Occupational Health & Safety
Section Newsletter
Mary Miller, Section Chair
Emily Allen, Maggie Robbins, Co-EditorsFrom the Section Chair:
OH&S Section in high regard at APHA
Welcome to the new year with the Occupational Health & Safety Section. First, I want to thank Janie Gordon for her great work as Chair this past year and continued hard work while we transition for the current year. We have a great leadership roster this year and the grand things that you’ve come to expect from the section will continue. One thing I have been struck with as I’ve come in contact with various APHA staff members is the high regard they hold for our section. At the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis when I identified which Section I belonged to, one staff member remarked, "Oh that’s the small Section that does big things."
Our influence is felt throughout the organization with positions held by Barry Levy, as Immediate Past-President of APHA, David Michaels as Chair of the Action Board for a second year, and Howie Frumkin as Chair of the Science Board, to name a few. A list of our Section leadership is included for your information in this newsletter. We and many other active Section members, are available to promote better working conditions through efforts to change policies at the national level, as well as in our local communities. Please use us as resources and consider becoming more involved yourself.
While we are looking forward to another productive year, one of the themes echoed repeatedly at the annual meeting was how to reach out to recruit new members. It is important that we continue to rejuvenate the section. It is incumbent upon all of us to find ways to tell others, especially students, about the important work we do in occupational health and safety, and why APHA is an important avenue for policy and worker advocacy to take place. The Public Health Student Caucus of APHA is growing by leaps and bounds and is anxious to connect with sections and members working in various public health capacities. We will hear more from them in the next newsletter, particularly about their mentoring project in which they are actively linking section members to students. Linda Murray, Membership Committee Co-chair, is our liaison to the Student Caucus and will help us develop a solid role with them.
Also of great importance at the 1997 annual meeting was the passage of a resolution on Ergonomics. Thanks to Jim Cone, Barbara Silverstein, Bob Harrison, and Dave Rempel for their hard work on this. Once a resolution is passed and essentially becomes part of APHA policy, the weight of the organization can be called upon when needed in support of the issue addressed by the resolution. It is important that you use this and other policies in your local settings as well as on the national level to fight for better working conditions.
As I have become more aware of APHA’s organizational structure, I am impressed with the commitment and dedication of the staff and the valuable resources available to us as members and Sections. While we may not always agree with their policies and procedures, there are many ways to make our voices heard. This is a member-driven organization and we would be foolish not to take advantage of the many organizational resources. –Mary Miller
Electronically Yours
OSHALERT is an e-mail list of section members begun several years ago by David Michaels for rapid communication on important policy and legislative issues. As time goes on, the Section may be expanding its use of electronic communication. If you have not received a recent OSHALERT message then you are not in the system. Please send a quick note to subscribe to OSHALERT@u.washington.edu.
APHA has made a computer file of our membership roster available for section activities. I hope that individuals doing grassroots advocacy or who are interested in working on local issues will be able to use this file to locate members in their area. However, as I have scanned the file looking for information to contact individuals, I have found that some of the records contain outdated information. If you have changed work or home locations in the last year, please update your records. You can do this electronically on their web page at www.apha.org; or send an e-mail to membership.mail@apha.org; or call: 202/789-5674.
There is now a "Members Only" page on the APHA web page. At present it lists the leadership for all Sections. If you were not notified electronically, then APHA does not have your e-mail address. Please update your records. To access the page, you need the Section name and password. Name: occhlth; password: rules.
I will be working with some individuals to develop a web page for the Section this year. Currently, APHA has provided space for the Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network on their web page under our sections description. They have also volunteered to post a copy of the poster developed for our Section’s scholarship fund that Janie Gordon has organized. Stay tuned.
submitted by Mary Miller
Resolutions Update
In 1997 APHA adopted a resolution from our Section on ergonomics. The resolution urges the federal government to develop an effective workplace prevention standard and undertake further research on causes of musculoskeletal disorders and the best interventions. It also calls on Congress to support OSHA's effort to adopt an effective standard.
