Jock McCulloch (1945-2018): A Tribute.

Jock William McCulloch, who died at Melbourne, Australia, in January 2018, was one of the foremost historians of occupational health of his generation. This tribute reviews his career and oeuvre, which was tragically ended by his death from mesothelioma.

Oil on the water: Government regulation of a carcinogen in the twentieth-century Lancashire cotton spinning industry.

In the Lancashire cotton textile industry, mule spinners were prone to a chronic and sometimes fatal skin cancer (often affecting the groin). The disease had reached epidemic proportions by the 1920s, which necessitated action by the government, employers, and trade unions. In contrast to previous accounts, this article focuses on the government's reaction to mule spinners' cancer.

Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations.

At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World," participants endorsed a Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations. The Code outlines practices that would ensure corporations enact the highest health and environmentally protective measures in all the locations in which they operate. Corporations should observe international guidelines on occupational exposure to air contaminants, plant safety, air and water pollutant releases, hazardous waste disposal practices, remediation of polluted sites, public disclosure of toxic releases, product hazard labeling, sale of products for specific uses, storage and transport of toxic intermediates and products, corporate safety and health auditing, and corporate environmental auditing.

Science is not sufficient: Irving J. Selikoff and the asbestos tragedy.

Professor Irving J. Selikoff (1915-1992) was America's foremost medical expert on asbestos-related diseases between the 1960s and early 1990s. He was also well known to the public for his media appearances on the burgeoning asbestos problem.

Shooting the messenger: the vilification of Irving J. Selikoff.

Dr. Irving J. Selikoff (1915-1992), a New York physician based at Mount Sinai Hospital, was the leading American medical expert on asbestos-related diseases between the 1960s and early 1990s.

Hero or villain?--Sir Richard Doll and occupational cancer.

In 2006, the English media broke the story that Sir Richard Doll had for many years been retained on a secret consultancy by Monsanto. Doll's colleagues rushed to his defense, arguing that the story was an unjustified smear on a great man whose work had saved millions of lives. However, Doll's conflicts of interest in his occupational health epidemiology are shown to sit uneasily alongside his more independent smoking/lung cancer studies.

The Rochdale asbestos cancer studies and the politics of epidemiology: what you see depends on where you sit.

The history of the exploitation of epidemiology by the U.K. asbestos industry and the subsequent obscuring of the disastrous results of exposures is presented, exploring in particular the roles of Sir Richard Doll and his colleagues.

Double standards: the multinational asbestos industry and asbestos-related disease in South Africa.

This study documents and contrasts the development of knowledge about asbestos-related disease (ARD) in South Africa and the United Kingdom. It also contributes to the globalization debate by exploring corporate decision-making in a multinational industry. Between the 1930s and 1960s, the leading U.

Chrysophiles versus chrysophobes: the white asbestos controversy, 1950s-2004.

In the first half of the twentieth century, asbestos was a controversial mineral because of its association with asbestosis and asbestos-related lung cancer. It has proved no less so since the 1960s, when another asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, was identified. Mesothelioma appeared to be more strongly linked with blue asbestos (crocidolite) than with the other asbestos varieties, brown (amosite) and white (chrysotile).

Mondays without dread: the Trade Union response to byssinosis in the Lancashire cotton industry in the twentieth century.

Trade unions have often been criticized for their failure to address occupational health issues. This article explores their response to byssinosis-a chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to cotton dust that was rife in the Lancashire cotton industry in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using the archives of the cardroom and spinning unions, it is demonstrated that trade union efforts to combat byssinosis began before the First World War and were sustained for over 70 years.

Asbestos and its lethal legacy.

Asbestos has become the leading cause of occupationally related cancer death, and the second most fatal manufactured carcinogen (after tobacco). In the public's mind, asbestos has been a hazard since the 1960s and 1970s. However, the knowledge that the material was a mortal health hazard dates back at least a century, and its carcinogenic properties have been appreciated for more than 50 years.