Silicosis

Boats placidly puffing from bank to bank, street cars clanging across cities are too slow for man's impatience. He must blast tunnels under peaceful rivers, bore subways through the solid earth that his transit may be measured in swift seconds. Men willingly give up sunshine and fresh air to work in the dark, dank underground; they will not willingly give up their lives. Last week Thomas J. Curtis, International President of the Tunnel and Subway Constructors Union, General Manager of the Building and Allied Trades Compensation Bureau, told the Welfare Council of Manhattan of the dangers run by subway workers.

All day the men grind through the rock with drills. All day the air is filled with minute particles of stone, deadly dangerous dust is sucked into human lungs with every breath. The dust varies according to the stone, but wherever there is quartz, flint, ganister, sandstone, granite, there silica particles lead all the rest. These tiny glasslike fragments do not dissolve in the moisture of the nasal passages. Sharp-edged, insoluble, they penetrate the lungs, enter the cells. The crowded cells clump together. In an effort to protect the body, fibres begin to grow around the "clumps." Gradually the lungs choke up with the tough fibrous growth, the chest becomes rigid, cannot expand; breathing becomes difficult; tubercle baccilli find a rich, fertile breeding ground; the rock driller dies of silicosis, tuberculosis, or both.

Union President Curtis said men were dying of silicosis at the rate of one a week. Seventy-five examinations revealed 75 pairs of lungs that cannot last five years. An effort is being made to examine each of the 1,500 subway workers of Manhattan, but the men are afraid. Silicosis is not on the list of Industrial Diseases; men found to be suffering from it would probably lose their jobs; would receive no compensation.

The granite cutters of Aberdeen, the miners of South Africa and Great Britain have surrendered their quota to death by silicosis. These places have their mines and quarries, New York has its blasted tunnels. The growth of fibres around the cell "clumps" is in the nature of a healing process. If the irritation were stopped at this stage the lungs would heal. It is the increasing accumulation of silica particles and the continued growth of fibres that finally cause death. Perhaps the present agitation will move the New York State Legislature to pass the compensation bill it has neglected for four years. The Board of Transportation at any rate is eager to do its immediate utmost. Said deputy chief engineer Colonel John R. Slattery: ". . . Two methods of preventing trouble from this source have been approved. They are the use of gas masks and the carrying of an extra hose line with which to wet down the drilling surface. The men dislike using either, however, because the gas mask is uncomfortable and the hose line means extra work." South Africa has devised the best remedy. A vacuum pumping system suctions the dust away from the drill point, leaving the air safe.