Jim Cone is preparing two resolutions for this year. The first seeks to bring light trucks under the same safety and environmental standards as cars. The second seeks to eliminate the use of MTBE, a toxic gasoline additive. The deadline for submissions of resolutions to APHA was March 6th. If you want to help get these resolutions through the process to adoption by APHA, contact Jim at (510) 540-2194.
APHA is undertaking a review of 50 years of adopted resolutions. Each Section will support this effort by reviewing resolutions they put forward. For our Section, Peter Orris has taken on the task of coordinating the review. The intention is to find out of date resolutions, as well as to identify policy gaps where resolutions may be needed. The review has not yet begun, so if you want to assist with this effort, contact Peter at (312) 633-5310.
Nominations Committee: Names ASAP
The Section needs names for the following positions: Chair-elect, Secretary-elect, Section Council (2 openings) and Governing Council (2 openings). Our professional lives are busy, but keeping the Section working is greatly appreciated-- serving a term is one way. If you are interested, please call/email for APHA Nomination Forms to John Morawetz, jsmorawetz@cwhse-cn.ccmail.compuserve.com,
(513) 621-8882; or Darryl Alexander, dalexand@aft.org, 800-238-1133, ext. 5674. Individuals can nominate themselves or other section members.
Section members will by now have received a Section Ballot around the same time as this newsletter. This is for the 1997 election, which unfortunately is being held a bit late. Please return these ballots by March 20. You will receive another (different!) ballot this summer. We will fill you in with more details in the next newsletter.
submitted by John Morawetz
Annual Meeting Scholarship kickoff
One of the exciting events at the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis was the kickoff of our Section’s scholarship fund. The fund will be used to increase the participation of students in health and safety disciplines, local union members or officers working on health and safety at the shop floor level and COSH activists at APHA Annual Meetings. This will help our field grow and direct that growth to the solution of the day-to-day health and safety problems of working men and women.
A Scholarship Committee is currently at work setting up the program. Key questions include: Who should be eligible? What expenses should be covered? What do we expect from scholarship recipients? How will recipients be selected? How will the program be publicized? How will funds be distributed? How will funds be replenished and increased? If you’d like to join the committee, contact Janie Gordon (410-706-7464) or jgordon@umppa1.ab.umd.edu.
At the Annual Meeting over $2,500 was donated to the fund. Donors received the satisfaction of supporting a worthwhile cause. Due to the generosity of photojournalist Earl Dotter and design/production by Lincoln Cushing of Inkworks, donors will also receive a beautiful poster featuring and original photograph. The poster makes a simple but eloquent statement about our struggle for safe jobs and safe communities. Earl also donated a large framed print of the poster photograph that was auctioned at the Section Social Hour! Denny Dobbin donated $300 for the honor of taking the signed print home with him!
It is not too late to support a healthy environment for workers and communities and get a striking poster to share the message. Your tax-deductible donation to the Scholarship Fund will be acknowledged with a receipt and a 17"x24" poster packaged in a cardboard mailing tube, ready to hang!
Checks should be made out to American Public Health Association, with "OH&S Scholarship Fund" in note field. Send checks to: APHA, 1015 15th St., N.W., Washington, D.C., 20005.
submitted by Janie Gordon
Get involved!
The OH&S Section has lots of great opportunities for making connections and participating in important and meaningful efforts. Help is always welcome. Use this leadership directory to contact the committee co-chair in your area of interest.
Call for newsletter submissions
Submissions for the late-spring ‘98 newsletter are welcome now through early May. Please e-mail them to emilyallen@aol.com, or call 206/325-9928. Submissions can take many forms: news brief, announcement, issue update, feature, review, "letter to the newsletter," or just a suggestion. Thank you in advance.
New programs at OSHA raise key questions
The Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) is changing the face of OSHA. This is the law which, among other things, requires federal agencies to give Congress a 5-year strategic plan by which the agency will have its performance measured. The logic behind GPRA is that if OSHA measures up to its goals, Congress could continue or increase funding OSHA as a reward. However, if OSHA doesn't meet the goals, then Congress may chose to cut OSHA's budget for not getting the promised results. Some Congressional critics have vilified OSHA for its past choice of performance measures, such as counting the number of inspections conducted and rate of citations of various types. The GPRA-induced 5-year strategic plan OSHA released on Sept. 30th has added some nice public-healthy goals and measures by including:
- Cut 3 categories of workplace injuries by 15%. The categories selected are lead, silica, and power press amputations.
