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unusualmusic_lj_archiveAccording to an AP article that appeared in our local daily this morning, one of the tools the federal government may use in going after Stewart Parnell and other management of the Peanut Corporation of America is the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Ironically, the 1938 law has its roots in an incident of corporate hubris and disregard for public safety not unlike the present salmonella-tainted peanut butter case.
"A spoonful of sugar," Julie Andrews sang in her role as Mary Poppins, "Helps the medicine go down." In the middle of the Great Depression, the S. E. Massengill Company found something much better than sugar. Or so they thought. The disaster unfolds on the flip.MORE
How Regulation came to be: The Iroquois Theater Fire
Here's a little mental exercise for you. Picture yourself standing at the front door of your house or apartment preparing to go outside. How do you open the door? Chances are you reach out, grasp the door knob or handle, turn it, and pull the door in towards you. Now picture yourself standing at the door of a business, school, or other public building. What's different? If you answered that the door swings out, give yourself a gold star.
If you know what the Iroquois Theater had to do with this difference, give yourself a big gold star.
...And if you don't, you know where to find out. To the flip.MORE
How Regulation came to be: Radium Girls - Part I
The Radium Dial Company employed about one thousand local women to paint dials primarily for their largest customer, the Westclox clock factory in Peru, Illinois that made the ubiquitous "Big Ben" alarm clock. In an era with few occupations open to women, the pay at the dialpainting factories was significantly better that most alternatives -- as much as three times more -- and the factories had little trouble filling positions. The women, many of them girls fresh out of high school, became part of a phenomenon that would become known collectively as the "Radium Girls".And then, the workers bones and teeth started to rot, and some began to dieThe women working in Ottawa were assured that the luminous material was safe. Their instructor, wife of the plant manager and teacher of the lip-pointing technique, once ate the radium-laced paint from a spatula to demonstrate its innocuousness. The workers were told by their supervisor that the radium would "put a glow in our cheeks," that "the paint would make us goodlooking,"
Claudia Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform: 1910-1935
How Regulation came to be: Radium Girls - Part II
... Indeed, no sooner had the regulators and trust-busters of the Progressive Era established mechanisms to protect the public and the country from the abuses of wealthy robber barons and monopolistic corporations, than those same tycoons and corporations set about to infiltrate and co-opt and install themselves into the very architecture that was supposed to constrain them. By the time Grace Fryer set out in search of a lawyer to represent her against U.S. Radium, representatives of the vested interests were well-established in the bureaucracies that were supposed to be regulating them. No lawyer would touch the case. Few doctors would come forward and implicate radium in the gruesome ailments afflicting the U.S. Radium workers. No scientist, no regulator, no educator -- for far too many of them it was because they owed livelihoods to just the sort of business interests they ought to have been standing up to.And so they contacted the National Consumer League
How Regulation came to be: Radium Girls - Part III
In the first two parts of Radium Girls, How Regulation came to be: Radium Girls - Part I and How Regulation came to be: Radium Girls - Part II , we were introduced to the women employed in the dial painting industry in the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties, painting luminous faces on clocks and instruments with radium-based paint. As many of the women began to experience medical problems, New Jersey public health officials turned to an organization of social activists to investigate. That investigation led five New Jersey dialpainters to bring suit against U. S. Radium Corporation of Orange, New Jersey. With U.S. Radium engaging in stalling legal tactics as the girls' health pushed them inexorably toward death, the pioneering women of the National Consumers League fought back.
