Radium Girls by Kate Moore. "I am not usually a non-fiction reader, but I could not put down this book. The dial painters were girls in their teens and early twenties that put the luminous paint on watches during WWI and the early 1920s. In order to get a nice point on the paint brush, they were taught to put the brushes containing radioactive paint in their mouths. As girls became radioactive themselves and developed horrible illnesses, they began to figure out the common cause of their diseases. But labor laws were very different at the time, and the corporations were just as shrewd as today. These deathly ill women fought valiantly for justice. Their stories should have been told long ago".