- Cut injuries in 5 high hazard industries by 15%. The industry targets are: logging, construction, shipyards, food processing, and nursing homes.
- Decrease fatalities in the construction industry by 15% by focusing on the 4 leading causes of them (falls, struck-by, crushed-by, and electrocutions and electrical injuries).
- Effect a 20% reductions in injuries and illnesses in at least 100,000 workplaces where the Agency initiates a major intervention.
- Within 4 years of the effective date of significant final rules, achieving a 20% reduction in fatalities, injuries or illnesses, or, for program rules or revisions, a 20% or greater increase in the rate of current industry compliance.
The problem comes with how these injury, illness and fatality goals will be measured. Will it be by collecting employer 200 Logs? Will it be by Workers' Compensation data? Are either of these sources of data be reliable, comparable to the "before" data (due to changes in record keeping practices and in state Workers' Compensation laws), or meaningful for judging OSHA's performance? While we all desire OSHA to reduce injury and illness rates, it is not at all clear that suitable data systems are currently available, or being used by OSHA, especially in light of the new program described below.
Cooperative Compliance Programs
A related development at "New OSHA's" desire to provide better "customer service," to "leverage resources" and encourage employer compliance though innovative new methods. On November 25, 1997, OSHA rolled out the new Cooperative Compliance Program (CCP). CCP is not the same as the existing Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP's). VPPs target the "best" employers, encourages them to go through a lengthy certification process in which they implement a comprehensive workplace safety and health program beyond OSHA's regulatory requirements, and in turn, the employer is removed from OSHA's random inspection scheduling system. CCP focuses instead on the employers with the most reported injuries and illnesses. Under CCP, private sector employers in certain industries who have 60 or more employees and have high workplace injury/illness rates will be selected by OSHA in the following manner:
1.) Those employers with the highest injury/illness rates will be put on a list for a thorough, surprise OSHA inspection. (There are about 500 employers nationwide on this list; inspections have already started.)
2.) Those employers with high (but not "the highest") injury/illness rates will be contacted by OSHA and asked to participate in the CCP by establishing a comprehensive worksite safety and health program that identifies and corrects hazards, reduces on-the-job injuries and illnesses and involves workers and unions in an on-going program of workplace monitoring, hazard detection, control and prevention. Employers that agree to participate will have a 30% chance of receiving a surprise, but "kinder and gentler" OSHA inspection (as opposed to a comprehensive wall-to-wall inspection); employers who choose not to participate will be placed on OSHA's list to receive a "wall-to-wall" inspection. (Approximately 12,250 employers nationwide have received an "invitation" into the CCP. Employers have until February 17, 1998 to decide whether or not to participate. Inspections will begin May 4, 1998.)
3.) Those employers of 60-100 employees who fall into the category described in #2 above, have the option of requesting a "consultation inspection" to be conducted by their state's "OSHA 7(c)(1) Consultation Program". Those choosing this option would only have a 10% chance of receiving an OSHA compliance inspection.
Employers are placed into this program based on their Log 200 form, which OSHA has collected from a number of employers in General Industry, Manufacturing, and some other industries, such as nursing homes. OSHA's new system of targeting companies for special programs, such as CCP, based on their self-reporting on the 200 Log will increase employer incentives to play numbers games with their log entries. This doesn't have to be as overt as fraudulent recordkeeping. Other time-tested methods of reducing "recordable" injuries are available, such as safety bingo and other safety incentive programs to dissuade worker reports of injuries, threatening workers with discipline or drug testing if they report an injury, or contracting hazardous jobs out to temporary agencies so the injuries/illnesses don't show up on their OSHA 200 log.
