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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 731

That, of course, is lead poisoning due to absorption of lead in the system.

That was covered as were a number of other diseases from well-known chemicals, but from the very beginning we kept running into mysterious illnesses, which the workman would often claim were the result of his work. There was a great tendency to believe on the part of workmen that using machines, or doing any work in which the hands were subject to constant vibration, would bring about neuritis, partial paralysis or various disabilities. Those were not covered by the law. We never could get any suitable medical evidence to cover them. We could get a sort of half-baked opinion on the part of the family doctor sometimes that this must have caused it, but there was no evidence that actually went into the histology of the case or the physiology of the case, indicating how these things could come about.

There were a great many new chemicals being introduced about this time into the industrial picture. Among them was the radium saturated paint, which was used for a variety of purposes. The famous case did not occur in the State of New York, but in New Jersey, where the women who painted the radium dials on watches and clocks all got radium poisoning from a technique of the trade of painting on china or faces of watches. The hours had always been put on with camel's





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