Workers’ health movement

Bartlett, B. 1984, History of the Sydney Workers Health Movement , Australian Left Review, vol. 88 (Winter), pp. 40-5... 

The secret police of modern totalitarian states have faithfully copied this inquisitorial method. The Mental Health Movements of modern Therapeutic States have improved upon it Institutional psychiatrists (and psychologists, social workers, etc.) act as and believe themselves to be the individual s ally, friend, and therapist, when, in fact, they are his adversary. Should the patient confide his fears or suspicions to them, they will interpret these as signs of mental illness and so report to their employer should the patient fail to co-operate with them, they will interpret his refusal as itself a sign of mental illness and will again so report to their employer. 

This buildup of pressure from unions, workers health centres and other elements of the labour movement is in part responsible for the round of legislative reform which occurred in the 1980s. The fact that most of Australia s OHS authorities are tripartite in some... 

The growth of the community mental health movement coincided with the social activism and idealism of the 1960s. The movement was consistent with war on poverty legislation that supported early intervention such as Head Start, improving the quality of schools that served economically disadvantaged communities, and the effective use of paraprofessionals (Riessman Popper, 1968). It addressed matters that progressive mental health and social workers had raised a half-century before. 

Jeanne SteUman was one of the few occupational health researchers in this period to be interested in the idea that the office could be hazardous to workers health. At conferences and meetings held by the feminist office workers movement, Stellman was often the lone speaker on occupational health. In 1978 Stellman founded the Women s Occupational Health Resource Center in Brooklyn, New York, which served as a clearinghouse for information on women s occupational health issues and for a time became the center of feminist occupational-health efforts. Between 1981 and 1983 the resource center held training sessions for over four thousand workers, published a newsletter, and... 

Muller s invention launched both the synthetic pesticide industry that exploited his discovery and the environmental movement that opposed its use. Yet Paul Muller, a shy and determined nature lover, shared many of the same reservations about using DDT in the environment that Rachel Carson popularized in her best seller, Silent Spring, 14 years later. In the 1990s, three decades after DDT was banned in most of the industrialized world, international health workers revived the debate over its use. DDT is a cheap and effective insecticide against malaria, which kills nearly three million people annually, most of them young children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Convention on Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and 69 ratified the ban on all kinds of hazardous waste export from wealthy OECD-countries to non-OECD countries, large amounts of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) are shipped overseas for recycling, the majority to China as reported by Brigden et al. [2] and Puckett et al. [3], lesser quantities to India and Western Africa reported by Kuper and Hojsik [4]. WEEE contains a variety of harmful substances like endocrine disruptors and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Additionally, hazardous substances may be formed during informal recycling. This often practised informal treatment without proper equipment for metal extraction and labour safety heavily affects the environment and human health of workers and the inhabitants of whole stretches of land. 

There is a successful movement within psychiatry, implemented in many states, that makes it easy to force clinic outpatients to take long-acting injections of drugs. Under these outpatient commitment laws, if the person refuses to come to the clinic, mental health workers can come to the home to administer the injections by force. At the same time, there is a movement to screen schoolchildren, and even preschoolers, for so-called mental illness. This potentially disastrous movement is driven by drug company money and aims at increasing the market for their products. 

In common with other fluorides, inhalation or ingestion of hydrofluoric acid may cause fluorosis. The s)unptoms of this condition are weight loss, malaise, anaemia, leucopoenia, discolouration of the teeth and osteosclerosis. It is the latter complication that is the major concern. Fluorine compounds are preferentially retained within the bone. Chronic intake may cause skeletal abnormalities characterised by slow progressive new bone formation usually beginning in the lumbar spine and pelvis. This is the rationale behind health screening via X-ray examination of (male) workers potentially exposed to fluorides. As the period of exposure continues, pain in the joints becomes more intense and movement of the vertebral column and lower limbs becomes more restricted. Calcification (ossification) of ligaments and joints may... 

No person known to have a contagious disease or to be a carrier of such a disease nor any person presenting lesions on exposed parts of the body shall be used in the production departments. The personnel employed in production shall undergo periodic medical examinations, in order to avoid any risk to the health of the workers resulting from handling hazardous and very active products, the persons employed in production shall wear protective clothing and accessories, which shall not continue to be used outside of the department In some cases, it may be necessary to limit movements of personnel to the site near their working station. 

Safety and health awareness has a surprising history that dates as far back as the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. The Code of Hammurabi, named after a Babylonian king circa 2000 BC, contained clauses that could be interpreted as early attempts at workers compensation. There is also evidence of concern for safety and health during the time of the Roman Empire. This chapter examines the history of the safety movement in the United States and how it has developed over the years. 

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