From raw source to completed product, the rubber industry is a murderous one. My grandfather went into the Akron rubber plants at 16, by 52 he was dead of multiple cancers. An early death being the lot of many thousands like him. A look at the myriad of health problems the profits of the rubber barons demand of its workers.

‘Poisoning in the Rubber Mills’ from Health and Hygiene. Vol. 4 No. 5. November, 1936.

DANGEROUS CHEMICALS USED IN THIS INDUSTRY ARE A GREAT MENACE TO THE LIVES OF ITS WORKERS

THE Borgias had nothing on the rubber barons.

In the vulcanization branch of the rubber industry alone, fifty-seven chemicals are used which are a threat to human life, according to India Rubber World.

A rubber worker’s surroundings on the job are a good deal like those of a chemist with the vital difference that the chemist is familiar with the danger in the materials with which he works. The average rubber worker, through no fault of his own, is not. As a matter of fact the nature of these poisonous chemicals is for the most part kept secret from him. And it is this secrecy, practiced by employers for trade reasons, that has so handicapped medical investigators attempting to study poisoning in the rubber industry.

The history of rubber, from the time of its use by the Amazon Indians to the Akron of sit-down strikes, is one of consistent exploitation, brutality and greed. During the nineteenth century the only source of rubber was the Amazon forest in Brazil where the Para rubber trees grew wild. In 1876, an English botanist, Henry Wickham (later knighted), smuggled 70,000 seeds out of Brazil and planted them at Kew Gardens, London. The seedlings were later transplanted in Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and the East Indies, marking the beginning of “plantation” rubber and the termination, for economic reasons, of Brazil’s wild rubber trade.

Since America is the world’s largest consumer of manufactured rubber goods, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford have attempted to break the British and Dutch stranglehold on the world’s supply of raw rubber. Ford bribed the Brazilian government into releasing 5,000,000 acres of its choicest rubber areas, while Firestone practically bought up the entire country of Liberia on the west coast of Africa.

It would require another article to describe the enslavement of Negroes, Malays, and other colonial peoples by the European and American rubber monopolists. The article would be a story of disease, floggings, famine and forced labor. Here we shall concern ourselves, however, with the health conditions under which 100,000 American rubber workers do their jobs, especially in those factories in the Akron district where 70 per cent of the world’s manufactured rubber goods is produced.

THERE are a thousand and one different products in whose manufacture rubber is used, but the rubber industry itself can be roughly divided into three groups. The first and largest section of the industry is devoted to the manufacture of tires and inner tubes; the second, rubber boots and shoes; and the third, rubber goods such as rubber belting and hose, rubber heels and soles, rubberized fabrics, and so forth. Another branch of the industry which is assuming even greater importance in recent years is the production of synthetic rubber. The search for a process whereby a rubber-like product could be synthesized from chemicals alone was particularly stimulated during the World War when the raw rubber markets were closed to all but the nations which controlled them. In America the Dupont corporation has been particularly active in this field and has produced synthetic rubber under the name of Duprene which, as yet, has not been made to pay for itself commercially.

The transformation of raw rubber into the finished product, a tire or a rubber heel, consists of a long series of chemical treatments the purpose of which is to convert the sticky, soft, natural product into a firm, elastic, and durable one. This is accomplished by vulcanization which, simply stated, is a process whereby the rubber is heated in the presence of any one of a host of poisonous chemicals, depending on the character of the rubber desired. It is in vulcanization and in most of the conditioning processes which follow it that the rubber worker is exposed to the many deadly poisonous chemicals which make his job among the most dangerous in industry.

The number of poisonous chemicals and the symptoms of poisoning which they cause could not begin to be recorded here, but a few of the major poisons encountered on the job will give an idea as to the hazards to workers’ health.

