100th anniversary of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of APHA

The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and early 1900s created many challenges to public health, including a vastly increased magnitude of occupational injury and illness in a wide range of industries and occupations.   Social and economic conditions of urbanization and industrialization were compounded by outdated laws and regulations on safety and health in the emerging factories, railroads, agricultural workplaces, mines, and distribution systems.    Legal systems that gave employers broad defenses against liability to injured and ill workers exasperated the problem, and left many injured and ill workers without protection, medical care, and compensation.    As the problem became more widespread, and awareness of theimpact grew, public health practitioners in health departments, settlement houses, universities, and governmental agencies saw the need for control of industrial chemical, dust, and physical hazards confronted by workers in dangerous trades.  In the early 1910s, while social conditions were leading to introduction of liberalized access to compensation for injuries and some acute illnesses, several APHA members saw the need to focus on problems of workplace specific health hazards, and the emerging tools of industrial hygiene work.  In 1914, one hundred years ago, the sixth section of APHA was created – the Industrial Hygiene section.  Its leaders and members,  including Alice Hamilton, Emery Hayhurst, CEA Winslow, and others, helped create an early social movement to improve working conditions and reduce preventable hazards, eventually broadening into today’s Occupational Health and Safety section.  This paper describes the conditions that led to the founding and ongoing work of the section.