Papers by Barry Castleman
Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2019
Caderno Crh, Sep 12, 2006
Barry I. Castleman * RESUMO: Este artigo analisa o papel peculiar das empresas multinacionais que... more Barry I. Castleman * RESUMO: Este artigo analisa o papel peculiar das empresas multinacionais que dominam a produção e comercialização nos ramos com altos riscos para a saúde e o meio ambiente. Historicamente estas têm exercido papel central na migração dos riscos industriais, especialmente para os países com recursos mínimos destinados à proteção ambiental e à saúde do trabalhador. São abordados vários tópicos dentre os quais a importância dos interesses das grandes empresas na determinação dos padrões de exposição às substâncias tóxicas, na exportação do "pensamento perigoso" sobre os riscos e na adoção de tipos de duplo-padrão de gestão nos países de origem e nos países em desenvolvimento. O autor apresenta vários casos ilustrativos que evidenciam questões puramente econômicas, assim como de ética e moralidade na conduta das multinacionais no cenário internacional contemporâneo, cuja redefinição requer a ação dos governos, das organizações sindicais de trabalhadores e das empresas.
International Journal of Health Services, Jun 12, 2018
Jock William McCulloch, who died at Melbourne, Australia, in January 2018, was one of the foremos... more Jock William McCulloch, who died at Melbourne, Australia, in January 2018, was one of the foremost historians of occupational health of his generation. This tribute reviews his career and oeuvre, which was tragically ended by his death from mesothelioma.
Policy and practice in health and safety, 2005
Investigations into the historical development of specific Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) for many... more Investigations into the historical development of specific Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) for many substances have revealed serious shortcomings in the process followed by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Unpublished corporate communications were important in developing TLVs for 104 substances; for 15 of these, the TLV documentation was based solely on such information. Efforts to obtain written copies of this unpublished material were mostly unsuccessful. Case studies on the TLV Committee's handling of lead and seven carcinogens illustrate various aspects of corporate influence and interaction with the committee. Corporate representatives listed officially as "consultants" since 1970 were given primary responsibility for developing TLVs on proprietary chemicals of the companies that employed them (Dow, DuPont). It is concluded that an ongoing international effort is needed to develop scientifically based guidelines to replace the TLVs in a climate of openness and without manipulation by vested interests.
Routledge eBooks, Aug 22, 2019
The incidence of cancer in the United States and other major industrialized nations has escalated... more The incidence of cancer in the United States and other major industrialized nations has escalated to epidemic proportions over recent decades, and greater increases are expected. While smoking is the single largest cause of cancer, the incidence of childhood cancers and a wide range of predominantly nonsmoking-related cancers in men and women has increased greatly. This modern epidemic does not reflect lack of resources of the U.S. cancer establishment, the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society; the NCI budget has increased 20-fold since passage of the 1971 National Cancer Act, while funding for research and public information on primary prevention remains minimal. The cancer establishment bears major responsibility for the cancer epidemic, due to its overwhelming fixation on damage control-screening, diagnosis, treatment, and related molecular researchand indifference to preventing a wide range of avoidable causes of cancer, other than faulty lifestyle, particularly smoking. This mindset is based on a discredited 1981 report by a prominent pro-industry epidemiologist, guesstimating that environmental and occupational exposures were responsible for only 5 percent of cancer mortality, even though a prior chemical industry report admitted that 20 percent was occupational in origin. This report still dominates public policy, despite overwhelming contrary scientific evidence on avoidable causes of cancer from involuntary exposures to a wide range of environmental carcinogens. Since 1998, the ACS has been planning to gain control of national cancer policy, now under federal authority. These plans, developed behind closed doors and under conditions of nontransparency, with recent well-intentioned but mistaken bipartisan Congressional support, pose a major and poorly reversible threat to cancer prevention and to winning the losing war against cancer.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2006
Archives of Environmental Health, Apr 1, 1989
New Solutions: A Journal Of Environmental And Occupational Health Policy, Nov 1, 1994
Environmental Health, Jan 19, 2016
In the 1970s, there were many reports of toxic hazards at corporate subsidiaries in the developin... more In the 1970s, there were many reports of toxic hazards at corporate subsidiaries in the developing world that were no longer tolerated in the corporations' "home" countries. Following the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984, leading corporations then announced that they applied uniform standards of worker and environmental protection worldwide. With globalization, corporations should also be obliged to take responsibility for their separate supplier, contractor and distributor companies, and licensees of their technology. The asbestos industry today consists of national corporations. Individual countries must overcome the influence of the asbestos-exporting countries and asbestos companies and stop building with asbestos, as recommended by WHO, ILO, and World Bank. WHO precautions for limiting governmental interaction with the tobacco industry should be applied in dealing with the asbestos industry.
