Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 155, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1914 — Tuberculosis in Packing Rooms. [ARTICLE]

Tuberculosis in Packing Rooms.

No paine are too great for managers of some large corporations to take to help eradicate disease from the ranks of their workers. As an instance of this might be mentioned the experience of a corporation in Chicago which employs thousands of men and women. It had been observed in this and other industrial institutions that tuberculosis was apparently most prevalent among employes in the packing department. Inquiry showed that great quantities of waste paper, excelsior and similar materials were thrown 'indiscriminately on the floors. When this trash had accumulated sufficiently it was swept up and thrown down a chute, but not until it had been spit upon in numerous cases. The dust thus raised carried 1 the dried sputum, sometimes from consumptives, to the lungs of others. As a remedy, first of all the rule was laid down that care should be taken with respect to the sweepings. Then measures were taken to weed out the 29 packers whom examination proved to be tuberculous. Other precautions were taken. But to crown it all the corporation bought a forest in a northwest state in order that it might manufacture its own excelsior, thus taking means to see that its packers might not be exposed tc tubercular infection from this source.