THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Wednesday, December 13, 1944. HEALTH IN INDUSTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25717, 13 December 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Wednesday, December 13, 1944. HEALTH IN INDUSTRY

Health hazards, it must be supposed, are inseparable from certain types of industrial employment. The coal miners, for example, are exposed by the nature of their work to conditions which require, for their mitigation, ceaseless care and the sharpest inspection of equipment and other properties. It is the opinion of Dr J. M. Davidson, an English authority on the subject of industrial hygiene, who is on loan to the New Zealand Government from the British Ministry of Labour for the purpose of making a survey of industry in this country and of advising on measures for the reduction or prevention of hazards, that one of the first requisites of industrial hygiene is a proper system of inspection, by which he means the bringing of every factory establishment, Government or private, under a rigid system of control and supervision.. It will have been assumed by most people that there is already insistence on supervision of the nature described. It has not been Dr Davidson’s experience to find it, at any rate measuring up to his exacting standard of requirements—supervision which is “ unbiased and impartial ” in every respect, and which permits nothing, “ not even national emergency,” to interfere with it. Dr Davidson has been in the Dominion since April of this year, and has had the opportunity to inspect some 250 factories. His conclusions, if they do not shock, will certainly give no cause for complacency, or excuse any lessening of the admirable enthusiasm among manufacturers and departmental officers for the post-war development' of industrial enterprise. When he addressed manufacturers in Dunedin on Monday evening, on the nature and intention of his investigations, almost a first comment was that the relevant factory legislation was too detailed, tending in that respect to defeat its own object. The mistake, he suggested, was “to fix a standard of harmful conditions that could be tolerated,” and he added pertinently that the aim of the law relating to factory hygiene should be “to achieve the ideal.” It ffiay be hoped, in the light of Dr Davidson’s helpful criticism of certain conditions freely encountered in New Zealand establishments, that the advice he will give to the Government before his return to England, on a proposal for the establishment of a division of industrial hygiene to be attached to the Department of Health, will be accepted. There are in many New Zealand factories, it appears, defects of ventilation and natural lighting which more common-sense planning might have avoided. Dr Davidson would obviously be the first to approve of air conditioning and artificial ventilation as a contributing means to better general sanitation, but he does insist logically that these are largely a negation of effort while toxic agents—dust, gas, or other impurity—are allowed to escape into the atmosphere from the point of origin, instead of being collected there and carried away. He finds that in this respect—what might be describad as the material side of factory planning and organisation—New Zealand is very much behind Great Britain. He finds also that in the matter of cleanliness, particularly in the provision of washing facilities for workers, New Zealand factories —and he deliberately specifies food factories —are “ peculiarly deficient.” His unvarnished comment, with which there jnust be concurrence, is that “ there is no excuse for such laxity.” He remarks on the inadequacy of first aid precautions and equipment in “most factories,” while in Dunedin he found a “lamentable ignorance ” of the simplest remedies. Finally, he deplores the employment in some cases of children who are required to work long hours—“ 12-year-olds working in impossible conditions.” This is, in essence, the gravest charge of all, since the law —which proscribes child labour and now in fact requires children to be at school until the age of 15 years—is obviously being brought into contempt despite the provision that is made for inspection and general surveillance. Both Government and employers should face the challenge contained in informed criticism of the kind Dr Davidson has made unhesitatingly, with a stern resolve to remove all occasion for it. It is more than ‘ salutary; in its more serious aspects it is both astonishing and humiliating.