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Toward Meaningful Protection Of Worker Health And Safety, Joseph A. Page

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the annals of job health and safety, 1974 was a signal year. It produced an epidemic of occupational liver cancer associated with vinyl chloride disclosure of a plan to soft-pedal federal regulation of industrial hazards in return for contributions to the 1972 Nixon reelection campaign, and the publication of a brace of exposes decrying the human toll taken by workplace perils. These events furnish hard evidence that the bright hopes raised by passage of the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 remain far from fulfillment.

In the search for reasons for this ostensible failure, two books present …