This raises the question as to how reliable the log will be as a data source (for inspection targeting or for determining changes in overall injury/illness rates). On top of this, there is a question of whether OSHA has the staff to implement the program they have put on paper. If many CCP-targeted employers opt for free OSHA consultation, will other employers voluntarily requesting assistance end up at the bottom of the already long waiting list? If CCP-targeted employers decline consultation help, are there enough compliance staff to conduct all the inspections in the allotted time? Will OSHA have an incentive to see that employers' numbers are accurate, when OSHA must constantly defend its existence and prove its effectiveness by bringing down customer (read as employer) injury/illness rates? What that means for unions and their allies is that we have to be more vigilant than ever about not letting a giant numbers game result from OSHA's initiative.
This article was prepared by Maggie Robbins, with inspiration and ideas from Nancy Lessin. The views expressed are Maggie's and do not reflect the position of her employer.
Virtual Conference: OH&S Pilot
As you may have heard (and/or approved) at the Business Meeting at the Indianapolis meeting, we are putting together a pilot project to have the presentations at the Annual Meeting available on the Internet. The postings would include the abstract, the presentation itself, and the author’s e-mail address. The project is based at the Dept. of Community Medicine/ Occupational and Environmental Health Center (Tim Morse, Ph.D., Project Director, and Michael Davies, Project Manager) at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC), and is in cooperation with the APHA and the regional National Library of Medicine at UCHC.
The project begins with a pilot project focusing on the approximately 125 presentations within the Occupational Health Section of the APHA from the November, 1997 meeting in Indianapolis. If you made a presentation at Indianapolis in the Occupational Health Section, we ask that you send or e-mail us an electronic copy of your presentation, along with a release note (see below) and e-mail address, so that we can post your presentation.
The abstract will be the same as is included in the APHA book of abstracts, which will be scanned in for all the presentations. The presentations will be posted with a link to the abstract both in original software form (Wordperfect, Powerpoint, etc.) and in a standard format (such as Adobe or HTML). If only paper copies of presentations are available, the paper form will be scanned in. The possibility of including some form of discussion forum capability is being explored for feasibility.
The project will include an evaluation which will cover both logistical feasibility as well as usefulness. The evaluation will include a count of the number of "hits" on the site, a survey of presenters to evaluate the feedback they have received from the web posting of their presentations, a voluntary user survey for individuals accessing the site, and a survey of the occupational health section members.
We hope to have the site up and running in a couple of months. There will be a link to the APHA home page and other relevant pages. We would love to hear comments and suggestions. Correspondence can be sent to Michael Davies at Dept. of Community Medicine, MC 6205, UCHC, Farmington, CT 06030-6205 or mdavies@cortex.uchc.edu. For more information contact Michael at 860-679-1869 or Tim Morse at 860-679-4720, tmorse@nso.uchc.edu. Release Note: "I hereby release the attached presentation, entitled _____________________ to be posted on the University of Connecticut Health Center / American Public Health Association internet site." Include your signature (if by mail), address, phone, fax, and e-mail address. We are not asking for the copyright: you can continue to use your presentation in any way you want.
submitted by Tim Morse
Oppose the latest sham OSHA reform
Senators Enzi (R-Wy), Gregg (R-NH), and Talent (R-MO) introduced "The Safety Advancement for Employees Act" (S.1237/H.R. 2579). This is a re-tread of the failed OSHA "Reform" legislation introduced last year by Republicans. The bill shifts the focus of the OSHA law from strong enforcement to voluntary compliance and takes away the rights of workers to get an OSHA inspection to investigate workplace hazards.
Key elements of the bill: 1) Allows warnings to be issued instead of citations even for serious violations of the law.
2) On-site OSHA inspections would occur only after the employer has been notified and the complaint investigated by telephone, fax, or letter with assurances from the employer that hazards have been eliminated.
3) Establishes a role for third-party consultants, including corporate health & safety staff or others hired by the company, to issue" declarations of compliance" which would exempt an employer from OSHA fines for 2 years. In addition, neither OSHA, workers, nor unions would have access to audits performed by these consultants.
4) Allows unprecedented fines for workers for "willfully" violating safety procedures.
5) The bill permits employers to engage in random drug and alcohol testing without individual evidence or suspicion of abuse, and puts OSHA in the business of supervising and regulating drug & alcohol testing, which it does not now do.
