RADIUM POISONING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17146, 31 December 1929, Page 5

RADIUM POISONING

EFFECT ON CHILDREN STRANGE ALLEGATION NEW YORK, Nov. 9. The question of the responsibility of employers for the pre-natal effects of working conditions on children of employed mothers is to be settled in a suit for" £IOO,OOO damages brought against the United States Radium Corporation by two women factory workers. It is"alleged in the complaint of Mrs. Metz, the mother of Edward, aged six, and Mrs. Tuck, the mother of Walter, aged six, and Harold, aged three, that the radium poisoning which the mothers contracted while painting illuminated watch diaJs 10 years ago lias communicated itself to the children, who have developed anaemia, and other incipient symptons of radium poisoning. The plaintiffs have not been employed by the Radium Corporation since 1918, but last year they and five other women sued for lieavy damages and obtained sub- ■ stantial financial settlements out of court. I The suit on behalf of the children promises to involve a profound scientific [discussion on whether the disabilities of parents in the present case can, as alleged, extend to their children, and whether the offspring would not in any case have been the victims of the symptoms from which they are now suffering. In the making of luminous watch dials advantage is taken of the property of radium to cause certain chemical substances to fluoresce. The solution with which dials are painted, therefore, contain minute traces of radium. Radium "poisoning" may take three forms>—a skin affection that may develop into cancer; extreme anaemia; and j sterility.