November 24, 2023 • 35 mins
In Goiânia, Brazil, a junk dealer acquires an old medical device from two scrap-metal scavengers. The device itself isn't useful, but it comes with precious lead which will fetch him good money. There's something else inside the device, too: a curious, crystal-like substance that glows bright blue in the dark.
At first, the dealer is mesmerized by it: he wants to turn it into jewelry for his wife. But, everyone who comes into contact with the magical glitter seems to get sick. His own family succumbs to nausea and vomiting. A doctor suggests food poisoning - but this isn't like any food poisoning they've ever known before. And soon, the whole city is contaminated.
No-one saw this horrifying radiation accident coming. Should they have?
For a full list of sources, please see the show notes at timharford.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. The body of a six year old girl is
about to be buried. She died in isolation in a
hospital bed, a terrible death. Her face and neck swollen,
ulcers on her stomach, internal bleeding from almost every organ.
(00:39):
Just a few weeks earlier, she had been completely fine,
a normal, healthy, happy girl. Her name was Lada. Her
body is in a coffin on a vehicle making its
way to the cemetery. The coffin is lined with lead.
Hundreds of people have gathered at the entrance to the cemetery,
(01:00):
but they're not here to mourn. They're here to protest.
They don't want the body of this six year old
girl to be buried in their city. They hurl stones
into the road, trying to block the vehicle's path into
the cemetery. When that doesn't work, they throw stones at
lady's coffin. The year is nineteen eighty seven. The location
(01:24):
is Guyana, a city in central Brazil, and the people
of Guyana have just been through an experience that few
of them yet understand and none had seen coming. This
is a story about ignorance, which is bad, and something else,
something much worse. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
(01:49):
cautionary tales. A Sunday morning in Guyana, a young man
(02:29):
gets a visit from his friend. Both are poor. They
scrape a living by scavenging for scrap that they can
sell to junk dealers. The friend has heard a rumor
about something that they might be able to scavenge and
sell lead. Lots of lead, so much that it's far
too heavy for him to deal with on his own.
(02:50):
Come and help me, he says. But it's Sunday, Oh,
come on, it's only half a mile away. The two
scavengers take a wheelbarrow to the site of an old
hospital demolished a couple of years before, but one building
still stands amid the rubble. It used to be the
Igoyanya Institute of Radiotherapy. Apparently there's some kind of legal
(03:14):
dispute about who owns the building. That's why it hasn't
been knocked down with the others. Someone has bashed a
hole in the wall. Homeless people sometimes sleep inside when
the security guard isn't there. He isn't there today. The
two scavengers enter the building. In a room, they find
(03:34):
the device that has the lead in it. So much
lead hundreds of kilos. Clearly it's some kind of medical
device cased in plastic, shaped a bit like a tear
drop two or three feet across, attached by a metal
beam to a thick concrete wall in such a way
that you can aim the pointy bit in different directions.
(03:57):
The friends have brought some simple tools with them. They
set about taking the device apart. It takes four hours,
and how are they going to carry a chunk of
lead way hundreds of kilos? They try putting the wheelbarrow
on its side and pushing the massive lead into it.
That doesn't work, It just breaks one of the wheelbarrow's legs.
(04:20):
But in the center of the device they've uncovered a
part that's come loose, a cylinder about a foot long.
It must weigh one hundred kilos, but they can lift
it into the wheelbarrow just about taking turns. They push
the barrow back to the scavenger's house and set the
heavy cylinder down in the yard under a mango tree.
(04:43):
Their work isn't done yet. On and off for the
next few days they hammer away at the cylinder. Before
they can sell the lead, they have to separate it
out from some other stuff. The lead surrounds a sort
of capsule made from stainless steel, which has no scrap value.
There's a tiny little window into the capsule. They bash
(05:03):
it in with a screwdriver. One of the scavengers starts
to feel ill, nausea and vomiting. So does the other,
and one of his hands is swelling up. He goes
to the doctor. Maybe it's an allergic reaction to some food.
The doctor says. At last, though they've got the valuable
(05:25):
lead off that little steel capsule. They wheel it all
to the yard of the local junk dealer. Ill by
the lead, he says, I've got no interest in the
steel capsule, but fine, whatever, just put it in the garage.
That night, the dealer turns off the light in the garage,
(05:46):
but the room isn't plunged into darkness. Instead, there's a
beam of blue light shining from the tiny broken window
of the capsule, like a spotlight on the wall. It
looks eerie and beautiful. The dealer takes the capsule into
the house and puts it in the closet where his
(06:07):
wife keeps her clothes. He invites neighbors to come and
see the blue glow. What's glowing? Is a kind of
crystal type stuff in the middle of the capsule. There
is much of it, barely a spoonful. The dealer shows
his brother, a bus driver. I'm going to get jewelry
made for my wife from it, he says. The brother
(06:29):
picks up a grain of the glowing substance. It crumbles
into powder between his fingers. He brushes it off on
his palm. You won't be able to make anything from that.
The dealer and his family are now all getting ill,
nausea and vomiting. The wife goes to see a doctor.
(06:52):
Sounds like food poisoning, the doctor says. The wife thinks back,
who's ill and what have they all consumed recently. There's
just one thing that links together everyone she knows who's sick.
The coca cola they drank the night she made a
black bean stew. She still has some of the coca
cola and she takes it to the local public health center,
(07:15):
the Vihilansia Sanitaria. I think this is bad, she says,
Can you run some tests in another part of the city.
Another of the junk dealer's brothers has heard about the illness,
and he goes to visit. It's been only a few days,
(07:35):
but the dealer's family are getting dramatically worse. It's not
just nausea and vomiting. Now they've got strange marks on
their skin. Their hair is falling out. Neighbors are gossiping
that they've got aids. The dealer's teeth are coming loose.
The dealer thanks his brother for coming to check on them,
(07:57):
and says, before you go, come and see this thing
I bought. It glows blue. It's beautiful. It is indeed beautiful.
