This was book was both very upsetting and intriguing. I think that obviously, on the edges of my mind I knew about radium poisoning and other issues with radioactive substances, but I don't think I ever thought in detail about how it was used in our lives and how it caused the damage it did. It is amazing to me just how much damage we can cause with greed, lack of knowledge, and flippancy for the little we do know. Any time I read a story like this, and find myself thinking, "Well, duh!" I have to wonder what we can look back at a hundred years from today and see so obviously how we are causing damage - and know that there were always people who knew from the beginning, and people who will deny it until the end. How depressing! That was highlighted in this very book with the postscript, which I first thought was a summary to close up the story but was actually just the same events happening again, except in the 70s.

This book felt a bit longer and more repetitive than it needed to be, however knowing that one of the author's main goals was to highlight the lives of the women who suffered through this makes me respect the length a bit more - each woman really was given her own history rather than mentioned as just another victim. I did truly become attached to them and felt empathy for them in a way I don't typically connect to historical nonfiction. Being introduced to them as teenage girls and walked through to their very young deaths felt truly heartbreaking.