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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Radium Dial Painters: Workers’ Rights, Scientific Testing, And The Fight For Humane Treatment, Elizabeth Richter Jan 2018

The Radium Dial Painters: Workers’ Rights, Scientific Testing, And The Fight For Humane Treatment, Elizabeth Richter

Departmental Honors Projects

From the early 1910s through the Great Depression, the dial painting industry provided opportune jobs for young female workers. Dial painting jobs did not require many skills but were well-paying professions. These careers attracted many young women and girls to work there. However, unknown to the painters at the time, the radium that they were using to paint the dial faces was slowly poisoning them and would later cause major health defects. Many of these women that did not die directly from the radium developed various forms of cancer and radium poisoning, which led to many lawsuits. New industrial and …


Gambling With Lives: A History Of Occupational Health In Southern Nevada, 1905--2010, Michelle Ann Turk Aug 2011

Gambling With Lives: A History Of Occupational Health In Southern Nevada, 1905--2010, Michelle Ann Turk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In April 2009, the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to "the exponential growth in the Las Vegas market." In fact, since Las Vegas' founding in 1905, rapid development in the region has always strained occupational health standards. From transporting hazardous railroad cargoes to building Hoover Dam, chemical processing at Basic Magnesium, nuclear testing, and dense megaresort construction on the Strip, workers, residents, and tourists alike have been exposed to the threat of living …


Dead Roses And Blooming Deserts: The Medical History Of A New Deal Icon, Michelle F. Turk Jan 2007

Dead Roses And Blooming Deserts: The Medical History Of A New Deal Icon, Michelle F. Turk

Psi Sigma Siren

Although a memorial plaque at the Hoover Dam sets the number of workers killed during its construction at ninety-six, the real figure was nearly double. In fact, the figure would have been much higher had it not been for the precedent-setting effort by the federal government, contactors, and workers to save as many lives as possible on the project. Aside from its long unrecognized value as a jobs program, much needed stimulus to the fledging Las Vegas economy, and status as one of the “man-made wonders of the world,” Hoover Dam represented a major step forward for the American occupational …