Description
Book SynopsisDespite the common perception that black lung has been relegated to the dustbin of history, silicosis remains a crucial public health problem that threatens millions of people around the world. This painful and incurable chronic disease, still present in old industrial regions, is now expanding rapidly in emerging economies around the globe. Most industrial sectors-including the metallurgical, glassworking, foundry, stonecutting, building, and tunneling industries-expose their workers to lethal crystalline silica dust. Dental prosthodontists are also at risk, as are sandblasters, pencil factory workers in developing nations, and anyone who handles concentrated sand squirt to clean oil tanks, build ships, or fade blue jeans. In Silicosis, eleven experts argue that silicosis is more than one of the most pressing global health concerns today-it is an epidemic in the making. Essays explain how the understanding of the disease has been shaken by new medical findings and technologies, deve
Trade ReviewAlthough the reader may think this could be a heavy read, the book is set out well and it was easy to read. The author enables the reader to understand. It is referenced well. Some books of this genre can be difficult to read, as politics, legal and medical terminology can feel beyond the reader- this was not the case.
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Nursing TimesThe authors make a powerful case that history matters to any analysis of the persistence of this iconic disease of industrialization... This well-researched and insightful transnational analysis of silicosis opens up new directions for historians of silicosis and other occupational diseases. As the contributors to this volume so poignantly confirm, accountability for diseases that ravage workers worldwide has yet to be adequately addressed.
—Lundy Braun, Brown University,
Bulletin of the History of MedicineThis book embodies a fascinatingly diverse set of chapters that have been successfully integrated into a refreshing narrative of not only health and medical aspects of silicosis, but also important social, economic and public health aspects of this ultimately preventable condition. Respirable crystalline silica exposure at work remains common globally, and those interested in tackling the resulting current, and future, health risks would find significant interest and enjoyment in this book.
—David Fishwick,
Occupational MedicinePaul-André Rosental's edited collection
Silicosis: A World History provides a full and nuanced understanding of the emergence of the concept of silicosis as an occupational disease . . . This is a comprehensive story of silicosis, dating back to the 1800s. It provides health practitioners, social historians, and scholars with a fascinating account of the discovery of the disease, the attempts of the mining companies to control and manage it (and, in some cases, hide it), and the people who cared enough to dedicate their lives to finding strategies for prevention and treatment . . . The authors have successfully imparted the history of silicosis beyond a narrow medical perspective, by acknowledging the strong influence of social forces on disease. In doing so, they have developed a framework for understanding responses to a range of other exposures such as asbestos and tobacco smoke.
—Jill Murray, University of the Witwatersrand,
American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Why Silicosis? Paul-Andre RosentalChapter 1 Why Is Silicosis So Important? Gerald Markowitz and David RosnerChapter 2: The Genesis and Development of the Scientific Concept of Pulmonary Silicosis during the Nineteenth Century Alberto Baldasseroni and Francesco CarnevaleChapter 3: Johannesburg and Beyond: Silicosis as a Transnational and Imperial Disease (1900-1940) Jock McCulloch and Paul-Andre Rosental, with Joe MellingChapter 4: The Politics of Recognition and Its Limitations: Legislating on Silicosis in the First Half of the Twentieth Century-a National or Transnational Process? Martin Lengwiler, Julia Moses, Bernard Thomann with Joseph MellingChapter 5: Silicosis and "Silicosis": Minimizing Compensation Costs, or Why Do Occupational Diseases Cost So Little Paul-Andre Rosental and Bernard ThomannChapter 6: Silica or coal? Design and Implementation of Dust Prevention in the collieries in Western Economies (circa 1930-1980) Eric GeerkensConclusion: Silica, Silicosis and Occupational Health in the Globalized World of the Twenty-First Century Francesco Carnevale, Paul-Andre Rosental and Bernard ThomannBibliography
