When the Air Became Important

A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries

By Janet Greenlees

SERIES: Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Rutgers University Press

In When the Air Became Important, medical historian Janet Greenlees examines the working environments of the heartlands of the British and American cotton textile industries from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Greenlees contends that the air quality within these pioneering workplaces was a key contributor to the health of the wider communities of which they were a part. Such enclosed environments, where large numbers of people labored in close quarters, were ideal settings for the rapid spread of diseases including tuberculosis, bronchitis and pneumonia. When workers left the factories for home, these diseases were transmitted throughout the local population, yet operatives also brought diseases into the factory. Other aerial hazards common to both the community and workplace included poor ventilation and noise. Emphasizing the importance of the peculiarities of place as well as employers’ balance of workers’ health against manufacturing needs, Greenlees’s pioneering book sheds light on the roots of contemporary environmentalism and occupational health reform. Her work highlights the complicated relationships among local business, local and national politics of health, and community priorities.

This is a promising, important, and long-awaited project—the first comparative history of industry-related hazards in the United States and Britain. The author has synthesized a vast body of research, much of it her own original work. At once comprehensive and selective, When the Air Became Important is illuminating scholarship.'
Chris Sellers, Stony Brook University

In this truly comparative social and environmental history of air pollution, Greenlees deftly weaves public health, regulatory politics and labor relations into a prescient reminder that protecting workers from hazardous workplaces remains a pressing issue on a global scale. Graham Mooney, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Instrusive Interventions: Public Health, Domestic Space, and

JANET GREENLEES is an associate professor of history at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. She is the author or editor of several books, including Female Labour Power: Women Workers’ Influence on Business Practices in the British and American Cotton Industries, 1780-1860.

Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
1          Introduction – When does the air in the workplace become important?
2          Textile town and mill environments
3          Tuberculosis in the factory
4          “I used to feel ill with it:” Heat, humidity and fatigue
5          Dust: A New Socio-Environmental Relationship
6          “The noise were horrendous:” The ignored industrial hazard
7          Conclusion: When does the air become important?
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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