Labor worker health and safety leader, Tony Mazzocchi honoring Harriet Hardy as she is awarded the 1988 Alice Hamilton Award by the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) at the annual meeting in Boston, From an interview with Harriet Hardy, on being awarded the 1988 Alice Hamilton Award by the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dr. Harriet L. Hardy was pioneer in occupational medicine, colleague and friend of Dr. Alice Hamilton and the first woman to become a full professor at Harvard Medical School. She was committed to social reform and hoped science would solve workplace hazards and improve the well-being of workers. Dr. Hardy developed an early interest in toxicology and environmentally related illness. Her investigation of respiratory illness among factory workers in Lynn and Salem, Mass., in the mid-1940's led to the discovery that they had come down with berylliosis, an often fatal disease caused by exposure to the light metal beryllium. She set up a registry of beryllium illness at the Massachusetts General Hospital that became a model for tracking other occupational hazards and establishing guidelines for their control. In 1947, Dr. Hardy created an occupational medicine clinic at the hospital and remained its director until she retired in 1971. Dr. Hardy also led the occupational medical service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge for more than 20 years and advised the institute on safety considerations relating to its first nuclear reactor. Over her career, she worked with the Atomic Energy Commission, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, United Mine Workers, and Coal Workers' Safety Board. Alice Hamilton invited her to help revise her textbook Industrial Toxicology. She died in 1993, five years after this interview, at the age of 87. Her autobiography, Challenging Man-Made Disease, was published in 1983. For more on her life and work, read http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_138.html. Anthony Mazzocchi, was a longtime union official who was a pioneer in the occupational safety movement and the founder of the Labor Party. In his years with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, Mr. Mazzocchi was widely viewed as one of the greatest innovators and mavericks in the labor movement. In the 1960's, he became one of the first union leaders to develop strong ties with the environmental movement. Mazzocchi became convinced that workers were being hurt by chemicals on the job, so, as the union's legislative director, he held a series of town meetings for union members and environmentalists around the nation that helped accelerate the occupational safety movement. He brought scientists and doctors to work with the union and its health and safety department. In 1970, when President Richard M. Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Mr. Mazzocchi was credited with being a principal force behind the legislation. For more on his amazing life and ideas, read his biography, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi, by Les Leopold. The book was published in 2007 by Chelsea Green Publishing Company The OHS Section is one of the oldest within the American Public Health Association (APHA), begun in 1914. The Section represents a multitude of disciplines from medicine, nursing, and industrial hygiene to epidemiology, environmental health, statistics, community organizing, teaching, history, law and journalism. The Section provides leadership and expertise on occupational health matters, recognizing the intrinsic link between the work environment, and the health and safety of families, communities and the environment at large. Thanks to Kathy Rest and Buck Cameron who conducted and filmed the interview. Thanks to Craig Slatin for making the posting of this interview possible.
