Mad Hatters, The Radium Girls, and The Asbestos Hotel: Stories of New Jersey’s Industrial Toxins with Dr. Sandra Moss
April 16 at 7 pm

Virtual Zoom Program:

https://middlesexcountynj-gov.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0td-2vrDkrEtFY_zNS08BYfuHmS3olfI4-

Join Dr. Sandra Moss to learn about how industrial toxins are an inescapable part of the history of the industrial State of New Jersey. Historically, three New Jersey industrial toxins – mercury, radium, and asbestos – have their own harrowing stories to tell. The hatting industry, which thrived in dozens of small shops in Essex County including in Orange, South Orange, and Millburn in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, exposed workers to toxic mercury fumes, causing mental and physical disabilities. In the interwar years, dozens of radium dial painters at a factory in Orange – all young women – suffered and died from radiation-induced bone cancer and bone degeneration. In the mid-century, workers at Manville, the “asbestos city,” fell ill with damaged lungs and a rare tumor called mesothelioma, as did workers who installed the insulation products produced at the Manville plant. In recent decades, New Jersey has been home to over 140 EPA-administered Superfund cleanup sites. But protection for workers and compensation for those suffering and sometimes dying from industrial exposures have been relatively recent developments – join us to hear about the cases that paved the way for protecting the health of workers throughout the state.