Beautifully filmed and crisply edited, América is more than a story or a film. Yet the path is an arduous one, and not for those without the strongest sense of commitment. The family is Mexican, but the issue is one which any of us may only be lucky enough to face ourselves if we live to watch our parents or grandparents bodies age beyond their capacities, without having suffered early death or disease. What kind of selfless love does it take to give up one's own freedom to respectfully aid a grandparent who might otherwise be institutionalized with minimal care or die alone? What is the effect on the relationship of brother to brother, and the implications to them having their own lives? This loving and respectful documentary required Chase Whiteside and Eric Stoll to follow the family for years, a journey which we watch while being reminded of our own elders and their needs. One by one, the sons and extended family members are called upon to help necessary for her survival but impeding theirs. 'Oops' is never good occupational health policy.Diego lives a carefree young life until his grandmother, América, needs care as she ages and dementia eats away at her abilities. 'We really don't want our factory workers to be the guinea pigs for discovery. By the time World War II came around, the federal government had set basic safety limits for handling radiation.Īnd, she says, there are still lessons to be learned about how we protect people who work with new, untested substances. At 107 years old, she was one of the last of the radium girls.īlum says the radium girls had a profound impact on workplace regulations. You just don't know what to blame,' she said.

'I was left with different things, but I lived through them. There's no way to know if her time in the factory contributed. Over the years, she had some health problems - bad teeth, migraines, two bouts with cancer. In all, by 1927, more than 50 women had died as a direct result of radium paint poisoning.īut Keane was among the hundreds who survived. Many of them ended up using the money to pay for their own funerals. At a factory in New Jersey, the women sued the U.S. Their spines collapsed.'ĭozens of women died. 'There was one woman who the dentist went to pull a tooth and he pulled her entire jaw out when he did it,' says Blum. The radium they had swallowed was eating their bones from the inside. By the mid-1920s, dial painters were falling ill by the dozens, afflicted with horrific diseases. 'Of course, no one thought it was dangerous in these first couple of years,' explains Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook. Twelve numbers per watch, upwards of 200 watches per day - and with every digit, the girls swallowed a little bit of radium. To get the numbers small enough, new hires were taught to do something called 'lip pointing.' After painting each number, they were to put the tip of the paintbrush between their lips to sharpen it.

was hiring dial people to paint the tiny numbers onto watch faces for about 5 cents a watch. Radium wristwatches were manufactured right here in America, and the U.S. In the 1920s, a young working-class woman could land a job working with the miracle substance. Doctors used it to treat everything from colds to cancer. Radium was the latest miracle substance - an element that glowed and fizzed, which salesmen promised could extend people's lives, pump up their sex drive and make women more beautiful. EPA Expected to Issue Million-Year-Long RegulationĪnd it did seem magical.

American radium movie