Celebrating International Women's Day - Alice Hamilton
By Susen Trail | 03/08/2020
Happy International Women’s Day!
And what better way to celebrate than to share some information about one of America’s first Industrial Hygienists: Alice Hamilton!
Alice was born in 1869 in New York but lived most of her life in Illinois. During her life she was a physician, a research scientist and author. She was the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University. In 1943 she wrote Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice Hamilton, an extremely interesting book.
While working as a bacteriologist and living in a working-class district in 1902 she became interested in the link between occupation and illness. She investigated industrial diseases, especially for women. At this time the industrial revolution was ramping up creating rapid growth in mining, manufacturing, etc.
Rapid growth usually comes at the expense of safety, the pace of the work and the new processes and materials created new and serious hazards. Among them were mercury, lead, white or yellow phosphorus, and poisonous chemicals.
My favorite quote in her autobiography was “I chose [medicine] because, as a doctor I could go anywhere I pleased -to far off lands or to city slums – and be quite sure I could be of use anywhere.” She proved this true many times in her life. In 1910 Alice Hamilton was appointed to head a survey on industrial illness in Illinois by Governor Charles Deneen.
This gave her access to workplaces and the authority to ask questions of workers and employers as well as review medical records. She would go deep into the mines to see working conditions for herself. She would uncover many unsafe working conditions that were endured because many of the workers were immigrants who did not speak English and unskilled American workers who felt they would lose their jobs if they complained.
Alice Hamilton did more than identify hazards, she proved the connection between exposures at work and illnesses experienced by workers helping to create brand new fields of study and practice Industrial Toxicology and Occupational Health. She identified the importance of engineering controls, stating “There can be no intelligent control of the lead danger in industry unless it is based on the principle of keeping the air clear from dust and fumes.”
Alice lived to be 101 years old, dying in 1970, just 3 months before congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
For a more detailed biography click here or, better yet, buy her autobiography.