1917. As a war raged across the world young American women flocked to work painting watches clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a lucrative and glamorous job - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed the women began to suffer from mysterious illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive - their work - was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. These courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly and instead became determined to fight for justice.