The brother apps a bit of the substance in a
piece of paper and slips it into his pocket to
take home. He wants to show it to his six
year old daughter, Lada. Look at this. The little girl
(08:23):
picks some up and crumbles it in her fingers. It's
like a special kind of glitter. A neighbor walks by
and remarks on the glow. The brother playfully daubed some
of the powdery substance on her neck. Your husband will
find you in the dark. Tonight. Lada's eating a boiled
egg now, her fingers still glowing blue. She always forgets
(08:46):
to wash her hands, no matter how many times they
tell her. That night, Lada vomits. The next day, the
neighbour's neck is irritated. Could there be something bad about
that glowing powder? The junk dealer's wife has started to
wander the same thing. This isn't like any food poisoning
(09:09):
she's ever known. That means it can't be the coca cola,
So what else? Links everyone she knows who's ill. She
takes the stainless steel capsule with what's left of the
crumbly crystals and goes back to the Vihillansia Sanitaria, the
same place she'd taken the coke. She puts the capsule
(09:30):
on the doctor's desk. This thing is killing my family.
The doctor doesn't really know what to make of it,
but it's clear that the woman is in a bad way.
He sends her to the hospital for tropical diseases. Perhaps
they can figure out what's wrong. He gets on with
his day. After a while, he looks again at the
(09:53):
thing on his desk and thinks, what if she's right?
What if it is dangerous? He takes it outside and
puts it on a chair in the courtyard. For now,
he should probably get rid of it, but how he's
not sure. He calls the fire department. Meanwhile, at the
(10:13):
hospital for Tropical diseases, one doctor looks at the lesions
on the dealer's wife's skin and thinks, that looks like
a radiation buron. But how can that be. He happens
to know a nuclear physicist who's currently visiting the city
and calls him up. Can he help them investigate? The
(10:34):
physicist degrees, but he needs a radiation meter. Where can
he get one in this city. He tries the local
office of a federal government agency that does geological surveys.
He persuades them to lend him a meter. He takes
it to the Vilancia Sanitaria. Outside the building, he turns
the meter on. It shoots right off the scale in
(10:57):
whatever direction he points it. How annoying. The meter must
be faulty. He goes back to the agency's office and
swaps it for another one. The same thing happened. Seems
like it's not a fault. He goes inside the building
and meets the doctor who put the capsule in the courtyard.
(11:19):
Don't worry, says the doctor. I've called the fire department
and they've decided how to get rid of the stuff.
Whatever it is. They're going to throw it in the river. No,
says the physicist. Don't do that. That's the worst possible
thing you could do. Cautionary tales will be back after
the break. Ottawa, Illinois in nineteen twenty two, a small
(11:58):
town of ten thousand people. A new employer has just
moved into the old high school building.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Radium Dial Studio requires the services of several girls for
studio work. Ideal location and surroundings, good pay while learning.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The work, as the company's name suggests, involves painting dials
with radium, dials of clocks and watches and instruments on airplanes.
And why radium Because mixed with phosphor, it blows a
bright greenish glow. You can see in the dark what
time it is or how high your plane is flying.
(12:39):
Radium is still fairly new, discovered by Mary Kouri in
eighteen ninety eight in Ottawa, Illinois. Nineteen year old Katherine
Wolf is one of the first to be employed at
Radium Dial. Her story is among those told in Kate
Moore's brilliant book The Radium Girls.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
We were taught how to point camel hair brushes with
our tongues.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Says Catherine.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
We would first dip the brush into water, then into
the powder, and then point the ends of the bristles
between our teeth. Every line had to be just so.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
The glowing powder got everywhere. When the girls were going
out on the town with their boyfriends, that sometimes wear
their party dress to work, because then at night the
dress would glow as they danced the Charleston. Sometimes at lunchtime,
the girls would go into a darkened room and paint
their faces with leftover radium, glowing eyebrows or mustaches. They'd
(13:40):
look in the mirror and laugh. A couple of years
after she started work at Radium Dial, Catherine developed a limp.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I began to feel pains in my left ankle which
spread up to my hip.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Other workers were getting health problems too, often with loose
teeth and sore gums. Katherine's friend Peg, for example, to
have a tooth taken out and the hole in her
gum just wouldn't heal. The dentist was baffled. One day,
the boss announced that the girls must no longer use
(14:22):
brushes to paint the dials. They had to switch to
glass pens instead. They weren't happy. The new pens, said Catherine,
were awkward, and clumsy. The brushes had been much more
precise because you could shape the tip of the brush
between your lips. But now they were being told that
anyone seen putting a brush to their lips would be sacked.
(14:45):
It was all very strange. Why would the company do that? Anyway,
it didn't last for long, the work was so much
slower with the new pens. In just a few months,
the boss had quietly dropped the whole idea. They were
back to using the brushes again. In nineteen twenty eight,
(15:06):
the local newspaper printed a story that shocked.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Them startling jump in the toll of radium poison victims
radium poison?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
What was this? The report was about a court case
in New Jersey, another company that employed women to paint
radium on dials had just settled a lawsuit brought by
its workers. The early symptoms of poisoning among dial painters,
said the news report, often included loose teeth and gum decay.
(15:39):
It sounded to the girls in Ottawa very much like
what was happening to them.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
The chill of fear was so depressing, says Catherine. We
could scarcely work.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But the boss at Radium Dial stepped in to reassure them.
Don't worry about these stories. He said, there's nothing to them.
You see, this other company uses radium paint made with mesthorium.
That must explain it. We use pure radium, and there's
no problem with that at all. But to put your
minds at rest, he says, we're bringing in medical experts
(16:14):
to test you. The experts took X rays and blood.