... Aspen's trusted legal education resources provide professors and students with high-qual... more ... Aspen's trusted legal education resources provide professors and students with high-quality, up-to-date and effective resources for successful instruction ... viii Asbestos: Medical and LegalAspects Doll's Study and Other Events 81 Negative Opinions on Asbestos as a Cause of ...
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Apr 1, 1995
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Dec 1, 1997
International Journal of Health Services, Oct 1, 1979
The export of hazardous industrial plants to developing nations is examined for a number of indus... more The export of hazardous industrial plants to developing nations is examined for a number of industries. As hazardous and polluting industries come under increasing regulation in industrial nations, some of the affected processes are exported, without improvements to make them less hazardous, to nonregulating countries where cheap and uninformed labor is abundant. "Runaway shops" then market their products in industrial nations with the competitive advantage of not having had to comply with costly workplace and pollution-control regulations. The international trade impacts of hazard export include: export of jobs from regulating to nonregulating countries; shift of international balance of payments in favor of nonregulating countries; export of mortal health hazards and environmental destruction to workers and communities in nonregulating nations, in order to produce goods for consumption by the regulating countries; weakened competitive position of reputable manufacturers who incur control costs and compete in domestic and world markets against less scrupulous companies; prolonged wide3pread use of discredited, extremely hazardous technologies, arising from the continuing "subsidy" of certain industries by workers and communities exposed to uncontrolled, well-recognized, mortal health hazards; and aggravated international relations resulting from developing nations' awareness and concern over becoming dumping grounds for hazard export from industrial nations.
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Jun 1, 1991
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2001
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Dec 1, 1979
We are going to write about compensation. It's not that compensation is a substitute for preventi... more We are going to write about compensation. It's not that compensation is a substitute for prevention, but compensation is an essential structural feature in any truly effective program to prevent occupational disease and injury. Manufacturers must be made to pay for the damage that their employees suffer from breathing toxic dusts and fumes. Pipe-coverers and sometimes their wives die with mesothelioma quickly, and are soon forgotten by their employers. We understand that businessmen can only be expected to be concerned about occupational disease when they are made to pay realistic compensation for the death and disease that is produced in their factories. This is one lesson of American industry's first century. Asbestosis was known to the ancient Romans and Greeks. Pliny wrote about the dangers to slaves weaving asbestos, and about the use of crude respirators to protect them.' Although the Roman slave drivers did not have microscopes, x-ray machines, or pulmonary function testing equipment, they were capable of using the scientific method and learning from trial and error. The first few slaves that developed shortness of breath were probably exhorted to continue working by means of beatings, and some probably died from the beatings. But after awhile, the Romans realized that these people really were having trouble breathing, and were literally dying from pulmonary disease. The Romans then took steps to protect their property. If the workers in the asbestos industry at the end of the last century had been the property of the asbestos factory owners and not just hired labor, they, too, might have been fitted with respirators. Asbestos factory owners were among the first to realize the mortal dangers of breathing asbestos dust. Henry Ward Johns, inventor and founder of what became the Johns-Manville Corporation, died of asbestosis in 1898. At the beginning of the century, modern medicine discovered that asbestos work was hazardous, not long after the insurance industry did. Some factories were beginning efforts to control the dust, but for the most part these measures were ineffective. The industry was half a century old by the time Cooke reported on the death of a 33-year old asbestos worker in 1924, and named the disease asbestosis three years The disease was soon well characterized by numerous studies in England, and it was not long before American doctors were informing asbestos workers that they suffered from occupation-related disease. In 1927, a foreman in an asbestos weaving plant filed a disability claim for worker's compensation in Massachusetts and compensation was awarded.' Of course, asbestosis was not limited to the factory workers, but also extended to users of asbestos products. In 1932, Dr. Albert Russell of the U S. Public Health Service, reported a case of a pipecoverer who had developed asbestosis from maintaining the heating plant in a government hospital.' The man had been compensated for disability under the Federal Employees Compensation Act. Other case reports of asbestosis in a pipecoverer, a boiler riveter, and a clerical worker at an asbestos plant appeared in the American and British medical literature in 1933 and 1934.6,' The pipecoverer described by Dr. Russell had an easy time getting compensation, compared to most pipecoverers. He was an employee of the Federal Government, and yet the government's doctors helped him establish his claim for disability. He was not sybjected to the hardships of an adversary proceeding. The asbestos workers have 273
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Jul 1, 2003
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Jul 1, 1994
vibration; seat design; physiology and vigilance of train driving. Discussion of each subject is ... more vibration; seat design; physiology and vigilance of train driving. Discussion of each subject is divided into three sections: survey of relevant literature, conditions on domestic locomotives, and recommendations to improve present models and future design.
Uploads
Papers by Barry Castleman