![]() Most stories were framed like this Salon article, titled “Electric cars are still better for the environment. Searching for information on the abuses of the lithium economy, it was hard to find much. And mining, of course, is devastating to the Earth, and to workers-both those mining the materials as well as manufacturing them into batteries, PV cells, and so on. Indeed, if the Green New Deal succeeds, it would keep the same destructive underlying system in place,*** only replacing our fossil fuel infrastructure with a mineral-based infrastructure (that is to say, our world would run on silicon PVs and lithium batteries, and wind turbines crafted primarily from iron ore). He called this “Deep Ecology.”īut the majority of activists still haven’t internalized this. Instead of fighting in ‘shallow’ ways-saving one forest, preventing one power plant or incinerator from being built-Naess argued we need instead to cultivate a radical new relationship with the Earth and ourselves. ![]() Back in the 1970s, Arne Naess criticized the environmental movement for that very failing. Retouched version ( Public Domain from Wikipedia) Diving deeperīut why is the struggle never ending? I would argue that it’s because we’re not attacking the insane economic system that allows for, and rewards, corporations that actively abuse people and the Earth. Sad fact: radium kept being used in watches until the 1970s even as the dangers of radium were known before the first Radium Girls started dying in the 1920s.** 1921 magazine advertisement for Undark, a product of the Radium Luminous Material Corporation which was involved in the Radium Girls scandal. But as this and countless other movies show, the corporations, with their nearly infinite resources (relative to the poor workers), their ability to pay off experts, to hide data, to utilize strongmen (including the police), to settle with (and thus silence) plaintiffs means they’ll just keep on winning. Toward the end of the film, Bessie asks Katherine Wiley of the New Jersey Consumer’s League, “So this is how it ends?” And Wiley, who had helped orchestrate the Radium Girls case, responds, “Can I tell you a secret I learned a long time ago? It never ends.” And with those three words conveys that the abuses will keep on and on, but so will the efforts to fight them. In fact, that’s the point I want to make. I put at the time in parentheses as I’m not sure really that much has changed. Or the shoe factory, or the canning plant,” because they’ll all expose you to “chronic toxins.” This was a nice shorthand way to show how abusive so many industries and corporations were (at the time). He then says, “Well, you know, don’t apply to the fireworks factory. Second, one of the sisters, Bessie, who fortunately didn’t lick her brush because she didn’t like the aftertaste, decides at first to find a new job, and tells this to her boyfriend, a labor activist. But then again, how many dumb things would people yell at you for doing? And did you even know that they were dumb? Sure some are obvious like smoking or vaping but what about flossing? In thirty years, our kids will be watching Glide Guys about how the Proctor & Gamble Company coated their Glide floss with PFAS chemicals (Teflon-like chemicals)-substances industry has known to be toxic since 1978! And yet, how many people today, even though they might have given up their Teflon pans, know they’re injecting similar toxic chemicals straight into their bloodstreams each time they do the good deed of flossing their teeth? “Stop flossing!” viewers will yell, and shake their heads at how stupid we were.* Radium Girls painting dials and getting cancer.įirst, as one watches the film, one can’t help scream to the girls, “Stop licking your brushes!” knowing how dumb it is. No need to tell the whole story, as it’s worth watching, but there are a few points that are relevant today. The story focuses on two sisters and two other Radium Girls who sued the United States Radium Corporation for damages. ![]() Of course, they got radium poisoning, their bones (where radium concentrates) turning cancerous or crumbling in their bodies - including pieces of their jaws literally falling out. Radium Girls were the young women who painted luminous watch faces with radium paint and were taught by their supervisors to shape the brushes with their lips to keep their work precise. How much do you know about the radioactive history of the radium industry? I recently watched the Radium Girls on Netflix, which reminded me of the brutal abuses suffered by radium workers (often women).
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