They ran a special test for radioactive breath that had
just been devised for that New Jersey court case. Time
went by and the girls heard nothing. They grew restive
and went to see the boss. Where are the results,
(16:36):
my dear girls, said the boss, If we were to give.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
The medical reports to you, there would be a riot
in this place.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Catherine and her colleagues didn't really know what he meant
by that. Years later, they found out the test results
had shown that more than half the workers had absorbed
so much radiation from radium they were measurably radioactive themselves.
The boss had decided that the best way to deal
(17:06):
with that finding was to hush it up. Radium Dial
took out a full page advert in the local newspaper.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
We have had thorough medical examinations made by technical experts
familiar with the conditions and symptoms of the so called
radium poisoning, nothing even approaching such symptoms or conditions has
ever been found.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It was a flat out lie, but it reassured the
workers for a while, even if Catherine's limp was getting
worse and her friend Peg was having more and more
problems with teeth coming out and gums not healing. Then
parts of PEG's jawbone started to come away in her mouth,
(17:52):
and she too got pain in her hips so bad
she could hardly walk. In nineteen twenty nine, six years
after she'd joined Radium dial, Peg collapsed at work. The
company sent her to hospital, died, and in the dead
of night men came to take her body away. But
(18:15):
PEG's brother in law was still in the hospital building
and he saw them. What do you think you're doing.
We're going to bury her, not like this, You're not.
She's a good Catholic girl, said the brother in law,
And she's going to have a mass and a funeral. Also,
we want an autopsy with our own doctor present, not
just yours, of course, said the company men. But when
(18:39):
the family's doctor arrived at the appointed time, he found
the autopsy had already been done. There must have been
some mix up. Could he at least examine what remained
of PEG's jawbone. No, the company's doctor had cut it away.
PEG's jawbone simply wasn't there. Once again, the boss's at
(19:02):
Radium Dial had decided the best way out of a
difficult situation was to lie about it. They told the
local newspaper they'd autopsid PEG's body and.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
There was no visible indication of radium poisoning.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Catherine kept going to work at Radium Dial. She was
finding it harder and harder to move around. The doctors
in Ottawa said it was rheumatism. But for a company
dogged by suspicion that its work made people ill, having
such an obviously sick employee was a daily embarrassment. In
(19:39):
nineteen thirty one, the boss called Katherine into his office.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I'm sorry, Catherine, he said, we have to let you go.
Your work is satisfactory. It's your being here in a
limping condition. Everyone is talking about you limping. It's not
giving a very good impression.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
To the company. After nine years working at Radium Dial,
Catherine no longer had a job, but she did have
a mission. She wanted to find out what was wrong
with her and whether or not the radium really was
to blame. If the doctors in small town Ottawa couldn't help,
(20:20):
she'd have to get another doctor from the city Chicago.
She sought out old workmates too, women who'd once painted
dials with her, who now had mysterious ailments, like Charlotte
with painful lump on her elbow the size of a
golf ball. The new doctor was baffled, But remember that
(20:42):
court case in New Jersey brought by other workers at
another dial painting factory. Doctors there had been learning more
about the various ways radium could affect the body, from
practice to cancers to anemia, symptoms that are hard to
predict and take time to appear gradually. The doctors had
(21:04):
been piecing together the clues. They'd been publishing articles in
medical jourmoernals. The doctors in Ottawa hadn't read those journals.
The new Chicago doctor sought them out, and what he
read left him in no doubt. Catherine and Charlotte went
back to Radium Dial to confront their old boss.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
We have radium poisoning. We have legal advice that we
are entitled to compensation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
The boss looked at them. Catherine barely able to walk,
Charlotte with just one arm, the other with a lump
on the elbow had been amputated.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I don't think, said the boss, that there is anything
wrong with you.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. Brazil, nineteen
eighty seven. In Guyana, at the Vihilansia Sanitaria, the physicist
(22:18):
hurries to intercept workers from the fire department for they
can pick up that strange steel capsule from the chair
in the courtyard. Don't go near it, he says, definitely,
don't throw it in the river. He'll poison the whole city.
He persuades the fire department to do something else instead,
evacuate the building right away, don't let anyone in. With
(22:43):
the doctor, the physicist goes to the home of the
woman who brought the capsule in outside the junk dealer's yard.
He gets out his radiation meter. You have to get
out of this house now, he tells the dealer, and
your family, and your workers, and your neighbors. The dealer
takes some persuading, but they all reluctantly agree. The physicist
(23:08):
and the doctor go to the State Ministry of Health
and hear their powers of persuasion face their sternest test
against the bureaucratic gatekeepers. Who are these two random people
brandishing a mysterious device, demanding to see the minister with
no appointment straight away? They insist. When the minister sees them,
(23:31):
he can't get his head around what the physicist is
telling him, but he makes the calls he needs to
make to the right government agencies. They swing into action.
The glowing blue powder in the steel capsule is caesium
one three seven, used at the time in radiotherapy devices
(23:54):
for treating diseases such as cancer. If its radiation is
narrowly focused by masses of lead to a tiny little window,
it can cure. Take away the lead that contains the radiation,
and it will kill. The first thing they have to
do is stop that blue powder killing anybody else. They
(24:17):
bring a crane to the Vihilancia Sanitaria, where the capsule
still sits where the doctor left it, on a chair
in the courtyard. The crane carefully lowers a wide section
of sewer pipe around the chair. Then they pump the
sewer pipe full of concrete. They will absorb most of
(24:38):
the radiation. The biggest threat is contained. But where has
the glowing blue powder been? They trace everyone who carried
it around, the scavengers, the junk dealer's bus driver, brother,
the other brother, lady's father. They take their radiation meters
(25:01):
to every building the caesium was in. They evacuate forty
one houses. Seven are so bad contaminated there's no choice
but to knock them down. They take away the ruins
and the soil underneath in special drums. Two hundred and
(25:21):
seventy five lorry loads of waste will eventually be driven
off and securely buried. And there's plant life to check.
