"The men are just drinking too much."
"They don't wash their hands."
"They are sickly by nature."
It was 1910. The Industrial Revolution was roaring. Smokestacks were the symbol of progress.
But inside the factories, men were dropping dead. They were losing their teeth. Their wrists were paralyzed. They were going mad.
The factory owners shrugged. They blamed the workers. They claimed that "industrial disease" didn't exist.
Then Dr. Alice Hamilton walked through the door.
She was a petite, soft-spoken woman from a wealthy Indiana family. She looked like she belonged in a library.
But she lived at Hull House in Chicago, the settlement house run by Jane Addams. She lived in the slums. She saw the workers come home covered in dust, coughing up blood.
She decided to become a detective.
But not for crimes. For poisons.
The Governor of Illinois appointed her to a commission to investigate occupational diseases. It was an unfunded mandate. She had no power to enter factories. She had no power to fine anyone.
So, she used the only weapon she had: "Shoe-leather epidemiology."
She went where no respectable doctor (and certainly no woman) would go.
She climbed rickety ladders to inspect vats of acid. She crawled into the ventilation shafts of lead smelters. She went into the saloons where the workers drank and interviewed them about their symptoms.
She hunted the silent killers: Lead. Mercury. Phosphorus.
Her most famous case involved the "White Lead" industry.
The owners claimed their factories were safe. Alice didn't believe them.
She staked out the plants. She noticed that the workers’ clothes were covered in a fine, white dust.
She proved that the men weren't getting sick because they were dirty. They were getting sick because they were breathing death.
She found men with "wrist drop" (paralysis caused by lead). She found men with the "lead line" on their gums.
She compiled the data. She didn't scream. She presented the cold, hard statistics.
She went to the owners and effectively said: "You are killing your workforce. And if you don't stop, I will publish this list of names."
She shamed them into safety.
She single-handedly forced the insurance companies to recognize that these were workplace injuries, not "acts of God."
Her work was so undeniable that the establishment couldn't ignore her.
In 1919, Harvard Medical School came calling.
They wanted to hire the world's leading expert on industrial medicine. There was only one problem. It was Alice.
They hired her anyway.
She became the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University.
But Harvard was still Harvard.
They gave her the job, but they gave her three rules:
She could not enter the Faculty Club.
She could not participate in the graduation procession.
She could not ask for football tickets.
Alice didn't care about the football tickets. She cared about the platform.
She used her position to fight the biggest battle of the 20th century: Leaded Gasoline.
In the 1920s, General Motors and Standard Oil wanted to add tetraethyl lead to gasoline to make engines run smoother.
Alice stood up and screamed "Stop."
She warned that spewing lead a neurotoxin out of every tailpipe in America would poison an entire generation of children.
The oil companies attacked her. They called her "hysterical." They hired their own scientists to say lead was safe.
She lost that battle. Leaded gas was approved. (It wouldn't be banned for another 50 years, after it had damaged the brains of millions of children proving Alice right).
But she won the war.
She founded the field of Occupational Health.
She died in 1970 at the age of 101, just months before the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Every time you see a "Hard Hat Area" sign... Every time a worker puts on a respirator... Every time a company is fined for unsafe conditions...
You are looking at the legacy of Alice Hamilton.
She proved that a paycheck should not cost you your life.
See Also