Occupational Safety and Health Health Article

THE HISTORY OF WORK

As long as humans have existed they have had to work. Initially, there was a need to hunt to catch food and have materials to make clothing. Generally, males would do the hunting and women would do the processing of the materials. Food would be preserved by drying, salting, or other methods for use over time; clothing would be made; and shelter would be fashioned from the hides of animals. When societies became more complex and humans changed into settled creatures, agriculture became a dominant force in their existence. As crops became cultivated and animals domesticated, there was still a need for essentially year-round labor, with both cultivation and processing activities being divided among the males and females of families, and this would generally include children as well. Only as societies became more complex did nonagricultural activities become possible, such as work from artisans fashioning useful household products, religious goods, and goods used for war or hunting. Eventually, societies were able to sustain other artisans who pursued writing, music, and visual arts such as painting.

Throughout recorded history, there have been references to work under a variety of conditions. The Old Testament includes rules about safe practices with regards to agriculture and how to treat workers. The Greeks and Romans used slaves, generally those captured in battle, to do both domestic work and to work in especially hazardous conditions, such as in mining. The writings of the ancients even discuss some early preventive measures, such as using inflated pig bladders to breathe into to avoid dusty atmospheres.

The first written discussions specifically directed toward matters of occupational safety and health were those of Paracelsus, in the fifteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, Bernadino Ramazzini wrote the first text on occupational medicine, De morbis artificium diatriba, and he is generally regarded as the "father of occupational medicine." Ramazzini wrote about the health hazards for dozens of occupations ranging from ditch diggers to tailors, from religious activities to those quite secular. In the United States, in the early twentieth century, Dr. Alice Hamilton became the first woman physician appointed to a faculty position at Harvard University, where she worked at the School of Public Health promoting safe and healthful work practices in the United States. She has been recognized as the leader of the occupational medicine movement in the United States, which came relatively late compared with that in Europe.

Except for hunting, agriculture is the most longstanding work activity. Even today, some 70 percent of the world's working population is engaged in agriculture. In sharp contrast, less than 2 percent of Americans continue to be engaged in agriculture; however, these small numbers, utilizing modern equipment, can feed and help clothe much of the rest of the population of the United States, and much of the world. By contrast, much of the agricultural work done in the rest of the world is still tied to direct human labor, sometimes assisted by animals, and somewhat more rarely by modern equipment. Farming continues to be an occupation associated with great risk.

Beginning in earnest in the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution of Europe led to large numbers of individuals settling in cities and working in factories. As more and more people worked in factories, and the hazards of factory work became known, regulations came into place regarding who could work, and under what conditions. Initially, there were no restrictions on ages or hours of work, but gradually child-labor laws, laws regulating the work of women, and mandated maximum hours of work were put in place. Today, in the United States, laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act control child labor, to some extent.