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5. Rayon, Carbon Disulfide, and the Emergenceof the Multinational Corporationin Occupational Disease
- Temple University Press
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5 rayon, Carbon Disulfide, and the emergence of the Multinational Corporation in occupational Disease paul d. Blanc T he history of “artificial silk,” a man-made textile we know today as rayon, is tightly interwoven with the story of a single and singularly toxic synthetic chemical, carbon disulfide (Cs2 ). Between 1910 and 1930, the artificial silk industry grew exponentially to assume a major economic presence in the united Kingdom and worldwide. From the very start, it was dominated by a few large multinational firms. as these became even more interconnected, the key chemical-intensive viscose manufacturing processes they shared meant that the Cs2 hazards experienced by one factory site were present at all others. yet despite widespread use of Cs2 and the emerging international biomedical confirmation of its toxicity in this industry, the artificial silk multinationals would not publicly acknowledge the danger, key British labor and health professionals minimized the threat, and prominent political figures practiced the art of the possible. On march 15, 1928, in an exchange noted in the Lancet,1 a British member of parliament (mp) named William t. Kelly asked the home secretary whether he had received any reports of ill health among artificial silk factory employees. sir W. Joynson-hicks responded that “the conditions generally are satisfactory” and, without specific mention of Cs2 , went on to assure the mp that this issue would “continue to receive the special attention of the medical staff.”2 By the time of this 1928 parliamentary exchange, it might be argued, the hazards of Cs2 were not widely appreciated within the biomedical community. it could also be posited that the novelty and technological complexity of artificial 74 / ChaPTer 5 silk manufacturing (still an emerging industry) impeded recognition of the importance of Cs2 to this enterprise, or that it was generally presumed that new protective controls would automatically be built into the new technology , guaranteeing “satisfactory conditions” and an acceptable degree of risk. theoretically, other barriers to a wider awareness of the carbon disulfide hazard could have come into play. the pace at which scientific knowledge was disseminated may have slowed wider recognition of the problem, in particular in foreign-language medical and technical publications for which notice in Great Britain may have been minimal. moreover, as limited as this objective biomedical literature might have been, there was likely to have been virtually no shared contemporaneous accounting of what it meant to be a Cs2 -exposed artificial silk worker in the “testimony” of these workers themselves . Finally, artificial silk manufacturing was a powerful industry. even in the early decades of the twentieth century, it manifested elements of a traditional cartel carried over from the nineteenth century and, at the same time, of a prototypical modern multinational corporation. this was an industrial juggernaut that had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of worker safety circa 1920. it had the will and it likely had the ways to defer, delay, or even seek to prevent altogether any external regulatory actions aimed at effective amelioration of the Cs2 problem. this essay systematically reviews and evaluates each of these factors leading up to parliamentary debates on the subject of Cs2 beginning in 1928. its analysis focuses on how they may have slowed recognition of the threat posed by this chemical and then, following belated acknowledgment of the hazard, blunted actions that might have been taken to abate its dangers. Carbon Disulfide in the nineteenth Century and the early Twentieth Century in order to understand the biomedical community’s general awareness of the dangers of Cs2 likely in the artificial silk industry, the use of this chemical should be considered in its historical context. By the mid-nineteenth century, Cs2 was already a well-recognized toxin, particularly noted for its adverse effects on the central and peripheral nervous systems.3 in the 1850s, its toxicity was first described in depth by a French physician, auguste delpech.4 his pioneering work was quickly expanded upon by others, predominantly French neurologists.5 the French interest in Cs2 was consistent with its use in “cold-cure” vulcanization of rubber in the production of dipped rubber objects (such as balloons and condoms), typically carried out under very poor hygienic conditions in that country. Cs2 -caused disease, particularly optic nerve damage,6 was well recognized in the united Kingdom. through the first decade of the twentieth century, numerous medical-scientific publications documented the adverse health effects of Cs2 , albeit almost entirely in rubber processing, where the chemical was most...