The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers
本书详述美国工人因接触氯乙烯、石棉、苯等工业化学品而患病，并揭露企业掩盖真相、阻挠监管的历史，对研究职业健康、环境正义和劳工权益的读者有重要参考价值。
This is a powerful, well-documented book on the long struggle for justice and compensation by US workers made ill by exposure to a range of hazardous chemicals including vinyl chloride, asbestos, benzene and ortho-toluidine produced or used in companies like B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear and Dupont. Cross-generational effects due to birth defects in children of workers exposed to such chemicals in the semiconductor and other industries are covered too. The lives of those with occupational diseases employed across major US industries is graphically described. Community impacts of both new jobs created and their health consequences for individual workers emerge from interviews with workers, discussions with lawyers, scientists, regulators and a small group of trade union officials committed to protecting the health and safety of their members. Morris outlines how, by the 1960s, the scale of workplace ill-health across the United States was being formally investigated by the state. Compelling testimony was given to inquiries on chemical hazards by trade union leaders from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) and researchers. Some US politicians recognised the problem and the 1970 US Occupational Safety and Health Act established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA's head, Eula Bingham, recognised there had been centuries of neglect of worker health and safety in the country and saw urgent action was needed. Progress was often slow and haphazard in setting safe chemical exposure standards due to opposition from influential neo-liberal interests. These struggles still continue in 2025. Morris provides a narrative of the interactions between activists, scientists, regulators including politicians like Reagan and Trump from the 1950s onwards on specific chemical hazards. This is a story of cover ups, blocks and obfuscations used by industry using what a former OSHA head has called ‘doubt and denial’ to thwart both greater regulation and enforcement for those workers whose health had already been damaged. The story that emerges provides a deep understanding of how US chemical industry leaders operated pre- and post-1960s. Employers involved frequently knew about the toxicity of the chemicals they supplied to other companies and covered up the research for decades. The US companies using those chemicals to manufacture products had growing knowledge about their dangers in making for example PVC, rubber tyres and engineering parts in various industries. A major case study in the book relates to workers’ occupational bladder cancers at the US Goodyear tyre plant in Niagara Falls, New York. This illustrates many of the problems relevant to effectively safeguarding workers over the last 60 years. The company still reportedly uses the bladder carcinogen ortho-toluidine in the 2020s, a chemical supplied from the 1950s by Du Pont. Dupont had apparently fully protected their own workers from exposure to the carcinogen they then supplied to Goodyear. However, Du Pont moved to a position where they ‘simply’ stopped reporting additional bladder cancer cases in the scientific literature according to epidemiologist David Michaels, and by the early 1990s, Du Pont identified around 450 bladder cancers among its Chambers factory workforce. The book vividly describes the suffering of the affected tyre workers. Central to the eventual legal recognition of the bladder cancer problem were several successful lawsuits, settled out of court, brought by Steve Wodka who had worked for OCAW in the early days and who then trained as a lawyer. Morris ends the book by noting workers dealing with carcinogens are still (mostly) on their own despite good work done by some regulators, some scientists, some trade unions and lawyers. For Morris, since the 1970s, there had been ‘stunning advances in medicine but an impoverished environment in which to apply them’ (p. 215). He highlights the fact that the European Union (EU) in the 21st century established far tougher standards on benzene than those adopted by OSHA in the United States as many new workplace health threats were emerging including exposure to nanoparticles. Hence, the book's assessments would in many respects be relevant globally. The detailed focus on the American workplace understandably but perhaps a little surprisingly leaves little space for investigating the global activities of companies like Goodyear and Dupont. The European Union's work is very briefly touched upon in the book as are the activities of the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the International Labour Organization. Morris further references the work of Italy's Maltoni on vinyl chloride monomer and the passing involvement of the UK physician in the bladder cancer story. He describes the continued lack of action by the United States on lead poisoning citing the United Kingdom's Thomas Oliver's work in 1911 that exposed those hazards. Perhaps another book or article beckons for the author exploring where the United States sits with regard to the global history of toxic tort actions against the chemical industry? What were the international trade unions doing to circulate information from one country to another where large multinational companies like Goodyear and Dupont had located factories? How did other countries, their unions, scientists, lawyers and non-governmental organisations deal with the same occupational disease threats that emerged in these US companies? Goodyear for example established a UK tyre plant in Wolverhampton in July 1927. At its height, the factory employed 7000 workers. To what extent was this workforce ever aware of the efforts of the US Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union at Niagara Falls to get redress for their rubber and chemical workers suffering from bladder cancer? Bladder cancer cases in production workers linked to the Wolverhampton factory were still apparently being reported in the press in the 2010s. It would have been fascinating to include some brief reflections from the author on this global dimension and how OCAW communicated global information on its Goodyear cancer cases. This is, however, a rich, original, humane, well-crafted, meticulously researched and well-presented book. It brings together complex themes and much data based on the lives and experiences of those US workers employed in the chemical plants who contracted occupational diseases. It is especially important because it situates and analyses, the workers’ struggles for justice squarely in the regulatory, political, scientific and trade union context in the United States from the 1960s right up to the 2020s.