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Previous by Date: Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Common industrial lab safety practices 1906-1930? Date: Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 9:43:29 AM Author: "Wright, Mike" <mwright**At_Symbol_Here**USW.ORG> |
Next by Date: Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] That Old Glove Problem Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2017 14:05:27 +0000 Author: Jeffrey Lewin |
Thanks. I'd forgotten that play sand story and was only using the more recent asbestos-contaminated sands as examples. this one is better.
As long as R&D in the US only consists of two steps: 1) invent or isolate a new substances, and 2) find a market for it, we will have these problems. Somewhere EARLY in research projects there should be the requirement to run some acute and chronic toxicity tests. Up until now, the lab rats have been the lab personnel, the factory workers who make products with the new chemicals, and the public that uses them.
Anyone see the flaw in this system?
And while we are at it, the required toxicity tests should NOT be the garbage-in-garbage-out computer-generated in silico tests that are being touted and the answer by industry, EPA and PETA. We are still discovering new metabolic pathways. It's far to early to lean heavily on this stuff.
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Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., Industrial Hygienist
President: Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
Safety Officer: Local USA829, IATSE
181 Thompson St., #23
New York, NY 10012 212-777-0062
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Lewin <jclewin**At_Symbol_Here**MTU.EDU>
To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Sent: Fri, Jun 9, 2017 7:04 pm
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Common industrial lab safety practices 1906-1930?
My "go to" for this era is the conditions found in the US Radium plant, aka The Radium Girls.
A short excerpt from:
Robert R. Johnson
For the Love of Pretty Things
The Radium Girls and "Dying for Science"
In the early twenties, U.S. Ra-
dium contracted with a noted
Harvard toxicologist, Dr. Cecil
Drinker, to conduct a study of work-
ing conditions at U.S. Radium's New
Jersey facilities. Drinker was a highly
respected scientist who, at the time
of the U.S. Radium operation, was
helping to develop the field of indus-
trial hygiene. He'd begun a research
facility at Harvard in the School of
Public Health, and had studied the
poisonous effects of manufacturing-
created dust on the respiration and
blood content of workers in the zinc
industry. (He eventually concluded
that the culprit was manganese.) His
contract with U.S. Radium was his
first foray into studying the indus-
trial hazards of radiation.
Drinker examined the workplace
in Orange and observed an environ-
ment replete with radium-tainted
dust, open containers of highly ra-
dioactive paints, poor ventilation,
and other problematic conditions.
He also took blood samples from the
workers on the shop floor as well
as the scientists working in the ad-
joining labs. What he found was di-
sastrous. Every one of the workers
suffered from dangerous blood con-
ditions. He encountered several cases
of radium necrosis; he noticed, too,
29
that a chemist, Edward Lehman, had
severe lesions on his hands and arms.
Lehman dismissed the idea that Un-
dark had anything to do with his le-
sions or that there was any threat to
his future health from continued ex-
posure to the substance.
Lehman would die within the
year.
Drinker remarked that Lehman's
attitude of complacency was ram-
pant at the company. "There seemed
to be an utter lack of realization of
the dangers inherent in the mate-
rial that was being manufactured."
U.S. Radium sold the sand-like res-
idue of the radium paint process as
filler for children's sandboxes. When
parents questioned the safety of the
sand, von Sochocky assuaged them
by telling them that the sand was
"most hygienic and... more ben-
eficial than the mud of world-re-
nowned curative baths."
On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 4:31 PM Reinhardt, Peter <peter.reinhardt**At_Symbol_Here**yale.edu> wrote:
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Colleagues,
With the wisdom of this listserve, I bet a few of you may provide some information on this topic.
A family member is writing a history of a relative who was a Harvard-educated dye chemist at a New England textile firm from 1906 until about 1930. At that time
his health began to deteriorate and he "retired" from chemistry. He died in 1936 of liver cancer at 51 years of age.
Both she and I know it is highly speculative to associate his work and poor health, but she wonders what laboratory safety precautions might have been in common
industrial use during that time. Do you know?
When I worked at the University of Wisconsin, a retired chemistry professor there told me that his first "gas mask" was purchased from army surplus prior to
WW II. In my career, I've helped remodel labs with functional fume hoods dating from the 1920s. Were masks, gloves, hoods, etc. in common use in industrial labs between 1906 and 1930?
Perhaps there is a book that traces this safety history. If so, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
Thank you!
Pete
Peter A. Reinhardt
Director, Office of Environmental Health & Safety
Yale University
135 College St., Suite 100
New Haven, CT 06510-2411
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Jeff Lewin
Chemical Safety Officer
Compliance, Integrity, and Safety
Environmental Health and Safety
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931
O 906-487.3153
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