Unlike previous OSHA reform bills, this one fails to extend coverage to eight million state and local public employees in non-state-plan states, including professional firefighters and police officers. This is a longstanding inequity in the OSHA law that is in need of being changed. Any bill that professes to improve OSHA must include this provision.
Remember! Each year 55,000 American workers die, and seven million are injured because of workplace hazards. We need a stronger more effective OSHA, not one that removes basic rights of workers to a safe and healthy work environment.
The Senate approved this bill without a hearing and rejected all Democratic amendments. Contact your Representatives NOW. Let them know that workers need more protection, not less. Demand that this bill receive a hearing in the House, and that they OPPOSE THE ENZI-GREGG-TALENTBILL.
submitted by Mary Miller
TEEN DRIVING:
Congress may weaken child labor laws
What follows is exerpted from a notice put out by the Child Labor Coalition c/o National Consumers’ League, 1710 K Street, NW, Suite 1200 Washington DC 20006, (202)835-0747. For more information, please call Darlene Adkins at 614-575-2539.
Last May, Rep. Larry Combest (R-TX) introduced a bill to allow teens to drive on the job to 1/3 of a minor's work in any work day and 20 percent of a minor's work in any work week. This is a substantial revision to HO 2, which prohibits all teen occupational driving except on an "occasional and incidental" basis.
Talking Points on Teen Driving Bill HR 2327:
- Any relaxation of the prohibition on teen driving should raise serious concern that it would result in additional injuries and deaths to both young people and the general public.
- The number one cause of death of our teens is too important an issue to be handled as a "Correction Day" item.
- This bill would permit the most inexperienced young drivers to spend as much as 1/3 of their work day behind the wheel. Federal child labor provisions place absolutely no limit on the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds may work, the time spent driving at work could be considerable. For example: 1) 16- and 17-year-olds could be employed to routinely deliver pizzas and spend a considerable amount of their workday making these time sensitive trips, and 2) 16- and 17-year-olds could routinely be employed as shuttle bus or van drivers.
Facts on driving and teen workers:
- According to a NIOSH study, motor vehicle crashes were the single largest cause of occupational deaths of 16- and 17-year-old workers in the US during the 1980s and remain the leading cause of death well into this decade. This is despite the current prohibitions of HO2.
- Data concerning automobile crashes overwhelmingly demonstrates that the use of alcohol and other controlled substances play almost no role in teen occupational automobile crashes.
- Newly licensed adolescent drivers have high crash rates compared to every other age group. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported in 1994 that young drivers tend to speed and make serious driving errors because of immaturity and lack of experience behind the wheel.
- 82% of 16-year-old drivers involved in fatal crashes in 1993 made at least one driving error that led to the accident, and
- 37% of all 16-year-olds in fatal collisions were speeding.
- On March 6, 1996, the American Automobile Association (AAA) reported that 16- and 17-year-olds are seven times more likely to be involved in crashes than the general driving public, and highway crashes are the number one killer of teenagers. In 1994, the local highway teen death toll increased for the first time in seven years -- a 22% increase over 1993; and nationally, teen deaths increased 8% between 1992 and 1994.
- The amount of time teens drive and the number of times they get behind the wheel each work day impact safety much more than a limit on how far away from an employer's base the teen may drive. Dr. Karl Hemple, writing in the Health Gazette, reports that of the 37,000 people killed in automobile crashes each year, 80% occurred less than 25 miles from home.
- NIOSH also reported that teenagers represented only 10% of the population but experienced 13% of all motor vehicle deaths, accounting for one-fourth of all deaths of this age group.
New NIOSH Publication:
Child Labor Research Needs
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just released a Special Hazard Review entitled Child Labor Research Needs: Recommendations from the NIOSH Child Labor Working Team. NIOSH Special Hazard Reviews deal with hazards that merit research and concern from the scientific community and are distributed to the occupational health community at large.
The NIOSH Child Labor Working Team was formed in April 1994 to identify research, surveillance, and intervention actions to prevent injuries and illnesses among working children and adolescents. This special hazard review presents the research needs identified by the Team and their recommendations for interagency collaborations as of July 1996. The document contains information about youth employment and occupational injury and illness in young workers, as well as Federal and State regulation of child labor. The document outlines national objectives for the occupational safety and health of youths and describes 10 NIOSH projects focused on young workers in 1996.
