Lead dust and air pollution in the workplace
Poussières de plomb et pollution de l’air au travail
Résumé
This paper emphasizes the case of lead paint as an emblematic template of the history of health and safety in the workplace and occupational disease in the 19th and early 20th c. in France. Even though white lead was clearly identified as a harmful agent responsible for widespread lead poisoning among lead workers, painters and other workers of the building industry, its use nevertheless increased during the 19th century in main industrialized and urbanized countries.
The banning of white lead has long remained a main occupational health and safety issue in France. The French State tried from time to time to prohibit the use of white lead, but these regulation attempts sank into oblivion, before a strong worker mobilisation met the political, hygienistic and medical concern in the early 1900s’. This paper will address the question of this irregular timeline, partially reflecting the social interest in risk and safety issues in general, during a long 19th c. On a transnational scale, I examine how the health issue emerges within the ILO through the dispute on white lead, one of the first tackled by the transnational body, giving cause to an international convention on prohibition.
L’interdiction de la céruse est un serpent de mer de l’histoire de la santé au travail en France aux XIXe et XXe siècles. L’État a cherché à interdire le pigment de plomb dans la peinture à plusieurs reprises, mais ces tentatives de régulation ont sombré dans l’oubli, jusqu’à ce que se conjuguent mobilisation sociale et ouvrière, d’abord, inquiétudes hygiénistes et médicales, ensuite, préoccupations politiques, enfin, dans les premières années du XXe siècle. Cet article s’interroge sur la chronologie irrégulière de cette question en France, reflétant partiellement l’intérêt public pour les questions de risque sanitaire et de sécurité au travail pendant un long XIXe siècle. À l’échelle transnationale, nous cherchons à comprendre comment la question sanitaire s’est imposée au sein du Bureau international du Travail à travers le débat sur la céruse, qui a donné lieu à une convention internationale interdisant le plomb dans la peinture en 1921.