RADIUM POISONING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 285, 30 October 1933, Page 2

RADIUM POISONING

WOMAN’S TERRIBLE DEATH. UNITED STATES FACTORY CASE. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received October 28, 12.50 p.m. NEW YORK, Oct. 27. A message from East Orange (New Jersey) states that the third of five women doomed to death through radium poisoning in one of the most sensational cases of industrial disease in America died here to-day. Miss Grace Fryer, aged 35, was aged 16 when she started to work in the factory of the United States Radium Corporation and was until now under intensive treatment in an effort to stave off the inevitable death which came to-day. With a steel brace clamped about her back to lend support to a crumbling spine, she continued to work as a clerk to the last. Five women brought a suit in 1927 for 1,250,000 dollars against the corporation for radium poisoning having, after the custom of operatives in the factory, damped with their lips brushes with which they applied radium paint to watch dials. The suit was settled with a grant of 100,000 dollars each and 600 dollars annually. Two of the five women are still alive and awaiting the same end.