....The great fear of the team campaigning for justice for the New Jersey dialpainters seeking compensation from U. S. Radium Corporation of Orange, New Jersey for the illness they suffered as a result of their exposure to radium was that the girls would die before the case was ever settled. Their fears were well grounded, as U. S. Radium delivered a volley of delaying tactics. When their lawyers convinced the judge in the Radium Girls' case at an April 25, 1928 hearing to continue the case until September because many of their witnesses were going to Europe for the summer, and the judge consented, Alice Hamilton was ready. MORE
How Regulation came to be: Construction Summer
Construction has always been a dangerous business. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries those undertaking construction projects just accepted that there would be a certain number of construction deaths on large projects. Accounts vary, but
between twenty and thirty workers were killed in building the Brooklyn Bridge. When only 11 workers died during the construction of the Golden gate Bridge between 1933 and 1937, it was considered a record to be admired.MOREIn the 1930s, bridge builders expected 1 fatality per $1 million in construction costs, and builders expected 35 people to die while building the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridge's safety innovations was a net suspended under the floor. This net saved the lives of 19 men during construction, and they are often called the members of the "Half Way to Hell Club."
About.com: Golden Gate Bridge Facts
How Regulation came to be: Red Moon Rising
When an apparent spark from a train passing over a bridge at the Republic Steel plant in Cleveland set the Cuyahoga River on fire just before noon on June 22, 1969, it wasn't the first time the river had caught fire. There had been previous fires in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1952 It wasn't even the worst fire on the Cuyahoga, for that matter. The 1936 fire was far worse, as was the 1952 fire that burned for three days and caused $1.8 million in damage.
Nor was the Cuyahoga the only river in America ever to catch fire. The Rouge River through Dearborn, Michigan, the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, the Buffalo River through Buffalo, New York, in fact many rivers in heavily-industrialized cities, as well as harbors such asBaltimore Harbor[This appears to have been a river leading into Baltimore Harbor, not the harbor itself. link] and New York had caught fire at one time or another. I have found reference to the Chicago River catching fire in 1889 and 1899, but in fact there were many others -- as long as property was not being destroyed, the fire department just let the fires burn and did not even bother to record them. MORE
How Regulation came to be: The Cherry Mine Disaster - Part I
The St. Paul Coal Company mine in Cherry, Illinois was not the kind of place where a disaster was supposed to happen. Formed to provide coal for its parent, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad (better known later in the twentieth century as the Milwaukee Road), its owners boasted of its safety and it incorporated many features considered advanced for its day when it went into operation in 1905, most notably an electric light system that was supposed to eliminate the need for torches and open flames to light the mine. As so often happens, though, things did not go according to plan. The fateful day, when it came, was one that only someone named Murphy could appreciate.
Immediately after dinner on the 13th day of November, 1909, a Saturday, a car loaded with baled hay intended for the use of the mules in the lower seam was let down the main shaft.MORE
Upon reaching the landing of the second seam, which was the destination of the cages in the main shaft, the car and its contents were taken off, transferred by means of a runabout and started in the narrow passageway leading to the air shaft from which point, in accordance with the practice it was to be sent to the seam below. A like operation had been performed successfully on all other occasions. but on this one it failed. Fate, utilizing all the agencies of human frailty was evidently busy arranging the scenes for a great tragedy, and circumstances, seemingly simple in themselves, combined to create a situation involving the imprisonment and ultimate death of more men than ever before occurred at the time in the history of the State.
State of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics: Report on the Cherry Mine Disaster, 1910. (plain .txt version)
How Regulation came to be: The Cherry Mine Disaster - Part II
In our first installment (Part I, here) we watched the Cherry, Illinois mine disaster unfold, as a series of events transpired that Peter Donna, the longest-living survivor of the disaster once called, "the biggest bunch of carelessness I have ever seen."
When a cart loaded with hay for mules working underground caught fire in the mine, the men responsible for it responded with an attitude of confidence in their control of the situation that convinced other miners in a position to help that the men had the fire under control. By the time the seriousness of the situation was realized, the middle level of the mine was rapidly turning into a blazing furnace.
As efforts to extinguish the fire failed, and means of escape and rescue were cut off, disabled, and destroyed, and air entering the mine only served to feed the inferno, mine officials and rescue experts sealed the mine to smother the flames. Our story concludes inside.
