How toxic chemical workers, in various settings, feel about being
placed at risk in their jobs: a study-report that complements
recent attention to regulation and other spotlight issues of
occupational health. Sociologist/activist Nelkin (The Atom
Besieged, The Creation Controversy) and researcher Brown are both
associated with Cornell's Program on Science, Technology, and
Society. In any discussion of risk, they would like the perceptions
and anxieties of workers to be considered along with measurable
exposure to hazards and states of physical health. Their
interviewees - who range from sculptors to firefighters to
laboratory technicians - talk about their fears of illness, their
ways of coping (use of protective equipment vs. ignoring the
hazards), their recourse in case of injury or illness (OSHA got
poor grades). As regards the risk-control issues, opinions ran the
gamut from the positive-minded, who wanted to work with management
to make the workplace safer, to skeptics strictly looking out for
themselves. ("I wouldn't trust that son-of-a-bitch company doctor
as far as I could throw a car.") Nelkin and Brown draw few
conclusions - leaving the pervasive fear of future illness to speak
for itself. An effective if unremarkable presentation of worker
concerns. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Workers at Risk" is a powerful and moving documentary of workers
routinely exposed to toxic chemicals. Products and services we all
depend on--glass bottles, computers, processed foods and fresh
flowers, dry cleaning, medicines, even sculpture and silkscreened
toys--are produced by workers in constant contact with more than
63,000 commercial chemicals. For many of them, the risk of death is
a way of life.
More than seventy of them speak here of their jobs, their health,
and the difficult choices they face in coming to grips with the
responsibilities, risks, fears, and satisfactions of their work.
Some struggle for information and acknowledgment of their health
risks; others struggle to put out of their minds the dangers they
know too well. Through extensive interviews, the authors have
captured in these voices that double bind of the chemical worker:
"If I had known that it would be that lethal, that it could give me
or one of my children cancer, I would have refused to work. But
it's a matter of survival and we just don't consider all these
things. Meanwhile, we've got to make money to survive."
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