In 1933, Louis Schwartz, F.C. Makepeace, and H. Trendley Dean published findings showing the hazardous effects of radium dial painting. The United States Radium Corp. extracted and purified radium which was used in producing paint for many of its products.

As a result, the young women who painted the dials of watches, popular in the military at the time, suffered radiation poisoning from using the self-luminous paint.