How Regulation came to be: Ground Fault, Interrupted
Charles Dalziel was a professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California at Berkeley, later to be home to the Free Speech Movement and host of other things that make conservatives' heads explode. (A good place, in other words.) As sometimes happens, he achieved his greatest impact when he ventured outside his narrow field of interest and specialty.
The results of Dalziel's studies (pdf) on the physiological effects of electric shock on humans are still used today. As an authority on the subject, he was frequently asked to review and offer his opinion in cases involving death or injury from electric shock. From this activity he came to recognize that the great majority of deaths from electric shock came as a result of a malfunction in ordinary household circuits known as a "ground fault", where electricity, instead of passing through the wiring in an electrical device, takes a "shortcut" to the ground through a person touching the device. And while this might be a useful plot device in any number of movies and TV shows, it was clearly not a good thing if you were the person completing the circuit.
Charles Dalziel, inventor of the
Ground Fault Current Interrupter
His particular research interest was in power systems, but a chance event diverted him to a new area. Faculty of the Davis campus enlisted Professor Dalziel's aid in developing an electric insect trap. Thus was started a lifelong interest in the effect of electric shock on living creatures, starting with barnyard flies and progressing to livestock, and ultimately to humans.Even then, research on the effect of electric shock on humans was a very sensitive area. Dalziel, using unique methods of persuasion, extreme care and rigorous methods of testing, amassed a large amount of data from a wide range of tests on approximately 200 volunteers of both sexes and a range of ages. These data provided an excellent source of information on the physiological effects of electric shock, and Dalziel soon became a world authority on the subject.
University of California: In Memoriam, 1986 -- Charles Dalziel
His research objective then became to create a device which would interrupt a ground-fault current before it became large enough to cause human physiological damage. The sensitivity, speed of action, reliability, small size, and small cost required made the device almost impossible to design.
ibid
How he finally succeeded
How Regulation came to be:The Cocoanut Grove
...Regarded as one of Boston's most elegant night clubs, the Cocoanut Grove had started as a speakeasy in 1927 and had recently expanded into an adjacent, converted building. It was decorated in a tropical theme with artificial palm trees forming a canopy overhead in the main dining room, and featured dining, drinking, dancing, and entertainment. The National Fire Protection Association described the layout:
...
Club owner Barney Welansky had bragged of being "in with the mayor". Evidence suggested he was certainly "in" with someone. The club's property taxes had mysteriously been cut in half. The club had been wired by an unlicensed electrician. Despite the presence of extensive paper and fabric decorations, and a flammable imitation leather covering many of the walls, a fire inspection eight days before the fire found everything "satisfactory". The Melody Lounge in the basement of the club had only one public point of entry and egress, the stairs to the ground level lobby. Some fire emergency doors, though equipped with the required anti-panic devices, also had additional locks installed in violation of fire codes so they could be locked to prevent patrons from sneaking out without paying their tabs. Many exits were not marked, and despite the lessons learned in the Iroquois Theater fire forty years earlier, some exit doors still opened inward. Many doors that could have provided egress were concealed in private side rooms and unmarked. Windows that could have been broken to provide an escape route to the exterior had been covered over with plywood as part of the war-time blackout. Shortly before the fire, club manager James Welansky had been seen dining at the club with a police captain and an assistant district attorney amidst all these violations.
Into this environment on the night of the fire the management packed over a thousand revelers, far beyond the club's legal capacity of about 600. The club's staff, many later discovered to be under-age, were untrained in fire procedures. And not that it probably would have mattered, given all the other codes and regulations that were ignored wholesale, but fire codes at the time did not consider a nightclub packed with hundreds of people to be a "place of public assembly" which would have subjected them to stricter fire regulations. It is hard to imagine a more inviting setting for disaster. FIRE!!!!!!!!!