You wouldn't want to eat mangoes from the tree in
the scavenger's yard, and animals, pet dogs. It goes on
and on. After six weeks, a worker's radiation meter springs
(25:42):
randomly into life. It's a radioactive chicken crossing the road.
The authorities take over the local sports stadium and ask
residents to come by to be checked over. Thousands of
people queue up. Two hundred and forty nine set off
the radiation meters. About half are lucky, taking off their
(26:06):
clothes and having a shower is enough to get them
the all clear. The rest need medical care. The worst
affected have so much caesium in their bodies they're dangerously
radioactive themselves. They're corraled together in a sealed off room
in the hospital, including the dealer, his employees, his wife,
(26:29):
his brothers, little lader, the neighbor with the powder daubed
on her neck. Four of them will die within the month.
The nurses can't spend much time tending to them, it's
too risky. After a couple of weeks, the President of
Brazil pays a visit with his entourage. They're all in
(26:52):
protective suits and they keep their distance. We were there
in the corner, sitting on the mattress, remembers the bus
driver brother. It felt like we were people from another world.
The other brother, Laida's dad, can't stop crying. When Lada
asks why, he says he has a speck in his eye.
(27:16):
Don't worry, dad, she tells him, I'm fine. The caesium
Mongoiana made people sick straight away. The radium paint from
the nineteen twenties and thirties had more insidious effects, and
the symptoms were disparate from Catherine's limp, to PEG's tooth,
(27:38):
to the lump on Charlotte's elbow. No wonder. It took
time at first for doctors to piece together what was happening. Radioactivity,
after all, was a recent discovery. What it meant for
human health was still unclear. The dial painters were among
the first to suffer its effects. In nineteen thirty eight,
(28:01):
seven years after she lost her job at Radium Dial,
Katherine Wolf Donahue sat in a courtroom. She was married now,
she had two small children. Her health had continued to decline.
Her jawbone broke apart at Easter as the priest gave
her holy communion. She weighed barely seventy pounds, but she
(28:27):
still had faith that the doctors would discover a cure,
and she had been fighting. She'd organized her former workmates,
she'd found a lawyer to represent them. Now she was
telling the court how Radium Dial had done away with
her glass pens and let the girls go back to
shaping their brushes in their lips, long after the company
(28:49):
was well aware of the danger.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's the way this terrible poison got into our systems.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Catherine died age thirty five, just three weeks after the
court delivered its verdict, radium dial it found had shown
gross negligce. The court awarded Catherine and her co workers' compensation,
nowhere near enough, but the maximum the law allowed. The
(29:20):
case helped reshape laws on workplace safety. It helped scientists
understand the risks of working with radioactive materials and how
to manage them, just in time for the race to
develop the atomic bomb. By nineteen eighty seven, half a
century later, radiation was well understood. And yet in Guyanya
(29:45):
here were people carting caesium around in wheelbarrows and on
the bus, crumbling it between their fingers, daubing it on
their necks. How could it have happened to start with?
Of course, the medical device containing highly radioactive material really
shouldn't have been left in an abandoned building on a
(30:06):
derelict site. I was asking for trouble. But who's to
blame appears murky. The clinic's owners should have taken it away,
but they were caught up in a legal dispute about
who owned the building. A court said they couldn't go
in the country's nuclear regulators should have been kept informed
about where the device was. Nonetheless, nineteen grams of caesium,
(30:32):
just a spoonful fell through the administrative cracks. Nineteen grams
were enough to cause all those problems. Public communication was
a problem too. When investigators from the International Atomic Energy
Agency studied the aftermath, they said the cleanup itself went well,
(30:55):
but people were confused about continuing levels of risk. Rumors
ran riot. Some people panicked too much, like the hundreds
of protesters who threw stones to try to stop Lader's burial.
Though the little girl's body in its lead lined coffin
posed no threat to anyone, others were far too blase.
(31:17):
A one journalist recalls watching with incredulity a marriage right
next to one of the most contaminated sights. The bride
and groom exchanged vows as workers in protective suits walked
past with drum after drum of radioactive waste. Were they
not worried? Not at all? Said the groom, God will
(31:41):
protect us. Seventeen days passed between the scavengers taking the
radiotherapy device and the fire department nearly throwing it in
the river. So many people saw the glowing blue powder.
How is it possible that no one knew the glow
(32:02):
meant danger. But then why would they We'd never heard
of caesium radiation these things, says Ladi's mum In nineteen
eighty seven, there was no world wide web. They couldn't
google glowing blue stuff. So I don't want to criticize
(32:23):
the people who didn't know. Instead, I want to celebrate
the curious, the doctor who thought this looks like a
radiation burn, the physicist who found a radiation meter to borrow.
The junk dealer's wife who stopped to think, why are
we sick? What might explain it? Her first answer was wrong,
(32:44):
wasn't coca cola? But she was asking the right questions.
If she hadn't, who knows how much further the caesium
would have spread. Catherine Wolf and her colleagues asked the
right questions, too. The difference was that they had a
boss who wanted to keep them from the answers. It
(33:06):
seems bad when no one knows the truth, but it's
far worse when someone's trying to suppress it. Seven minutes,
said the scientists, was the longest the nurses could stay
by Lada's bedside without risking too much exposure to the caesium.
That was breaking down her body. One man didn't care
(33:29):
about getting more radiation. Lada's dad, so what he said,
if I die with my daughter. He didn't die with
his daughter, but he didn't live to old age. He
started to smoke endlessly, one cigarette after another. He died
(33:50):
of emphysema, or that's what the death certificate said. Others
say he died from grief or guilt. He never forgave
himself for bringing that powder home, but it isn't a
sin to be ignorant. Lada's dad had no reason to
blame himself, unlike the boss of Radium Dial, who seems
(34:15):
to have felt no guilt at all. Kate Moore's book
is titled The Radium Girls And Next Time I'll be
back with Kate Moore herself for a cautionary conversation about
their story. For a full list of all our sources,
(34:38):
please see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.
