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We sent our industrial hygienists and other competent people in to measure this. They found that although there was a slight reduction, it was only of the coarser particles, which because they were precipitated in the water couldn't be seen. But the major and more hazardous part, the fine part, continued to fly about. Thus there was not much difference in the rate of silicar exposure in the grinding.
This disease had been known not only as silicosis, but was well known in all of the grinding trades, where they work on emery wheels, as “grinder's rot,” which is a perfectly expressive name for it. The lungs fill up with this stuff and they rot. If you look at them in an autopsy, they appear to have just rotted away. The union was quite strong in the polishing and grinding trades and they had insisted on wet grinding in many places, believing that it gave them protection. It merely gave them greater comfort, but it did not give them great protection, so we found. Johnny Flynn was head of the Molders Union, but he also represented the Metal Polishers. Some people tell me that he was a molder, but I think he was a metal polisher, because he told me how he had “grinder's rot” himself.
Finding no easy method to prevent this, I finally offered a prize, which wasn't very much - a couple of hundred
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