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On September 5, 2003, the New York Times business section announced a startling new problem. Silicosis, an occupational lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica sand and considered in the 1940s and 1950s a “disease of the past,” was now rivaling asbestosis as the single most important source of toxic tort litigation in the United States. The Times noted that the disease had been a well-documented threat for at least seventy years and the courts were confronting an interesting legal issue (Glater 2003). Liability suits were clearly going to sky-rocket, but since workers’ compensation protected employers from liability suits due to exposures on the job, the diseased workers were suing the corporations who manufactured and sold the silica sand and the masks and equipment meant to protect the lungs of the workers. The Times article illustrates what a crucial role history is playing in these lawsuits. Over the course of the past thirty years we have seen a growing list of substances, circumstances, and events in which the historical record and its interpretation has emerged as an important element. One need only recall the public debates over responsibility for damages caused by silicone implants, tobacco, radiation, and a wide range of environmental disasters in Love Canal, New York, and Times Beach, Missouri, among others, in which historical analysis played an important part in ascribing responsibility for harm. Press attention to environmental hazards has elevated what were once limited liability issues into national concerns. At the core of the legal and policy debates are questions regarding the honesty and integrity of individual corporations and whole industries that are suspected of having knowingly poisoned workers, consumers, and communities Building a Toxic Environment Historical Controversies over the Past and Future of Public Health Chapter 6 Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner 130 alike. An essential part of that knowledge has been the scientific research that was either ignored or manipulated in an effort to create or preserve a market for toxic substances. In this chapter we look at a number of cases in which industries have used a variety of methods to shape the scientific and professional debates over the safety or dangers of its industrial products and byproducts .1 We are not dealing here with issues of genuine scientific ambiguity. Rather, we are discussing how industry has used its money and power to prevent the debate that might force it to alter its procedures or cease manufacturing its products. Industries have used a variety of tactics to forestall judgments of legal liability , legislation, and regulations aimed at restricting their use of various substances or products. Some of these tactics have been fairly obvious, even bold. In the face of scientific evidence that documented danger, some industries have sought to hire or provide grants to respected scientists to conduct research to find contrary evidence. When industrial medical departments or research arms have discovered data on the deleterious effect of new substances on workers’ health or on the environment, such data were, at times, kept secret, withheld from the public, hidden from the workforce, or denied to the government. Other tactics have been subtler and quite sophisticated. When results of public scientific studies suggested that danger might exist, industries have sometimes sought to publicize the ambiguity inherent in science. Particularly in the case of environmental hazards, where proof of danger is often difficult to establish, industry creates controversy over the validity of negative data to forestall regulation and combat legal challenges. Industries have also sought to direct public and professional attention away from potential dangers through sophisticated public relations and advertising campaigns. In addition , industries have traditionally downplayed the risks associated with their products through sophisticated uses of scientific ambiguity and claims that risk no longer exists because of self-regulation and modern industrial practices . Finally, in the wake of the establishment in the early 1970s of regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), industries have become much more active in finding ways to forestall government from curtailing industry practices or recommending stricter standards and better enforcement. They argue that the relative costs of new environmental regulations are too high given the uncertainties about potential health benefits. Further, the money spent protecting small numbers of workers from relatively rare diseases produced by new toxins could be better used in campaigns to change personal behaviors (such Building a...

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