The sound design and original music is the work of
(35:01):
Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the
voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge Harford, Jemma Saunders
and rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible
without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne,
Litel Millard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan.
(35:25):
Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you
like the show, please remember to share, rate and review,
tell your friends and if you want to hear the
show ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the
show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
(35:48):
slash plus
Pushkin. The body of a six year old girl is
about to be buried. She died in isolation in a
hospital bed, a terrible death. Her face and neck swollen,
ulcers on her stomach, internal bleeding from almost every organ.
(00:39):
Just a few weeks earlier, she had been completely fine,
a normal, healthy, happy girl. Her name was Lada. Her
body is in a coffin on a vehicle making its
way to the cemetery. The coffin is lined with lead.
Hundreds of people have gathered at the entrance to the cemetery,
(01:00):
but they're not here to mourn. They're here to protest.
They don't want the body of this six year old
girl to be buried in their city. They hurl stones
into the road, trying to block the vehicle's path into
the cemetery. When that doesn't work, they throw stones at
lady's coffin. The year is nineteen eighty seven. The location
(01:24):
is Guyana, a city in central Brazil, and the people
of Guyana have just been through an experience that few
of them yet understand and none had seen coming. This
is a story about ignorance, which is bad, and something else,
something much worse. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
(01:49):
cautionary tales. A Sunday morning in Guyana, a young man
(02:29):
gets a visit from his friend. Both are poor. They
scrape a living by scavenging for scrap that they can
sell to junk dealers. The friend has heard a rumor
about something that they might be able to scavenge and
sell lead. Lots of lead, so much that it's far
too heavy for him to deal with on his own.
(02:50):
Come and help me, he says. But it's Sunday, Oh,
come on, it's only half a mile away. The two
scavengers take a wheelbarrow to the site of an old
hospital demolished a couple of years before, but one building
still stands amid the rubble. It used to be the
Igoyanya Institute of Radiotherapy. Apparently there's some kind of legal
(03:14):
dispute about who owns the building. That's why it hasn't
been knocked down with the others. Someone has bashed a
hole in the wall. Homeless people sometimes sleep inside when
the security guard isn't there. He isn't there today. The
two scavengers enter the building. In a room, they find
(03:34):
the device that has the lead in it. So much
lead hundreds of kilos. Clearly it's some kind of medical
device cased in plastic, shaped a bit like a tear
drop two or three feet across, attached by a metal
beam to a thick concrete wall in such a way
that you can aim the pointy bit in different directions.
(03:57):
The friends have brought some simple tools with them. They
set about taking the device apart. It takes four hours,
and how are they going to carry a chunk of
lead way hundreds of kilos? They try putting the wheelbarrow
on its side and pushing the massive lead into it.
That doesn't work, It just breaks one of the wheelbarrow's legs.
(04:20):
But in the center of the device they've uncovered a
part that's come loose, a cylinder about a foot long.
It must weigh one hundred kilos, but they can lift
it into the wheelbarrow just about taking turns. They push
the barrow back to the scavenger's house and set the
heavy cylinder down in the yard under a mango tree.
(04:43):
Their work isn't done yet. On and off for the
next few days they hammer away at the cylinder. Before
they can sell the lead, they have to separate it
out from some other stuff. The lead surrounds a sort
of capsule made from stainless steel, which has no scrap value.
There's a tiny little window into the capsule. They bash
(05:03):
it in with a screwdriver. One of the scavengers starts
to feel ill, nausea and vomiting. So does the other,
and one of his hands is swelling up. He goes
to the doctor. Maybe it's an allergic reaction to some food.
The doctor says. At last, though they've got the valuable
(05:25):
lead off that little steel capsule. They wheel it all
to the yard of the local junk dealer. Ill by
the lead, he says, I've got no interest in the
steel capsule, but fine, whatever, just put it in the garage.
That night, the dealer turns off the light in the garage,
(05:46):
but the room isn't plunged into darkness. Instead, there's a
beam of blue light shining from the tiny broken window
of the capsule, like a spotlight on the wall. It
looks eerie and beautiful. The dealer takes the capsule into
the house and puts it in the closet where his
(06:07):
wife keeps her clothes. He invites neighbors to come and
see the blue glow. What's glowing? Is a kind of
crystal type stuff in the middle of the capsule. There
is much of it, barely a spoonful. The dealer shows
his brother, a bus driver. I'm going to get jewelry
made for my wife from it, he says. The brother
(06:29):
picks up a grain of the glowing substance. It crumbles
into powder between his fingers. He brushes it off on
his palm. You won't be able to make anything from that.
The dealer and his family are now all getting ill,
nausea and vomiting. The wife goes to see a doctor.
(06:52):
Sounds like food poisoning, the doctor says. The wife thinks back,
who's ill and what have they all consumed recently. There's
just one thing that links together everyone she knows who's sick.
The coca cola they drank the night she made a
black bean stew. She still has some of the coca
cola and she takes it to the local public health center,
(07:15):
the Vihilansia Sanitaria. I think this is bad, she says,
Can you run some tests in another part of the city.
Another of the junk dealer's brothers has heard about the illness,
and he goes to visit. It's been only a few days,
(07:35):
but the dealer's family are getting dramatically worse. It's not
just nausea and vomiting. Now they've got strange marks on
their skin. Their hair is falling out. Neighbors are gossiping
that they've got aids. The dealer's teeth are coming loose.
The dealer thanks his brother for coming to check on them,
(07:57):
and says, before you go, come and see this thing
I bought. It glows blue. It's beautiful. It is indeed beautiful.