DK GreenRoots - How Regulation came to be: Donora
About twenty-five miles upriver of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Monongahela River makes a sweeping horseshoe bend. Nestled in the horseshoe on the west bank or the river is the town of Donora, surrounded by a ring of 400-foot-tall hills and river bluffs that form a bowl around the town....
Bowls are made to hold things. For five suffocating days at the end of October, 1948, the topological bowl around Donora did just that.
The U.S. Steel Corporation's Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant employed thousands of Monongahela Valley residents, bringing good jobs and comfortable incomes to the local population. In exchange, the residents of Donora and surrounding towns were willing to live with the yellow clouds laden with sulfur dioxide and other contaminants that belched from the plants. As a veteran of the disaster, Bill Schempp, said years later, "That's the way it was here. It was a normal way of life."
Residents didn't show much concern when a thick fog rolled in on October 26, 1948, trapping pollutants from the mills in it, and they found themselves immersed in the foul yellow cloud. Given the bowl-like topology around the town, it wasn't unusual for temperature inversions to trap the smog in the valley for a few hours, even a day or two. But this smog just would not go away.
This time the smog had not broken up in a few hours. One day turned into two and still the thick cloud remained. Then a third day. And a fourth. And as the crisis dragged on, people began to die.Smog laden with sulfur dioxide from the zinc works was something Donora residents had become used to. As it thickened, residents went about their normal routines. On Oct. 29, the smog hid players from the crowd at a high school football game, and later, it became too thick to drive. That evening, people walking outside couldn't see their hands in front of their faces.
Still, few had any sense of the danger encircling them.
CLEANER AIR IS LEGACY LEFT BY DONORA'S KILLER 1948 SMOG
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God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:24 pm (UTC)Only, they knew better and did it anyway. That's the scary part.
It was not not knowing that led them (and us) down this path.
Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:34 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:36 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 08:51 pm (UTC)The tugsten welding rods I use are thoriated, which means they are spiked with 2% radioactive thorium. I have about a kilo of those.
The ionization detectors for my smoke alarms have a radioactive chip of Americium, a synthetic element which is manufactured inside a nuclear reactor. It's a piece of active nuclear waste from the bowels of a reactor core, basically.
Multiple sources of ultraviolet radiation for curing resins, erasing EPROM computer chips, and sterilizing drinking water.
Two glass vials of tritium, the stuff in hydrogen bombs that I use as maplights.
Many vacuum tube devices, which use radionuclides to enhance their low power operation, kind of like my welding rods.
A half kilo of vanadium pentoxide catalyst for stripping pollution from diesel engine exhaust. This is one of the leftovers from yellowcake after the uranium is taken away.
So, even as I point out the dangers, I also have to address my complicity. These things do make my life easier, and in some cases, possible. But they are not without cost.
Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 09:05 pm (UTC)Re: God protects fools and children
Date: 2009-08-13 09:31 pm (UTC)Our only salvation is to get away from the kind of living that demands that we either do these things, or comply with someone else choosing to. That is difficult if not impossible today for most of us.
I mean, is it better for me to TIG weld up a recumbent bicycle to get around using discarded scrap steel, or pay a company to do it for me out of factory steel? Should I walk? So many questions...
It's one of the harshest lessons of environmentalism. There are no free rides, only informed, hard choices.
As an example, think about natural lime plaster as a building material? 5% of the Earth's CO2 emissions come from lime kilns. No kilns, no lime plaster.
The steel I am building all the things I need came from a corrupt culture that holds us all hostage, as did the technology to bring our words to each other. But even as I am held hostage to this culture, I have some freedom to make better choices, like using discarded materials when I can.
For me, bringing the consequences home to me as much as possible, talking about my choices with honesty and candor, and weighing the options using the wealth of information available to me as a privileged member of an industrialized nation is how I cope. It's using the privilege I have to make my tiny little corner of the world better as best I can, without seeking fanfare or glory for greenwashing the real cost away.
There are no simple answers, but there are honest, informed choices.