The Colorado statesman., 1917-03-17
Uncle Sam Seeks to Guard
Health of Workers in
Munition Plants.
THOROUGH INQUIRY is MADE
Methods of Preventing occuPatlonal
Disease Will Be Devised as Re-
suit of Investigation of Many
Factories

The new munition manufacturing in
dustry built up in the United States
since the beginning of the European
war has brought new dangers to in
dustrial workers. Industrial poisons,
about which little or nothing was
known in this country, have developed
and Uncle Sans experts have just
completed an investigation to deter
mine the extent of this danger and the
steps that are being, or may be, taken
by manufacturers to combat it.
Although the great rush of contracts
for the European market has been di-
minishing during the last few months,
there is still great deal of high eX-
| plosive manufactured in The United
| States, and millions of shells are still
| being filed with explosive charges.
Moreover, it would be a mistake, say
the experts, to suppose that these
plants will close down after the war is
over. Many men in the industry be-
lieve that the compounds now being
manufactured for military purposes
can be used for peace explosives or
as basis for the manufacture of dyes
and other chemicals for which we for
merly depended entirely on Europe.
This is a new and unfamiliar indus
try in the United States. We have
manufactured nitroglycerin and mer
curry illuminate for many years to
very small extent and such explosives
as guncotton, smokeless powder and
Metric acid, but carbolic acid and ben
zene and toluene and aniline, so neces-
sary in the making of explosives, used
to come from Germany, and the new
materials for detonators and shells
have been made here to very limited
extent. This means that only in few
long-established factories were the
| problems connected with such work
well understood, and there were only
few company physicians who knew
anything about the poisons involved in
the industry.
Will Propose Remedies.
The experts of the United States bu-
reau of labor statistics have made their
| investigation in 40 munition plants in
the United States and as a result in
the near future will formulate methods
of prevention and treatment of the
poisoning incident to work in these fac
| tories.
Those who conducted this study say
that it has not been possible to discOv-
er how much occupational disease has
been caused by work in this industry
since the war broke out. Some plants,
it is said, furnish no medical service
| to their men, who must go to outside
doctors, and if the physician is not IA
miliar with the work in that plant he
does not think of CHASING the illness
as occupational.
There are. numbers of poisonous
gases around the munition plants, but
1T is said that the two explosives that
are attended with the greatest amount
of poisoning from nitrous fumes are
| nitrocelluloSe and picric acid, and in
some ways the latter was found the
more dangerous. Picric acid can be
made, it is said, with very simple
equipment provided no attention is
paid to the safety of the workmen, and
it was found in the investigative work
of the bureau that men were nitrating
phenol to picric acid in ways which
were primitive and very dangerous be-
cause of the escape of nitrous fumes.
AS matter of fact, the conditions
around many of the munition plants,
hastily constructed, were very bad for
the workmen.
Fear to Frighten Men.
In connection with the very thorough
study that was made of these plants
in various parts of the country it is
said that there is not as a usual thing
much, if any, instruction given the
men as to how to protect themselves
against the dangers of sickness brought
on by the work. Indeed, in some no
instruction at all seems to be given.
perhaps, 1t is suggested by the ex-
perts, because the company fears to
frighten away men at a time when la
Dor is scarce. Men working in a large
triton-shell plant told the investigators
that they had never even been told the
STUN was poisonous. On the other
hand, great guncotton plant visited
has regular system of instruction for
the force, taking the men, according
to departments, and giving them lee
lures in English and in their own Ian
guages, explaining the dangers peculiar
to the departments in which they work.
So far as possible, it is said, these
talks are illustrated by stereopticon
pictures. The effect is shown by their
report of fume sickness for five months.
The first month there were 266 cases
among 660 men; the fifth month "a
cases among 621 men.
As result of the study the officials
say that men with LESSONS in lungs or
kidneys will be unduly endangered oy
work of this character and should be
discharged as soon as the condition is
discovered. The same is said to be
true of alcoholics, their resistance to
these poisons being far helnw The aver