The brother apps a bit of the substance in a
piece of paper and slips it into his pocket to
take home. He wants to show it to his six
year old daughter, Lada. Look at this. The little girl
(08:23):
picks some up and crumbles it in her fingers. It's
like a special kind of glitter. A neighbor walks by
and remarks on the glow. The brother playfully daubed some
of the powdery substance on her neck. Your husband will
find you in the dark. Tonight. Lada's eating a boiled
egg now, her fingers still glowing blue. She always forgets
(08:46):
to wash her hands, no matter how many times they
tell her. That night, Lada vomits. The next day, the
neighbour's neck is irritated. Could there be something bad about
that glowing powder? The junk dealer's wife has started to
wander the same thing. This isn't like any food poisoning
(09:09):
she's ever known. That means it can't be the coca cola,
So what else? Links everyone she knows who's ill. She
takes the stainless steel capsule with what's left of the
crumbly crystals and goes back to the Vihillansia Sanitaria, the
same place she'd taken the coke. She puts the capsule
(09:30):
on the doctor's desk. This thing is killing my family.
The doctor doesn't really know what to make of it,
but it's clear that the woman is in a bad way.
He sends her to the hospital for tropical diseases. Perhaps
they can figure out what's wrong. He gets on with
his day. After a while, he looks again at the
(09:53):
thing on his desk and thinks, what if she's right?
What if it is dangerous? He takes it outside and
puts it on a chair in the courtyard. For now,
he should probably get rid of it, but how he's
not sure. He calls the fire department. Meanwhile, at the
(10:13):
hospital for Tropical diseases, one doctor looks at the lesions
on the dealer's wife's skin and thinks, that looks like
a radiation buron. But how can that be. He happens
to know a nuclear physicist who's currently visiting the city
and calls him up. Can he help them investigate? The
(10:34):
physicist degrees, but he needs a radiation meter. Where can
he get one in this city. He tries the local
office of a federal government agency that does geological surveys.
He persuades them to lend him a meter. He takes
it to the Vilancia Sanitaria. Outside the building, he turns
the meter on. It shoots right off the scale in
(10:57):
whatever direction he points it. How annoying. The meter must
be faulty. He goes back to the agency's office and
swaps it for another one. The same thing happened. Seems
like it's not a fault. He goes inside the building
and meets the doctor who put the capsule in the courtyard.
(11:19):
Don't worry, says the doctor. I've called the fire department
and they've decided how to get rid of the stuff.
Whatever it is. They're going to throw it in the river. No,
says the physicist. Don't do that. That's the worst possible
thing you could do. Cautionary tales will be back after
the break. Ottawa, Illinois in nineteen twenty two, a small
(11:58):
town of ten thousand people. A new employer has just
moved into the old high school building.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Radium Dial Studio requires the services of several girls for
studio work. Ideal location and surroundings, good pay while learning.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The work, as the company's name suggests, involves painting dials
with radium, dials of clocks and watches and instruments on airplanes.
And why radium Because mixed with phosphor, it blows a
bright greenish glow. You can see in the dark what
time it is or how high your plane is flying.
(12:39):
Radium is still fairly new, discovered by Mary Kouri in
eighteen ninety eight in Ottawa, Illinois. Nineteen year old Katherine
Wolf is one of the first to be employed at
Radium Dial. Her story is among those told in Kate
Moore's brilliant book The Radium Girls.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
We were taught how to point camel hair brushes with
our tongues.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Says Catherine.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
We would first dip the brush into water, then into
the powder, and then point the ends of the bristles
between our teeth. Every line had to be just so.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
The glowing powder got everywhere. When the girls were going
out on the town with their boyfriends, that sometimes wear
their party dress to work, because then at night the
dress would glow as they danced the Charleston. Sometimes at lunchtime,
the girls would go into a darkened room and paint
their faces with leftover radium, glowing eyebrows or mustaches. They'd
(13:40):
look in the mirror and laugh. A couple of years
after she started work at Radium Dial, Catherine developed a limp.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I began to feel pains in my left ankle which
spread up to my hip.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Other workers were getting health problems too, often with loose
teeth and sore gums. Katherine's friend Peg, for example, to
have a tooth taken out and the hole in her
gum just wouldn't heal. The dentist was baffled. One day,
the boss announced that the girls must no longer use
(14:22):
brushes to paint the dials. They had to switch to
glass pens instead. They weren't happy. The new pens, said Catherine,
were awkward, and clumsy. The brushes had been much more
precise because you could shape the tip of the brush
between your lips. But now they were being told that
anyone seen putting a brush to their lips would be sacked.
(14:45):
It was all very strange. Why would the company do that? Anyway,
it didn't last for long, the work was so much
slower with the new pens. In just a few months,
the boss had quietly dropped the whole idea. They were
back to using the brushes again. In nineteen twenty eight,
(15:06):
the local newspaper printed a story that shocked.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Them startling jump in the toll of radium poison victims
radium poison?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
What was this? The report was about a court case
in New Jersey, another company that employed women to paint
radium on dials had just settled a lawsuit brought by
its workers. The early symptoms of poisoning among dial painters,
said the news report, often included loose teeth and gum decay.
(15:39):
It sounded to the girls in Ottawa very much like
what was happening to them.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
The chill of fear was so depressing, says Catherine. We
could scarcely work.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But the boss at Radium Dial stepped in to reassure them.
Don't worry about these stories. He said, there's nothing to them.
You see, this other company uses radium paint made with mesthorium.
That must explain it. We use pure radium, and there's
no problem with that at all. But to put your
minds at rest, he says, we're bringing in medical experts
(16:14):
to test you. The experts took X rays and blood.
They ran a special test for radioactive breath that had
just been devised for that New Jersey court case. Time
went by and the girls heard nothing. They grew restive
and went to see the boss. Where are the results,
(16:36):
my dear girls, said the boss, If we were to give.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
The medical reports to you, there would be a riot
in this place.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Catherine and her colleagues didn't really know what he meant
by that. Years later, they found out the test results
had shown that more than half the workers had absorbed
so much radiation from radium they were measurably radioactive themselves.