A free copy of Child Labor Research Needs: Recommendations from the NIOSH Child Labor Working Team (NIOSH pub no. 97-143), as well as other materials on workplace safety and health, can be requested by phoning the NIOSH toll-free number at 1-800-35-NIOSH. This publication is in the public domain and may be copied, duplicated, or distributed in any way you see fit.
Submitted by: Dawn Castillo,
Division of Safety Research, NIOSH
Asbestos: Medical and
Legal Aspects (4th ed.)
by Barry I. Castleman
Aspen Law & Business,
Frederick, MD
By Arvin H. Chin, MD, JD, MPH
A comprehensive collection of scientific bibliography, historical vignettes and anecdotes based on company written documents, legal records, recollections, and first hand accounts, this book is a very interesting look at the history of the American experience with regulation of a hazardous industrial material. Barry Castleman presents a chronological record of the evidence for linking asbestos to fibrotic lung disease (asbestosis) as well as to cancer. Written in a journalistic fashion with numerous editorial comments, this book reads as a novel or a mystery, since it has at one moment the sense of suspense and the next a sense of indignation that the villain may get away with his misdeeds. In this book the villains are the large asbestos companies -- and often, their hired henchmen -- company physicians.
The story of America’s experience with asbestos is quite different from other industrial nations. Germany, which has had a long tradition of treating asbestosis and other pneumoconioses as work-related disease, declared asbestosis in combination with lung cancer a compensible occupational disease in 1943, during the height of the Second World War. In 1930, JAMA reported the introduction in England’s Parliament of a bill to extend the silicosis provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Act to cover asbestosis. By 1935, England had adopted industrial hygiene regulations for asbestos in the workplace. American action was delayed much longer than medically or scientifically reasonable.
Castleman’s book stands as an indictment of the parties who he felt were responsible for the delays in American recognition of the hazard. Details of the culpable behavior are provided in the book and it is not hard to believe that a company with business interests certain to be affected by bad publicity or new regulations, would act to suppress information concerning the dangers faced by asbestos exposed workers. Direct requests to change reports or remove data were made by the villains of the book and some complicit physicians who acted as their agents. Masquerading as academics, in some instances, allowed them to get away with the lies and deceit. There are, however, some heroes in the book, who defend their beliefs in spite of witchhunt-like accusations against them.
Aside from the historical review of the hazards, the author also delves into the legal and technical aspects of asbestos use. He reviews the history of compensation laws in America and elsewhere, and also states some of the arguments used in product liability cases. There are chapters on environmental (bystander) asbestos disease, asbestos use, as well as alternatives to asbestos. The legal aspects of different industries and companies are also reviewed, as are government documents, other research sources and computerized databases. Insurance companies roles in influencing policies affecting asbestos use are also detailed. The creation of standards for asbestos levels is also covered, as well as the epidemiology of related diseases.
Technical and scientific facts are interspersed with anecdotal information, which is helpful, but can also be distracting. The comprehensive details, which make for a fascinating story, also make it choppy at times.
The intended audience is physicians, environmentalists, enlightened business executives, lawyers, public health specialists, policy makers, and anyone interested in the medical and legal history of asbestos exposure, scientific understanding, regulation, and workers’ compensation.
As stated on p. 273, "The history of physicians in industry, certainly in the asbestos industry, indicates that they were a self select, management-oriented group. They served at the pleasure of higher management for the purpose of controlling employers’ costs for injuries and illness at work. ...In this climate of corporate control of the field of industrial medicine, the industrial physician virtually had to either go along with unethical practices or get out of the specialty altogether."
One need only look at the recent attempts of corporate influence on academic integrity in Rhode Island to see that worker health is not always protected when it is weighed against business and profit. Today, there continues to be a tension between serving patients and pleasing clients. In occupational health, it is a delicate balance that often becomes tilted the wrong way. This book addresses just this issue.
