U.S. and European Worker Safety Rates. Mine Safety

Reform movements in the United States and Europe were spurred by workers, but the U.S. fight between labor and industry was particularly bitter. One impediment to reform was the U.S. myth of a higher standard of living and cleaner factories, which prevailed for many decades into the twentieth century. However, in many industries U.S. workers fared worse than their European counterparts.

"For years we had the comfortable illusion that byssinosis ("brown lung" disease from cotton dust) was not a problem for US workers," a Public Health Service brochure said in 1969 (Rosner & Markowitz 1987,219). But a survey of 230,000 textile workers had found rates of from 12 to 30 percent in various plants.

U.S. coal miners had an average of 3.4 deaths per 1,000 between 1900 and 1906. This compared with 2.1 in Germany, 1.3 in Britain, 1.0 in Belgium, and .9 in France.

In 1921 the U.S. Public Health Service examined eighteen hundred pottery workers and found a lead poisoning rate of at least 13.5 percent. In comparison, British pottery workers had less than 1 percent. The United States was also slow in legislating technological change for worker protection. White phosphorous matches were well known to produce "phossy jaw," a disfiguring necrotic condition of the face. They were banned in Europe in 1906 but not until 1931 in the United States. Similarly, white lead paint was banned in Europe in 1922 but not in the United States until much later.

Mine Safety. The fatality rate for coal and hard-rock miners was the worst of all industries. It was 3.4 per 1,000 annually in 1900, dropping by the time of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 to about 1.75 and a late twentieth-century rate of .22 per 1,000.

The worst year on record was 1907, when more than nine hundred coal miners died in seventeen instances, including the worst mine disaster on record, which occurred 6 December 1907, when 362 Fairmont Coal Company workers died in explosions at Monongah No. 6 and No. 8 mines in West Virginia.

Another mining disaster involved over 470 deaths and over 1,500 injuries from silicosis in the period 1931-1933 during construction of the Hawk's Nest hydroelectric tunnel for a Union Carbide power project near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Officials on the job were aware that the thick silica dust was killing workers and did nothing. Racism was a factor because most of the dead workers were African American or recent immigrants.

Factory Disasters Spur Legislation. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City caught fire 25 March 1911, killing 146 women who were trapped without fire escapes. Public outrage was intense, especially after factory owners were acquitted under New York law. However, the incident led New York State to establish the Factory Investigating Commission, which led to a nationwide era of reform in factory legislation between 1911 and 1914.

Tetra-ethyl lead was a gasoline additive designed by General Motors and Standard Oil to boost engine power. It was dangerous to make, and many workers in one Standard Oil plant near New York went "violently insane" in October 1924. At least seventeen men died from severe lead poisoning in several plants. The incidents drew attention to the larger issue of using a well-known poison in a common article of commerce.

Prominent U.S. occupational health advocate Alice Hamilton, like England's Charles Thackrah a century before, insisted that other gasoline additives would have the same anti-knock effect (which increases engine power) without poisoning workers or the public, but a Public Health Service committee was pushed into approving leaded gasoline. Leaded gasoline was banned in 1986, and Hamilton's public health objections and ideas about alternatives were proven to be accurate.

Radium dial painters of New Jersey developed cancer and other problems after working with radioactive watch dial paints that glowed in the dark. At no time during their employment were the painters warned about or protected from the radioactive paint. Their employer, U.S. Radium Corp., tried to forestall lawsuits in the late 1920s with phony medical examinations and inaccurate scientific reports.

After a great deal of publicity, in 1928 the painters' lawsuit led to a negotiated court settlement, and their medical bills were covered. Most of the workers died within a few years. Both leaded gasoline and radium dial workplace dangers were diminished after Public Health Service expert conferences identified specific issues.