Observations on Workers' Perceptions of Risk in the Dangerous Trades

Abstract

In the 1910s, Alice Hamilton, one of the first American specialists in the field of occupational disease, began her work on the risks of the trades.' Today, occupational risks are the focus of increased evaluation, much of it centering on the effects of exposure to chemicals that are indispensable to the industrial economy. Industry in the United States uses an estimated 63,000 commercial chemicals in all aspects of manufacturing, processing, and service. The workers who may be exposed to these products include not only the 4.6 million employees in chemical and chemical products industries, but also people in occupations as varied as firefighting, fine arts, scientific research, and maintenance work. The U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimated that in 1974 about 25 million North American workers were exposed to hazardous substances.2 This dependence on chemicals, however, may create additional costs in terms of worker health.3 And, although preventive measures now reduce exposure to some substances, new products and changes in chemical processes continually create new uncertainties in the relationship between work and disease. The precise dimensions and implications of the problem remain elusive, obfuscated in part by the technical difficulties of evaluation as well as by the fact that the effects of chronic chemical exposure often become evident only after long latency periods. The cumulative impacts of prolonged exposure to low doses, and the effects of exposure to combinations of substances, further confound systematic analysis. Poor data collection, relatively primitive diagnostic techniques, and the lack of physicians trained in occupational health contribute to insufficient accumulation of information over time. Moreover, the uncertainty of risk analysis-the fact that the data do not provide unique answers-allows a range of interpretations about how chemical exposure affects the health of workers, and encourages considerable conflict over questions of responsibility and regulation.4 Relatively few studies have addressed the perspectives of those exposed to the hazards-the workers themselves. One important and provocative exception was the series of national quality of worklife surveys that the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research conducted in 1969, 1972, and 1977.5 These surveys suggested that production workers were increasingly aware of the dangers and were concerned about their health. Between 1969 and 1977, the proportion of those who said that they were exposed to one or more hazards on the job increased from 38% to 78%. In 1977, 72% of male production workers reported exposure to air pollution and fumes; 45%, to dangerous chemicals. Professor Nelkin is in the Program on Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Sociology, Cornell University, NY 14853. During the 1983-1984 academic year, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY 10021. Mr. Brown is a research specialist in the Program on Science, Technology, and Society, and a Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. * Research for this article is treated more fully in Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Brown, Workers at Risk: Voices From the Workplace (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984). The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, EVIST grant number ISP 8112920.