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Workers were routinely told that chemicals used in manufacturing were safe, including lead, arsenic, phosphorus, radium, mercury, and picric acid. But Dr. Alice Hamilton knew that was not true. Determined to gather irrefutable evidence she conducted groundbreaking investigations.
She started by researching the lead industry and the rubber industry. Tirelessly Dr. Hamilton inspected factories; interviewed chemists and pharmacists; talked with factory managers, (who routinely denied any workers were sick); scrutinized hospital records; and got first-hand, candid information from sick workers by visiting in their homes. Dr. Hamilton wrote reports in which she documented the dangers. She listed the symptoms of poisoning, such as convulsions from lead poisoning and recommended safety measure.
Then she was asked by the National Research Council to investigate the explosive industries. But World War I had begun and the factories’ locations were secret. That is why Dr. Alice Hamilton was on the look out for canaries, that she could follow to the factory. Other clues she looked for were “great clouds of yellow and orange fumes, nitrous gases which . . . . rose to the sky from picric-acid and nitrocellulose plants.” She checked out everything she heard, including gossip. Then she wrote another detailed report of her findings and recommendations for safety protections. Once again Dr. Alice Hamilton had fulfilled her mission to do “what could be done to protect” workers.
By the end of the war, Dr. Hamilton said, “industrial medicine had at last become respectable.” In 1919, the all-male Harvard University appointed her an assistant professor in the new department of industrial medicine. Today Dr. Alice Hamilton is considered a founder of what is known as the field of occupational health and safety.
Continuing her sleuthing, she investigated many industries, including copper mines in Arizona, where she climbed down eighty-foot ladders and walked a narrow path around the edge of a tank filled with “evil-looking, dark, bubbling acid.”
A prolific writer, Dr. Alice Hamilton wrote articles, reports, and her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades. She lived to be 101 years old. “For me,” she once wrote, “the satisfaction is that things are better now, and I had some part of it.”
Mary Gibson Henry risked her life following her passion for new botanical species. During the Civil War, Katharine Wormeley worked aboard hospital ships and helped to save the lives of many sick and wounded soldiers. With a promise and a dollar and a half, Mary McLeod Bethune opened a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904, at a time when schools were segregated.
Award-winning author Penny Colman offers a compelling collection of true stories about eight women who were bold enough to confront obstacles and take risks in the pursuit of their goals. This is a book that celebrates the intelligence, fortitude, and courage of women. For information, click here.
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