Air Quality and the Working Environment
In this month's blog post Dr Janet Greenlees, Senior Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, looks at the history of industrial air quality and considers how it has variously been considered a worker's health, community health, and economic concern.
When Does Air Matter?
 |
| Men and women weaving at the White Oak Mill in Greensboro, NC, 1909. Courtesy of the National Museum of American History. |
When
do people think about the air quality inside buildings? Similar to other health
issues, the honest answer probably would be when either they or someone they
care about is affected by the poor air they breathe on a regular basis. That
being the case, the air quality in working environments could only then be of
concern to a relatively small number of people with any improvements sought by labour
and their representatives or employers seeking to increase productivity.
However, sometimes public health concerns about air quality can apply to both the
community and the working environment. How then, is the public health discourse
negotiated when the needs of industry can be affected? And, why do certain health
issues attract public or political interest and intervention, while others do
not? A simple answer might be that the only health issues to attract widespread
public interest are those which can
affect large numbers of people, such as contagious diseases. However, a closer
look suggests regional and national variations regarding responses to public
health concerns, even when the same issues and industries cross special boundaries.
An Air Laden with Dust and Dirt
During
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cotton cloth manufacturing grew
rapidly in New England, America and Lancashire, Great Britain. Both industries
subsequently declined, albeit at different rates. Cotton manufacturing was also
an industry where men and women worked alongside each other, performing the
same tasks for the same rates of pay and experiencing the same workplace health
hazards. The air these men, women and sometimes children breathed was laden
with dust and dirt, factory ventilation was poor and concerns were raised about
the spread of contagious diseases in such environments, particularly
tuberculosis. In addition, the noise from the machines was horrendous,
particularly in the weaving rooms, and could cause hearing loss and in some
cases, deafness. While since the earliest cotton factories, workers had been
aware that inhaling dust and dirt made them feel unwell and the noise was uncomfortably
loud, it was the late nineteenth century before the workplace became entwined
with public health reform, starting with fears about tuberculosis contagion.
Public and much scientific belief held that the tubercle bacilli attached
itself to dust and quickly spread disease throughout the mill. In the
progressive state of Massachusetts, the leading cotton cloth manufacturing
state, these fears about TB contagion secured both a legislative ban of a
particular technology, the suction shuttle, and selective employer cooperation
at improving ventilation. In contrast, and despite widespread belief that
England led the way with factory regulation, the tuberculosis risk in the
Lancashire mills was debated, but economic concerns prevented both regulation
and industrial reform.
Worker Fatigue and Factory Ventilation
 |
| The Boott Cotton Mill of Lowells, Massachusetts. Courtesy of the Lowell Museum Collection. |
During
the early twentieth century new health concerns arose, firstly surrounding the
importance ventilation and following the Great War, fatigue. Fatigue was not
simply related to long hours of labour but also to working in poorly ventilated
factories. In Massachusetts cotton towns, ventilation became a public health
campaign with improvements introduced in many public buildings, including
schools and government buildings and extending into workplaces. Some (but not
all) employers accepted the notion that a healthy worker was a more productive
worker. Ventilation attracted considerable British debate and scientific
interest, but while some communities sought to improve factory ventilation and
legislation imposed air quality standards on the cotton mills, in reality,
employers remained able to operate as they saw fit. Factory air quality was secondary
to the needs of industry. The Great War turned scientific, political and
medical interest to fatigue research, particularly in Britain. Textile workers
were included in the research; however, industrial decline meant political and
scientific interest in operative fatigue quickly faded. The same was true in
New England. During the 1920s, most of the cotton manufacturing industry
shifted to the southern states. Remaining northern firms were more concerned
about economic survival than the air quality in the mill. Worker and community
concern about mill air quality also declined as jobs took priority. Indeed,
wider economic concerns were increasingly influencing the public health agendas
of both countries.
Cotton Dust Inhalation
Nevertheless,
scientific and medical interest about occupationally specific health concerns
was growing, particularly surrounding cotton dust inhalation. However, the
physical symptoms of respiratory damage caused by dust inhalation mirrored
those of respiratory diseases common to many textile towns, including bronchitis
and pneumonia, namely, tightness of the chest, dyspnea and coughing. Therefore,
doctors found it very difficult to identify cases of byssinosis, the respiratory
disease caused by prolonged cotton or flax dust inhalation. While public
concern grew surrounding the widespread dust found in urban environments, such concerns
were not transferred to factory dust. There, dust remained an occupationally
specific hazard about which middle class social and political reformers had
little interest. This was only reinforced by the ambiguity surrounding diagnosis.
For workers, dust was an everyday reality that was simply part of the job and
unions sought compensation rather than reform. Britain was first to introduce
byssinosis compensation for selected male workers in 1941, although it was the
1970s before compensation was extended to all affected workers. By this time,
cotton manufacturing had virtually disappeared from the country. Despite
individual American doctors and scientists recognizing byssinosis cases, it was
1969 before the federal government introduced compensation for byssinosis
sufferers. Instead, public health concerns about dust remained confined to the
urban living environment and, when combined with the ambiguity surrounding
diagnosis, many workers were left to suffer on their own.
 |
| Interior of a Lancashire Cotton Mill with Mill Workers at their Machines, Lancashire, c. 1890. |
Managing the Health Impact of the Working Environment
Lastly,
noise, but not internal industrial noise, briefly became a public concern. Community
concerns about specific urban noises increased as the twentieth century
progressed. Societies were formed to tackle ‘unnecessary noise.’ However, the
continuous crashing of metal-tipped shuttles against metal loom frames in the
mills which caused hearing loss in many workers was ignored. Instead, communities,
medics and even operatives accepted that hearing loss was a risk attributable
to certain jobs, including weaving. Weavers adopted coping strategies to manage
the noise, including sign language and lip reading. Indeed, despite the fact
that other air quality issues had attracted public interest and industrial
reform, operatives regularly found themselves needing to adopt coping
strategies to manage the health consequences caused by working in confined
spaces with poor air quality. Other strategies included taking unpaid time off,
patent medicines, cooperative strategies, switching firms to where conditions
were better and exiting the industry. Air quality at work was important to
workers, but managing the health impact from the working environment comprised
only one part of their decision-making surrounding work, health and community.
Similarly, at different times, certain aspects of air quality became community
health concerns. Only at certain times did the two environments entwine.
Janet Greenlees
 |
| Dr Janet Greenlees |
Janet Greenlees is a Senior Lecturer in History at Glasgow Caledonian
University, based in the Centre for the Social History of Health andHealthcare. Her research interests include women and work, public health and
the working environment and maternal health and she has published on all these
topics. The intersection of health in the community and work environment described
above is explored in greater detail in her book: When the Air became Important: A Social History of the Working
Environment in New England and Lancashire, 1860-1960 (Rutgers: Rutgers
University Press, forthcoming 2018). For more on gender and workers’ responses
to poor air quality at work, see ‘Workplace Health and Gender among CottonWorkers in America and Britain, c. 1880s-1940s’, International Review of Social History, 61, 3 (2016), 459-83.