Benzol is a poison which is used in some department of every rubber factory particularly in rubber cement and rubber tires. Twenty-six cases of benzol poisoning were recorded in 1929 in Ohio alone. Poisoning by benzol is extremely serious and often fatal, as readers of the May, 1935, issue of HEALTH AND HYGIENE will recall. That benzol poisoning is even more common than is reported is confirmed by a recent survey made by the Ohio Department of Health. This survey revealed that of 31 girls occupied in filling cans with rubber cement, 27 were suffering from benzol poisoning.

Benzol poisoning particularly attacks the blood-forming organs so that anemia and an increased tendency toward bleeding are among the most prominent symptoms. Thus these girls noticed that their skin bruised very easily, leaving large black and blue marks. Later bleeding from the gums, nose and genital organs appeared. The report does not state the number of fatalities, but knowledge of similar cases in the past informs one that the survivors could not have been many.

Dr. Alice Hamilton, foremost American authority on industrial diseases, records an interesting incident of a similar epidemic of benzol poisoning in her book Industrial Poisons. We quote:

“A strange story, possible only in Czarist Russia, was told by Dworetzky in the spring of 1914. It deals with an epidemic of mysterious illness in the factory population of St. Petersburg, beginning in a large rubber works and extending to chocolate and tobacco factories. It was the cause of widespread excitement, strikes, lockouts, riots, a heated controversy between two schools of doctors, interpellations in the Duma, and ended in the complete suppression of all discussion and inquiry by the chief of police. The starting point was the rubber glove department of a great rubber factory where hundreds of women were employed in cementing gloves. The solvent for the cement had recently been changed from an ill-smelling, colored fluid to a colorless one with a pleasanter odor; and following this change an acute illness developed among these women, consisting of headaches, dizziness, excitement, in many cases fainting or epileptoid convulsions and involving in four days’ time, no less than 231 of them. Physicians were divided between those who maintained that there was a toxic substance in the cement, and those who held that it was pure hysteria, the latter group being led by von Bechterew. Color was lent to the hysteria theory by the enormous excitement which the discussion had aroused in the working population who believed there was a conspiracy among the employers to poison them, and by an outbreak of similar symptoms among the women in the tobacco and the chocolate factories. The real nature of the trouble could not be known; for before any investigation could be made, the manufacturers declared a lockout until the workers would promise to be quiet, and the police forbade any inquiry into the nature of the trouble or any discussion of the occurrences, maintaining that it was all the work of agitators and revolutionists.

“While in Moscow in October, 1924, I made inquiries about the above occurrence and was told that similar trouble had developed among the women employed in rubber factories in Riga and in Moscow at about the same time as in St. Petersburg. All these factories were using a solvent from Baku which was supposed to be petroleum naphtha. After the excitement had died down, a quiet investigation was permitted and the fact established that the toxic substance was benzene (benzol).”

PREVENTION of benzol poisoning is a simple matter if proper safeguards are provided to eliminate the inhalation of the poisonous fumes. Thus, tanks or other receptacles which contained benzol must be aired for at least six days, the airing to be followed by the introduction of boiling water. If the tank has remained empty for some time, it must be filled with water and emptied before anyone goes into it. Entering a tank and working inside must be done only by men wearing a helmet or mask which is connected by a rubber pipe to fresh air, or provided with a breathing apparatus which will allow the man to breathe normal air or a mixture of oxygen and air. Every man who enters a tank must wear a safety belt with a rope attached and the other end of the rope must be held by a man outside. An oxygen flask with face mask and proper connections must always be available. After emptying, washing, and steaming out the tank, a cage of white mice should be lowered into it and if the mice are overcome by the vapors the process of flooding and steaming should be repeated until the mice can occupy the tank without showing any effect.

Where exposure to benzol occurs in a closed room, adequate ventilation must be installed to eliminate the ever-present danger of poisoning from the fumes.

These facts and many more about the prevention of benzol poisoning have been known for years. Yet poisoning continues in Akron; the rubber barons choose to remain oblivious to them.

