Fighting Toxic Ignorance

<p><b><i>Fighting Toxic Ignorance</i></b><b> explores conflict over access to information regarding health hazards encountered in the US workplace during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. </b>Alan Derickson considers risks posed by toxic chemicals and physical and biological agents of disease. By the 1970s, occupational disease was estimated to kill up to 100,000 Americans a year. Derickson unravels the social and political forces and the conflictual process that gave rise to a sustained social movement for a workers' right to know about often-insidious threats. He argues that the decades prior to the emergence of this movement were not a dark age of victimization brought about by enforced ignorance but a time of recurrent battles over the disclosure of needed facts. Workplace warnings—informative signs, labels, and instructions—often saved lives. <i>Fighting Toxic Ignorance</i> covers a broad range of dangerous substances, deals with a large share of the national workforce, and illuminates the many ways that activists endeavored to see that warnings reached workers, especially immigrants and workers of color.</p>