melosi10-11

Melosi 10-11

Some pioneers:

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911)

took the courses for a chemistry degree at MIT (she wanted engineering, but chemistry looked to be more accepting of women--finishing in 1873) though they would give her only special status.
In 1876 she was asked to establish a woman's laboratory at MIT (which had other women wanting to study there).
By 1882 women were being admitted as regular students at MIT so the separate laboratory was abolished and she became an instructor in sanitary chemistry.
She taught courses at sanitary engineering at MIT and is also seen as a founder of home economics for her work on water and food safety.

Mary McDowell and Jane Adams

Mary McDowell (1854-1936)

the oldest daughter of a large family with an invalid mother
set out to train as a kindergarten teacher
was invited to run a new settlement house in Chicago's stockyard district (Jane Addams founded Hull House, a building in the slums were she and others could live in the community with the people they were helping Twenty Years at Hull House)
McDowell said later this was “a chance to work with the least skilled workers in our greatest industry; not for them as a missionary, but with them as a neighbor and seeker after truth; not to proselyte Jews or Roman Catholics, but to express my ideas of right social relationships.” ("Beginnings" by Mary McDowell, Chicago Historical Society)
in the summer infant mortality was 5 times greater in the slum district than in wealthy neighborhoods
she identified the open garbage dumps as one cause of the problem, plus Bubbly Creek, which was bubbly because it contained so much stockyard waste
"In the meanwhile the Settlement Lady had become the Garbage Lady. First as always an objector at conditions, Then a propagandist, then a thorn in the flesh to the local politician who had first gouged out a vast clay pit and then was letting the city pay him for the privilege of turning it into a pest hole. Then a champion of the public health. Then, when she was asked what else to do with garbage if it weren’t to be dropped back of the yards, an expert on garbage removal, garbage disposal, garbage insinuation, as one politician caught it. And finally a solver of the problem for the metropolis. As Dutchess of Bubbly Creek she was equally definite, equally insistent, but unhappily not equally successful.” (“An appreciation of the life and work of Miss Mary McDowell as delivered at the annual board meeting at the U.C. Settlement on January 20, 1937 by Professor Percy H.Boynton," Chicago Historical Society)
she gave lectures with slides to women's clubs until enough sentiment had been aroused to get reform in how Chicago disposed of its garbage
“She always seemed to use the right methods in dealing with men. As a member of the City Waste Commission, she used to educate them as to modern methods of waste disposal without their being conscious of her influence. She would hand out pamphlets to the most promising member until she was able to beguile the whole commission into listening to her suggestions. She succeeded in persuading them to go to Milwaukee to investigate the incineration plant which was operating so satisfactorily there.” (Letter from Sarah B. Tunnicliff to Mr. George Snider, Aug. 15, 1924, Chicago Historical Society)

Alice Hamilton (1869-1970)

went to medical school and then studied in Germany and at Johns Hopkins
accepted a job in 1897 as a professor at the Women's Medical School at Northwestern University, but decided to live at Hull House (Jane Addams' settlement house)
went the medical school closed she took a job at the the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases, where she sought to prove that flies carried typhoid fever from open privies
then she went on to investigate the health of factory workers
she became concerned about chemicals in the workplace, picking up on some European research, and in 1908 began to work for the Illinois Commission on Occupational diseases
she did pioneering work on lead poisoning, not only studying the symptoms, results, and exposure levels, but also trying to persuade factory owners to make changes that would reduce exposure
In 1919 Harvard University hired Hamilton as an assistant professor in a new degree program in industrial hygiene at Harvard Medical School. In order to get Harvard to hire a woman professor, the dean of the medical school had to argue to Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell that “she is greatly superior to any man that we can learn of for such a position.” (Barbara Sicherman, Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984), p. 209-210)
In the case of radium poisoning of watch dial painters, she wrote of the reaction of the manufacturers at a national conference in 1929: “It is, after all, the weapon of publicity which we hold up our sleeves that impresses them and makes them ready to do what we tell them to.” (Sicherman, p. 3)

Principle: government should do more for the public good, particularly to protect the weak and make society better

The automobile comes into wide use in the 1920s, and suburbs expand rapidly
The Great Depression--after several years the government committed to the strategy called The New Deal: the government would finance construction projects for public benefit in order to create jobs. A lot of this was highways and government buildings but it also included water and sewer systems.
Concern about water pollution was also growing but regulation was on a local level
increasing concerns about hazardous substances, both in industry and in water
When does the old principle that "The solution to pollution is dilution" break down?