Progressive reformers publicized these brutalities. Although toothless and partial, they led to stronger federal laws protecting workers in the 1930s, says historian Alan Dawley. Through the booming 1950s, deaths and injuries kept dropping. Yet most employers and workers didn't worry about the less obvious environmental hazards, such as asbestos and benzene and noise. Federal intervention, beginning with the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, has helped, but also has been criticized as focusing on trivialities and creating red tape.
Sweatshops still persist.
And while work-related deaths have plunged 75 percent since 1912 even as the workforce tripled, nearly 5,000 workers still die each year, including 250 from overexposure to the same thing that killed those West Virginia tunnel drillers, silica dust.