Towards a transnational industrial-hazard history: charting the circulation of workplace dangers, debates and expertise

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>We argue that industrial hazards have remained an integral feature of the international and ‘global’ economy since the early modern period, and invite historians of science into the study of their history. The growth and dissemination of knowledge about these hazards, as well as the production and trade that generate them, continue to generate deep inequalities in just who is exposed to them, as illustrated by the shifting impact of the asbestos-related disease plague in the past half-century. Exposure levels in poorer countries have risen as those in affluent societies have fallen, the latter due as much to popular protest and media exposure as to scientific expertise. We suggest that the best way to understand the formation of knowledge about these hazards is not to return to the epistemological battlegrounds of the ‘science wars’ of the 1990s but to seek more interdisciplinary integration of the multifaceted ways that material bodies, environments and interests contribute to an understanding of such hazards and injuries. We propose the framework of ‘industrial-hazard regimes’ as an avenue into the ways in which knowledge about risks and dangers at work are created, translated and contested in different countries and times. While urging a return, in some respects, to the early models of ‘progressive enlightenment’ devised by radical commentators and pioneering historians of the industrial hazard in the early twentieth century, we would revise these early approaches, and also offer some sceptical commentary on the difficulties raised, more recently, by narratives of ‘heroic populism’ or ‘anti-science epidemiology’. The critical standpoints for which we argue recognize the diverse social and political identities and loyalties not only of past contributors to the controversies on industrial hazard, but also of historians of science and medicine themselves.</jats:p>

Occupational Health and Safety Statistics as an Indicator of Worker Physical Health in South African Industry

“…The paucity of the Compensation fundderived OD and injury statistics complicates the process of attributing the specific sectors from which these accidents emanated. With regard to the manufacturing sector, however, occupational health hazards continue to feature in the modern production processes employed in the various industry types [76]. The transfer of manufacturing to developing countries from developed countries, some with untreated occupational health hazards, consequently sees the cross-border transit of these hazards inherent of such processesWatterson [77].…”

“…The transfer of manufacturing to developing countries from developed countries, some with untreated occupational health hazards, consequently sees the cross-border transit of these hazards inherent of such processesWatterson [77]. Coupled with poor OHS regulation and enforcement [78][79][80], workers employed at these facilities in developing countries are severely impacted compared to developed countries [76,77]. The somewhat low impact of occupational hazards in developed countries has been credited to public awareness leading to protest as well as media publicitySellers and Melling [76].…”

Toxic Tales—Recent Histories of Pollution, Poisoning, and Pesticides (ca. 1800–2010)

“…Described by Christopher Sellers, Frederick Rowe Davis, and others, the period around 1900 saw a new generation of toxicologists, industrial hygienists, and other “measuring scientists” (Schwerin 2009: 7) focus not only on acute toxicity but also on low-dose and long-term exposure to substances like lead and new hazards like radiation (Sellers 1997; Sellers & Melling 2012; Davis 2014). Resulting risk scenarios led to attempts in differentiating between acceptable and inacceptable exposure.…”

Medical Experts and Agnotology in the Fumes Controversy of the Huelva Copper Mines (1888–1890)

“…This is the case with the concept of industrial hazard regimes formulated by Christopher Sellers and Joseph Melling as 'those arrangements, formal as well as informal, by which public bodies, private interest groups and civic parties mobilize to comprehend, define and deal with the dangers connected with a particular form of production'. 12 My study will keep this perspective in mind and will return to it, more explicitly, in the conclusion.…”