A much more common type of poisoning among rubber workers is known as “rubber itch.” In 1929, 2,818 cases of this type of poisoning were reported in Ohio. Of these 608 were caused by one chemical alone, Hex. On many jobs, the skin of the worker, particularly that of the arms and hands, comes in contact with numerous chemicals whose irritating qualities produce marked inflammation and itching of the skin. The skin becomes red, cracked, blistered, raw, and inflamed and this condition persists as long as the worker remains in contact with the poison. Although this illness is not fatal, it disables the worker completely and he loses his only means of livelihood. This illness is compensable but the employers and the insurance companies do all in their power to avoid paying.

The problem of workers’ skin rash in industry is a complex one and cannot be dealt with here. It need only be pointed out that whenever a search is forced upon the employer because of an epidemic of skin rash, it is always found that a harmless chemical could almost always be substituted for the poisonous one causing the rash.

ANOTHER common poison encountered in rubber is lead. In the churning, mixing and compounding rooms, the air is so thick with the poisonous lead dust that the workers’ overalls are often covered with it. In many instances the workers are kept ignorant of the nature of the chemical with the result that no effort is made to keep the lead dust from spreading. Dr. Hamilton found many plants where such conditions prevailed, with consequent widespread poisoning of the workers.

Another chemical poison which was formerly used much more widely is anilin. This poison also affects the blood, resulting in a deep blue discoloration of the lips and skin as well as other symptoms such as weakness, dizziness, vomiting and breathlessness. The blue-tinged skin was so characteristic and widespread at one time that workers so afflicted were given the name of the “blue boys” by the people of Akron.

Other poisons less frequently met, such as carbon disulphide and naphtha, cause profound nervous symptoms, sometimes ending in insanity. It is recorded that in one shop where this poison was indiscriminately used the men would become so violent at the end of the work day that the windows had to be walled in to prevent suicide attempts by the poisoned workers.

Silicosis, that dreaded disease which has come into the public eye recently, is also encountered. Soapstone is used in cleaning the molds and since very few precautions are observed for keeping the dust down, the disease occurs with regularity among the workers employed in this type of work.

This short list of poisons does not begin to scratch the surface of the health hazards rubber workers are exposed to. In May, 1932, The Monthly Labor Review, published statistics on accidents in the tire and tube industry. For the year 1931, 1,749 accidents caused 161,334 days lost from work. Sixteen of the accidents were fatal. These figures concern only one branch of the rubber industry.

Add to this the speed-up, the heat, the steamy atmosphere, the wet floors, the dusts and fumes, and you begin to get a faint picture of the industrial life of a rubber worker. Authorities on industrial medicine all agree that every health hazard described above is preventable. A program which would include investigation by physicians and chemists into every chemical used in the rubber industry as well as an investigation of problems of ventilation, general sanitation and the physical conditions of the plant and its machinery, would in a short time wipe out this menace.

One can understand the sit-down strike of the Akron rubber workers. They are, in fact, fighting for their very lives.

In the past two years the rubber workers have built a strong progressive union, the United Rubber Workers of America, who, with the aid and inspiration of the C.I.O. are rapidly organizing what was until now a non-unionized basic industry. The trade unions are generally beginning to realize the importance of improving the health conditions of the worker on the job. They are learning, too, that without independent political action, the drive to force federal supervision and through it, employer supervision, the problem will not be tackled adequately. Only a Farmer-Labor Party representing the working people can bring pressure to bear for the enactment of a real and thorough-going program for the prevention of industrial diseases. The modern Borgias can be curbed.

Health was the precursor to Health and Hygiene and the creation of Dr. Paul Luttinger. Only three issues were published before Health and Hygiene was published monthly under the direction of the Communist Party USA’s ‘Daily Worker Medical Advisory Board Panel’ in New York City between 1934 and 1939. An invaluable resource for those interested in the history history of medicine, occupational health and safety, advertising, socialized health, etc.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/health/v4n5-nov-1936-health-hygiene.pdf