The boss had decided that the best way to deal
(17:06):
with that finding was to hush it up. Radium Dial
took out a full page advert in the local newspaper.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
We have had thorough medical examinations made by technical experts
familiar with the conditions and symptoms of the so called
radium poisoning, nothing even approaching such symptoms or conditions has
ever been found.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It was a flat out lie, but it reassured the
workers for a while, even if Catherine's limp was getting
worse and her friend Peg was having more and more
problems with teeth coming out and gums not healing. Then
parts of PEG's jawbone started to come away in her mouth,
(17:52):
and she too got pain in her hips so bad
she could hardly walk. In nineteen twenty nine, six years
after she'd joined Radium dial, Peg collapsed at work. The
company sent her to hospital, died, and in the dead
of night men came to take her body away. But
(18:15):
PEG's brother in law was still in the hospital building
and he saw them. What do you think you're doing.
We're going to bury her, not like this, You're not.
She's a good Catholic girl, said the brother in law,
And she's going to have a mass and a funeral. Also,
we want an autopsy with our own doctor present, not
just yours, of course, said the company men. But when
(18:39):
the family's doctor arrived at the appointed time, he found
the autopsy had already been done. There must have been
some mix up. Could he at least examine what remained
of PEG's jawbone. No, the company's doctor had cut it away.
PEG's jawbone simply wasn't there. Once again, the boss's at
(19:02):
Radium Dial had decided the best way out of a
difficult situation was to lie about it. They told the
local newspaper they'd autopsid PEG's body and.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
There was no visible indication of radium poisoning.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Catherine kept going to work at Radium Dial. She was
finding it harder and harder to move around. The doctors
in Ottawa said it was rheumatism. But for a company
dogged by suspicion that its work made people ill, having
such an obviously sick employee was a daily embarrassment. In
(19:39):
nineteen thirty one, the boss called Katherine into his office.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
I'm sorry, Catherine, he said, we have to let you go.
Your work is satisfactory. It's your being here in a
limping condition. Everyone is talking about you limping. It's not
giving a very good impression.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
To the company. After nine years working at Radium Dial,
Catherine no longer had a job, but she did have
a mission. She wanted to find out what was wrong
with her and whether or not the radium really was
to blame. If the doctors in small town Ottawa couldn't help,
(20:20):
she'd have to get another doctor from the city Chicago.
She sought out old workmates too, women who'd once painted
dials with her, who now had mysterious ailments, like Charlotte
with painful lump on her elbow the size of a
golf ball. The new doctor was baffled, But remember that
(20:42):
court case in New Jersey brought by other workers at
another dial painting factory. Doctors there had been learning more
about the various ways radium could affect the body, from
practice to cancers to anemia, symptoms that are hard to
predict and take time to appear gradually. The doctors had
(21:04):
been piecing together the clues. They'd been publishing articles in
medical jourmoernals. The doctors in Ottawa hadn't read those journals.
The new Chicago doctor sought them out, and what he
read left him in no doubt. Catherine and Charlotte went
back to Radium Dial to confront their old boss.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
We have radium poisoning. We have legal advice that we
are entitled to compensation.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
The boss looked at them. Catherine barely able to walk,
Charlotte with just one arm, the other with a lump
on the elbow had been amputated.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I don't think, said the boss, that there is anything
wrong with you.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. Brazil, nineteen
eighty seven. In Guyana, at the Vihilansia Sanitaria, the physicist
(22:18):
hurries to intercept workers from the fire department for they
can pick up that strange steel capsule from the chair
in the courtyard. Don't go near it, he says, definitely,
don't throw it in the river. He'll poison the whole city.
He persuades the fire department to do something else instead,
evacuate the building right away, don't let anyone in. With
(22:43):
the doctor, the physicist goes to the home of the
woman who brought the capsule in outside the junk dealer's yard.
He gets out his radiation meter. You have to get
out of this house now, he tells the dealer, and
your family, and your workers, and your neighbors. The dealer
takes some persuading, but they all reluctantly agree. The physicist
(23:08):
and the doctor go to the State Ministry of Health
and hear their powers of persuasion face their sternest test
against the bureaucratic gatekeepers. Who are these two random people
brandishing a mysterious device, demanding to see the minister with
no appointment straight away? They insist. When the minister sees them,
(23:31):
he can't get his head around what the physicist is
telling him, but he makes the calls he needs to
make to the right government agencies. They swing into action.
The glowing blue powder in the steel capsule is caesium
one three seven, used at the time in radiotherapy devices
(23:54):
for treating diseases such as cancer. If its radiation is
narrowly focused by masses of lead to a tiny little window,
it can cure. Take away the lead that contains the radiation,
and it will kill. The first thing they have to
do is stop that blue powder killing anybody else. They
(24:17):
bring a crane to the Vihilancia Sanitaria, where the capsule
still sits where the doctor left it, on a chair
in the courtyard. The crane carefully lowers a wide section
of sewer pipe around the chair. Then they pump the
sewer pipe full of concrete. They will absorb most of
(24:38):
the radiation. The biggest threat is contained. But where has
the glowing blue powder been? They trace everyone who carried
it around, the scavengers, the junk dealer's bus driver, brother,
the other brother, lady's father. They take their radiation meters
(25:01):
to every building the caesium was in. They evacuate forty
one houses. Seven are so bad contaminated there's no choice
but to knock them down. They take away the ruins
and the soil underneath in special drums. Two hundred and
(25:21):
seventy five lorry loads of waste will eventually be driven
off and securely buried. And there's plant life to check.
You wouldn't want to eat mangoes from the tree in
the scavenger's yard, and animals, pet dogs. It goes on
and on. After six weeks, a worker's radiation meter springs
(25:42):
randomly into life. It's a radioactive chicken crossing the road.
