Carter Roy

Meanwhile, in a different part of the same building, the male chemists and scientists handle radium very differently.

They use tongs and wear protective equipment.

They know better than to let this stuff touch their skin, let alone put it in their mouths.

Same company, same radium, two completely different sets of rules.

But the dial painters don't know any of this.

Like most of America, they see radium as a beauty product.

Soon the dial painters become the envy of every young woman in town, because by the end of each shift, the women literally glow.

The radium dust settles on their hair, their skin, and their clothes.

They paint their fingernails and teeth with the stuff.

They wear their best dresses to work so the fabric will sparkle at the dance hall.

They come to be known as the Ghost Girls, because when they walk home at night, they shimmer in the dark.

They have no idea what's making them glamorous is also killing them.

By 1920, the glow starts to fade and something else takes its place.

Dentists in Orange, New Jersey are suddenly flooded with patients, young women mostly, loose teeth, painful jaws, infections that won't heal, tooth extractions that never close up.

one by one the ghost girls are getting sick one of them is molly magia she's 24 years old one of seven sisters four of them worked at the factory together molly is good at her job she's been painting dials for a few years and is a top earner

In 1921, she visits her dentist with a toothache.

He pulls the tooth.

Routine procedure.

But then the next tooth starts hurting.

And the next.