byssinosis
cmonforton | October 8, 2014It was too late for textile workers Grover Hardin and Louis Harrell to be helped by OSHA’s cotton dust standard. By 1978 when the rule was issued, both men suffered from byssinosis (a.k.a., brown lung disease) and would die from it. Harrell’s face and Hardin’s words, however, would have meaning for other textile workers and possibly help them be protected from the consequences of breathing cotton dust.
Harrell and Hardin, along with images of other textile workers taken by photojournalist Earl Dotter, appeared in the OSHA booklet “Cotton Dust: Worker Health Alert.” It was issued in the final…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…