Nature's Laboratory by Browning Elizabeth Grennan;

Author:Browning, Elizabeth Grennan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mirroring Jane Addams’s appreciation for capturing the long history of labor and industry, Hamilton recounted the deep history of lead—one of the earliest metals to be smelted—in order to make employers aware of their dangerous disregard of occupational health. In 1910, Hamilton explained that American employers mistakenly saw lead poisoning as resulting from workers’ neglect to wash their hands after handling lead. In fact, the breathing of dust and fumes—which the employees had little control over—induced poisoning much more quickly and severely. Identifying lead as the oldest industrial poison besides carbon monoxide, Hamilton traced it to ancient Rome, where Pliny the Elder included lead poisoning among the “diseases of the slaves” alongside silicosis and mercurial poisoning. Observant physicians who foreshadowed modern occupational health, including Bernardino Ramazzini in eighteenth-century Italy and Louis Tanquerel des Planches in nineteenth-century France, had noted the dangers of exposure to lead dust in contrast with the relative safety of handling solid lead.70

In the early decades of the twentieth century, physicians had a difficult time diagnosing lead poisoning’s unusual and varied symptoms. Although diagnostic methodologies advanced during Hamilton’s career to include chemical and microscopic examinations of blood and excreta and testing for nerve response, her initial study’s methods “were as crude as those of Tanquerel des Planches.” Namely, she relied on the “lead line” test, a physiological indicator of poisoning evidenced by a clear “deposit of black lead sulphide in the cells of the lining of the mouth, usually clearest on the gum along the margin of the front teeth,” and caused by the sulphurated hydrogen emitted by decaying proteins left behind from chewing food.71 Relying on the biophysical processes of the worker to signal his status of health, Hamilton worried about the significant number of serious cases she had likely overlooked due to her lack of more sophisticated testing methods.

Her concerns were well founded since factory foremen unduly jeopardized workers’ health by disregarding sanitary measures. With no break in their six- to eight-hour shifts, Hamilton saw the enamel works employees eating lunch “with lead-covered hands in a lead-laden atmosphere,” “sandwiches lying on dusty window sills,” and enamel particles coating the inside of workers’ lunchboxes.72 Given these lax safety standards, workers could not contain the lead dust to the factory walls. Coating workers’ lunchboxes and clothing, the dust inevitably invaded workers’ homes, where their families’ health subsequently suffered.

Chicago’s most hazardous job with respect to lead poisoning was in service to a luxury product that only the wealthiest could afford to consume: Pullman cars. Chock-full of white lead, Pullman’s paint was so dangerous that the company’s painters suffered a high rate of severe acute lead poisoning. Recent immigrants from Hungary, Serbia, and Poland were the only workers willing to take the dangerous job of sanding and painting the cars. In light of the severe occupational risks Pullman workers faced, Hamilton found the company’s medical department entirely inadequate. Unable to reason with Pullman’s administration, Hamilton took her complaints to Jane Addams in 1912. Addams made use of her influential network by alerting a wealthy Pullman stockholder.

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