This excellent historical review is a detailed story of corporate dishonesty and scientific truth, of government inaction and inspirational academic integrity. Unfortunately, it is a story too often repeated in the history of worker health protection when it conflicts with business strategies.
Workplace Roulette:
Gambling with Cancer
by Matthew Firth, James Brophy, and Margaret Keith.
Between the Lines, 1997
By Eileen Moy, MD
The authors of this very compelling paperback book are from the Windsor Occupational Health Information Service in Canada. They wrote it for a broad audience, and are adept at presenting scientific concepts in clear and concise language. The subject is timely: carcinogens (including environmental tobacco smoke) abound in the workplace, yet neither industry, government, or the health care sector has adequately addressed occupational cancer risks. As "dirty" industries relocate to developing countries, occupational cancer risks also move offshore.
The authors want to change this situation, not just redistribute risks. They urge workers to become health activists within their own workplaces, and implore health care professionals and policy makers to pay more attention to occupational health and safety. To achieve these ends, they provide concrete strategies along with excellent resources.
The interpretation of the cancer data in this book may be misleading, however. The authors may be using attributable risk to describe relative risk. Admittedly, data interpretation for occupational and environmental cancer is difficult, and currently an area of controversy.
Radium Girls: Women and
Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935
By Claudia Clark
University of North Carolina Press, 1997
By Emily Allen
When young women in New Jersey and Connecticut first went to work during World War I, applying luminescent radium paint to clock and watch faces, radium was being touted as having medicinal, almost magical, properties. In the fifteen years that followed, as the skeletally deposited radioactivity disfigured and killed more than two dozen workers, the reformers of the time struggled to gain recognition of radium’s dangers against the intransigence of the radium industry.
As is well known of this historical occupational disease, radium poisoning was partly a result of the then-recommended technique of workers pointing their brushtips with their mouths. The early dialpainters thus ingested sufficient quantities of radium-bearing paint to cause crippling bone lesions, anemia, and the characteristic rotting of the jaw. But even among dialpainters starting work after 1927, by which time lip-pointing had become disfavored, a pattern of bone and head cancers emerged, with dialpainter fatalities eventually numbering over 100. Although concerns about radium’s harm to workers were published as early as 1913, radium’s commercial interests vigorously promoted its therapeutic use throughout that decade, and vehemently denied any dangers from dialpainting work for the decade that followed.
Claudia Clark’s information-packed Radium Girls traces the political, social, and personal narrative of radium and occupational disease in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois in the 1910’s and 1920’s. Like the Watergate investigative reporters, Clark uncovers the trails of affiliation and knowledge, elucidating how the myriad scientists, physicians, industrialists, reformers, government agency personnel—and the dialpainters themselves—reacted to this emergent occupational hazard. The narrative that unfolds is a fascinating one.
The role of reformers—particularly of women reformers—is important throughout the historical tract. Alice Hamilton, the influential occupational physician, figures prominently. Florence Kelley and her Consumers’ League, championing the industrial hygiene movement, play a vital role in advocating for the dialpainters and for occupational health protections and compensation. APHA’s own "Section on Industrial Hygiene" —circa 1915—makes an appearance. Clark credits New Jersey’s vital reform movement for winning responses to radium poisoning from state health and labor agencies—in contrast to the relative lack of agency response in Connecticut, where the government seemed to kowtow to the influential clock industry.
Throughout the text, Clark’s narrative is that much more believable because she does not portray the players in stark or heroic terms; instead, all the individual actors are real and complex. Clark’s exuberance for historical precision and scholarly analysis occasionally makes her language a bit unwieldy, but she is always thorough and even-handed—never polemical or shrill. The dialpainters’ story, so well documented, speaks for itself.
Like Jonathan Harr’s recent best-selling legal thriller A Civil Action, which documents the story of solvent-contaminated wells and childhood leukemias in Woburn, Massachusetts, Radium Girls brings historical fact and human narrative together in an absorbing story. Unlike A Civil Action, Clark’s Radium Girls focuses not on a single personality or on creating page-turning suspense, but rather on communicating this compelling history in its social and political context. And unlike with A Civil Action, one is left not disappointed by legal caprices, but convinced of the power of social reformers to advance the cause of occupational health.