Document pM32BQD7RkVNGq003zye6O8X

78 CHAPTER 4 knowledge base needed to rescue pilots exposed to icy cold air or water or the rapid decompression associated with high-altitude bailouts. German military authorities wanted to know whether a pilot downed in the North Sea and exposed to water at a temperahue of, say, ten degrees Celsius for three hours might still be alive and worth a rescue effort. Many of the most notorious experiments were designed to answer practical questions of this sort. Germany, in effect, had two systems of occupational health and safety: one for the racially desirable and one for the racially infe rior. Most of the ordinances protecting "decent healthy Germans" were formalized by law; many of the abuses suffered by "racial inferiors" were perpetrated in a legal gray area confused by the exigencies of war and the disregard for international human rights (a concept not yet well developed). For upstanding healthy Ger man males--that is, males with full citizenship rights judged ra cially unimpeachable--there were in fact a number of new legal protections (see table 4.1). New laws mandated compensation for illnesses acquired at work (cancers caused by asbestos or petro chemicals, for example) and restrictions on the hours worked by youth. New laws strengthened certain kinds of protections for mothers, children, and the "unborn." Restrictions were placed on the hours that women or children could work; mothers and/or children were also barred from exposure to certain substances or processes (see table 4.2). Much of the interest in women's occupational health focused on threats to proper reproductive or sexual function. A 1941 medical thesis, for example, explored hazards of women's work in tobacco factories, looking at things like the effect of absorbed nicotine on menstrual disorders, age of menopause, ovarian and hormonal dysfunction, and so forth.18 Paternalistic, pro-natalist concerns were clearly at the center of many rulings in this area--especially as the fraction of women employed in the workplace grew over time. Foreign workers, of course, rarely benefited from such safe guards. Five million foreigners were forcibly brought into Ger many to make up for labor shortages caused by the war; responsi bility for organizing this gigantic task was in the hands of Fritz OCCUPATIONAL CARCINOGENESIS 79 Table 4.1 Occupational Health and Safety Regulations in Germany, 1933-1945 December 16, 1936 1937 October 30, 1939 May 23, 1940 February 7, 1941 August 6, 1942 January 29, 1943 The Third Occupational Disease Ordinance adds several new diseases to the list of compensable occupational illnesses, including asbestosis, lung cancers from work with chromate, and bladder cancer from exposure to aromatic amines.3 A "Cancer Commission" is established by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Arbeitsschutz under the direction of Franz Koelsch. The "Gesetz fiber die Heimarbeit" regulates health and safety conditions for work performed for employers in the home ("outwork"). Smoking is banned in the entryways and waiting rooms of factories in which there is a danger of fire (involv ing work with explosives, flammable liquids, etc.).b Work involving exposure to X-rays is barred for anyone deemed unfit for such work by a state-certified occu pational physician (Gewerbearzt). X-ray technicians must be examined for both local and general radiologic injuries at least twice yearly. Evidence of radia tion injury is to be followed up by urine and blood analysis; radium workers evidencing injuries must have a close-up X-ray taken of their lungs. Health and safety conditions are strengthened for lac quer and varnish workers.' The Fourth Occupational Disease Ordinance requires compensation for employees suffering from asbestosrelated lung cancer.d 3 "Dritte Verordnung iiber Ausdehnung der Unfallversicherung auf Berufskrankheiten. Vom 16. Dezember 1936," Reichsgesetzblutt 1 (1936): 1117-20. b "Rauchverbot in den Aufenthaltsraumen feuergefahrdeter Betriebe," Arbeitsschutz 3 (1942): 99. c "Richtlinien fur den Gesundheitsschutz bei Ladder- und Anstricharbeiten," Arbeits schutz 3 (1942): 297-98. d "Vierte Verordnung zur Ausdehnung der Unfallversicherung auf Berufskrank- heiten. Vom 29. Januar 1943," Arbeitsschutz 3 (1943): 65-67. Sauckel, Thuringia's hard-line Gauleiter and, as of March 21,1942, Plenipotentiary for the Mobilization of Labor (and a leading anti tobacco activist--see chapter 6). The jobs worked by many of these men, women, and children were usually difficult or dirty; most such workers were paid, but few were free to leave their place of work or move about the countryside. The philosophy behind the