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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.24] on Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 16:00:07 :
In Reply to: Re:No David pre OSHA is was state safety posted by mikey stone Idaho,USA [71.39.211.42] on Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 15:19:37 :
State Safety must have never ventured into the pulp mills in the old days, then. I used to hear all the stories: Man sent into a digester to work on something, collapses from the fumes, foreman goes in after him, collapses too, by the time they get them out, both men are dead. Man sent down to change the knives on the hog. Operator can't see the cutting head from the switch board, so they give him X amount of time to change the knives and then turn the machine back on. The down time is time the mill isn't making money, so management tries to keep it as short as possible. This guy was a little slow for some reason. Only recognizable part of him was one hand on the chip belt coming out of the hog. Men have to walk on a catwalk between some beams up above the digesters to do some regular maintenance. It's slimy and slippery from the moisture. Men ask for a handrail, but management says no, can't afford it. Welders who welded the lead pipes for the acid were called "lead burners". They used a gas torch with a small tip and a lead rod, and worked in a cloud of lead fumes. They got half again the pay of the regular welders because they could only work for 10 years before they'd be too poisoned to keep working. There were always men willing to take the pay and get poisoned.
All this was within living memory, not back in the 1800s or something. Weyerhaeuser figured on losing 2 men per mill per year to industrial accidents. That doesn't count injuries.