Document dnpyzRByVO3OMJeVoZXOZVMNR

14 FRANK A. PATTY and Canada--whose progress is somewhat similar to our own--but several of them have set up training centers at home. One of the most notable is that estab lished at Lima, Peru, with the co-operation of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs.10 Japan has established an Industrial Hygiene Association. There is ample evidence of a widespread and growing interest in industrial hygiene and health engineering in nearly all countries. IV. Industrial Hygiene in the United States We have seen that the United States lagged behind other countries in provid ing control measures or compensation for occupational diseases, and that it was not until the late Twenties that industrial hygiene became more than an incipient dream in the minds of a relatively few individuals. A few farsighted pioneers in the field of public health saw the possibilities of making the control of industrial health a vocation and of enlisting the technical aid of professions other than medicine to do the job. Industrial hygiene in the United States has from the start been kept on a high professional: plane and has therefore attracted men with a liberal leaning toward technical research. One of the outstanding reasons that industrial hygiene has been so successful in controlling adverse environmental conditions and in preventing or controlling occupational disease is that pronounced rivalry has developed between the medical men and the men of the sciences, as well as between the scientific professions involved, for instance, chemists and mechanical engineers. This rivalry, as has been pointed out before,11 has been wholesome and has resulted in advancing accom plishments in the field of industrial health that would have been improbable with out it; competition and wholesome incentive have always inspired accomplish ments. Advances in industrial process ventilation have been almost solely the achievement^of the industrial hygienist: the heating and ventilating engineers; either from lack of interest or understanding, have remained aloof. As a result, many grotesque ventilating systems and ideas have appeared under the sponsorship of sheet-metal men who did not even pretend to understand the physical laws applying to air flow and air movement but were attempting to supply a demand for protection of workmen as best they could. Industrial hygiene hassiaSdidside its swaddling clothes and entere<i;'a vigorous stage of advancement. It is;;-noi longer seen by industry as the aimless effort of intellectuals collecting bottjes filled with nothing so thatJheyjjan prepare long and useless discourses that few woufd read or understand, or, if tEey did under stand, would know what action to take. The safeguarding of industrial health is on a business basis of evaluation and control and is recognized as such by both " J. J. Bloomfield and A. S. Landry, Am. Ind. Hvg. Assoc. Quart., 16, 65 (1955). u C. D. Selby, Am. J. Pub. Health, 30, 1422 (1940). INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE--RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 15 id management. The purpose of the industrial hygienist is no longer merely Hgck-the stable door after the horse has been stolen" but to anticipate and ijj^ygnt-harmful situations, or to control them before serious injury results. ftEhe industrial hygienist has done much toward bringing medicine and safety jieiering into close co-operation, partly because his interests overlap these ^pelds. For instance, the safety engineer looks to the industrial hygienist for jPPftftce in problems involving the technical phases of the flammability or ex^agility of solvents,.gases, vapors, and dusts. Likewise, the technical differences classes of respiratory protection devices and the chemical absorbents jgHpjfare somewhat confusing and require special study. Medical men with no experience, on the other hand, will be more concerned with the toxigfegical aspects and in their desire to prevent harmful exposures may consider ffljiitbe promotion of health without due regard for practical economic measures )Jii|estpr,ableffis * the P^ant production and maintenance engineers. It is the in- trial hygienist's job to become acquainted with these engineers and get the Befit of their reactions to any of his major recommendations so that his control a 5*; !^'-`"'-rtSU^es will be more sound and acceptable. One of the most urgent needs today la.' `.ift "'o t,,common understanding between the heating and ventilating engineer and the fifestaStfial hygienist. The former thinks in terms of comfort, and air conditioning ' frequently is unable to grasp the problems involved in the control of gases, and dusts, which are designated in parts per million or million particles ibic foot. The industrial hygienist is going to have to take the initiative in ||i;g7his-control-recommendations-into terms of volume or rate of flow or somengfinore familiar to the heating and ventilating engineer. He should make it ^^pjrstood more generally that the control of all air contaminants, even excess UmmjS&aJt/iji.something the heating and ventilating engineer needs to become acquainted rekn "with--not a thing to be added as an afterthought or left to be unskilled persons who may thereby upset the'iunctioning of an other^^j^'/^iokrefully planned heating and ventilating or airrconditioning installation. there are the architects, the plant layout men, and building designers as <^es'Sners machine tools and equipment. The basic principles of tA>BaandjMtai.al hygiene must be presented to these men so that industrial, hygiene will ^^^^^th the blueprints of factories and machines. All too frequently still.indus- iygieneTbecomesra matter-of telling-management what their^raistakes have r tremendously expensive changes will have to be made, rather * 1.- - ideas into design where the most good will be accomplished ^^^a^[naone,.oL=the.jnost.modem.aluminum foundries built during^Worid'-War II, (frequently pointed out as a model of perfection, the mechanization was the sand-handling and dust-control equipment was good, but sorne and heat sources were uncontrolled and the general ventilation left fu. *<..... ?h'|to b,e desired. No one had ever made the designer aware that dust- or fiirhe- jgpd heated air had to be moved out of any enclosure by removing all of the