The authorities take over the local sports stadium and ask
residents to come by to be checked over. Thousands of
people queue up. Two hundred and forty nine set off
the radiation meters. About half are lucky, taking off their
(26:06):
clothes and having a shower is enough to get them
the all clear. The rest need medical care. The worst
affected have so much caesium in their bodies they're dangerously
radioactive themselves. They're corraled together in a sealed off room
in the hospital, including the dealer, his employees, his wife,
(26:29):
his brothers, little lader, the neighbor with the powder daubed
on her neck. Four of them will die within the month.
The nurses can't spend much time tending to them, it's
too risky. After a couple of weeks, the President of
Brazil pays a visit with his entourage. They're all in
(26:52):
protective suits and they keep their distance. We were there
in the corner, sitting on the mattress, remembers the bus
driver brother. It felt like we were people from another world.
The other brother, Laida's dad, can't stop crying. When Lada
asks why, he says he has a speck in his eye.
(27:16):
Don't worry, dad, she tells him, I'm fine. The caesium
Mongoiana made people sick straight away. The radium paint from
the nineteen twenties and thirties had more insidious effects, and
the symptoms were disparate from Catherine's limp, to PEG's tooth,
(27:38):
to the lump on Charlotte's elbow. No wonder. It took
time at first for doctors to piece together what was happening. Radioactivity,
after all, was a recent discovery. What it meant for
human health was still unclear. The dial painters were among
the first to suffer its effects. In nineteen thirty eight,
(28:01):
seven years after she lost her job at Radium Dial,
Katherine Wolf Donahue sat in a courtroom. She was married now,
she had two small children. Her health had continued to decline.
Her jawbone broke apart at Easter as the priest gave
her holy communion. She weighed barely seventy pounds, but she
(28:27):
still had faith that the doctors would discover a cure,
and she had been fighting. She'd organized her former workmates,
she'd found a lawyer to represent them. Now she was
telling the court how Radium Dial had done away with
her glass pens and let the girls go back to
shaping their brushes in their lips, long after the company
(28:49):
was well aware of the danger.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's the way this terrible poison got into our systems.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Catherine died age thirty five, just three weeks after the
court delivered its verdict, radium dial it found had shown
gross negligce. The court awarded Catherine and her co workers' compensation,
nowhere near enough, but the maximum the law allowed. The
(29:20):
case helped reshape laws on workplace safety. It helped scientists
understand the risks of working with radioactive materials and how
to manage them, just in time for the race to
develop the atomic bomb. By nineteen eighty seven, half a
century later, radiation was well understood. And yet in Guyanya
(29:45):
here were people carting caesium around in wheelbarrows and on
the bus, crumbling it between their fingers, daubing it on
their necks. How could it have happened to start with?
Of course, the medical device containing highly radioactive material really
shouldn't have been left in an abandoned building on a
(30:06):
derelict site. I was asking for trouble. But who's to
blame appears murky. The clinic's owners should have taken it away,
but they were caught up in a legal dispute about
who owned the building. A court said they couldn't go
in the country's nuclear regulators should have been kept informed
about where the device was. Nonetheless, nineteen grams of caesium,
(30:32):
just a spoonful fell through the administrative cracks. Nineteen grams
were enough to cause all those problems. Public communication was
a problem too. When investigators from the International Atomic Energy
Agency studied the aftermath, they said the cleanup itself went well,
(30:55):
but people were confused about continuing levels of risk. Rumors
ran riot. Some people panicked too much, like the hundreds
of protesters who threw stones to try to stop Lader's burial.
Though the little girl's body in its lead lined coffin
posed no threat to anyone, others were far too blase.
(31:17):
A one journalist recalls watching with incredulity a marriage right
next to one of the most contaminated sights. The bride
and groom exchanged vows as workers in protective suits walked
past with drum after drum of radioactive waste. Were they
not worried? Not at all? Said the groom, God will
(31:41):
protect us. Seventeen days passed between the scavengers taking the
radiotherapy device and the fire department nearly throwing it in
the river. So many people saw the glowing blue powder.
How is it possible that no one knew the glow
(32:02):
meant danger. But then why would they We'd never heard
of caesium radiation these things, says Ladi's mum In nineteen
eighty seven, there was no world wide web. They couldn't
google glowing blue stuff. So I don't want to criticize
(32:23):
the people who didn't know. Instead, I want to celebrate
the curious, the doctor who thought this looks like a
radiation burn, the physicist who found a radiation meter to borrow.
The junk dealer's wife who stopped to think, why are
we sick? What might explain it? Her first answer was wrong,
(32:44):
wasn't coca cola? But she was asking the right questions.
If she hadn't, who knows how much further the caesium
would have spread. Catherine Wolf and her colleagues asked the
right questions, too. The difference was that they had a
boss who wanted to keep them from the answers. It
(33:06):
seems bad when no one knows the truth, but it's
far worse when someone's trying to suppress it. Seven minutes,
said the scientists, was the longest the nurses could stay
by Lada's bedside without risking too much exposure to the caesium.
That was breaking down her body. One man didn't care
(33:29):
about getting more radiation. Lada's dad, so what he said,
if I die with my daughter. He didn't die with
his daughter, but he didn't live to old age. He
started to smoke endlessly, one cigarette after another. He died
(33:50):
of emphysema, or that's what the death certificate said. Others
say he died from grief or guilt. He never forgave
himself for bringing that powder home, but it isn't a
sin to be ignorant. Lada's dad had no reason to
blame himself, unlike the boss of Radium Dial, who seems
(34:15):
to have felt no guilt at all. Kate Moore's book
is titled The Radium Girls And Next Time I'll be
back with Kate Moore herself for a cautionary conversation about
their story. For a full list of all our sources,
(34:38):
please see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.
The sound design and original music is the work of
(35:01):
Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the
voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge Harford, Jemma Saunders
and rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible
without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne,
Litel Millard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan.
(35:25):
Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you
like the show, please remember to share, rate and review,
tell your friends and if you want to hear the
show ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the
show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
(35:48):
slash plus
Host
Tim Harford
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