BLS and Alice Hamilton: pioneers in industrial health

In the early part of this century, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) contracted and published studies of industrial health and safety, and Alice Hamilton was its most active agent. She published her first article on industrial hygiene in 1908 in Charities and the Commons. Later that year, Hamilton was appointed to the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases and was later medical investigator for its Survey of Occupational Diseases. In a BLS study, she investigated 23 US factories that manufactured white lead and discovered 358 cases of lead poisoning, 16 of which were fatal. Later, Hamilton focused on problems in the rubber industry, printing, explosives manufacturing, and dye production. Her studies suffered, though, from a lack of funding. Before beginning a study, she would learn the technical side of an industry, talk to workers, and check hospital records. During World War I, she surveyed conditions in war-related industries. Hamilton became the first woman on the Harvard Medical School faculty and retired from there in 1935. She died in 1970.