[Music]
[The Federal Security Agency. Paul V. McNutt. Administrator]
[The United States Public Health Service. Thomas Parran. Surgeon General presents]
[Save a Day!]
[Narrator:] America's rear guard army!
They wear no uniforms and their ranks are machinists, welder, riveter, instead of sergent,
lieutenant, and captain.
But, they are an army. An army of 50 million Americans doing the jobs that must be done
to make America strong for victory.
Their health and strength, their ability to produce, is the nation's most vital resource.
These people are America's industrial army.
Our resources must be protected, and here protection starts, when the worker's day starts.
It starts with the milk we drink. Most of our milk is pasteurized and then bottled under
conditions that protect our health.
The water that flows into most of our homes comes from carefully guarded sources to avoid
pollution and is kept at high standards of purity.
The food we eat is inspected to protect our health.
Sewage disposal in most of our cities is scientific and thorough to protect us against diseases
that are a threat [sound skip] of unsanitary conditions.
And in hundreds of towns and cities, new homes have been built under government sponsorship.
Homes that let in air and sunlight. Homes that help protect our health.
These and many other precautions are taken,
yet when the working army of America goes to the factories and shipyards and mines,
a million men and women are missing.
Every day, a million workers are off the job because of sickness.
It means that coal, which is needed, remains in the earth.
Assembly lines are slowed down. Machines untended. It means four hundred million days a year
junked.
In these millions of days lost, 164,000 tanks could be built.
A line of tanks that would present a solid front over 200 miles long.
The reasons for some of this loss can be found in industry itself.
There are the old reasons. Some jobs are dangerous. Some men are careless.
There are many old industrial health problems, not yet solved, and now there are new problems.
New developments in industry, new machines and materials are creating hazards that further
challenge safety control.
And war production has brought the speed and strain that spell: "danger."
These are conditions that keep tens of thousands of men off the job every year.
But, the hazards must be controlled. The men must be kept on the job.
So the question was asked, "How can the wasted days be saved?"
This question was asked by some of the men at the machines.
It was asked by industry. And it was asked by the United States Public Health Service.
[Sign reads: Federal Security Agency. U.S. Public Health Service. National Institute of Health. National Cancer Institute.
[Sign reads: Industrial Hygiene]
In the research section of the Public Health Service, scientists are searching for the answer.
They are searching for it in their laboratories with experiment and study. With equipment
and men geared to do the job.
They search for the understanding of metal poisoning.
For ways to fight dust hazards and fatigue.
They study the science of ventilation and lighting.
Every problem of worker's health is part of their work.
And the men who work here go to other government agencies and to industry and help them
meet their industrial health problems.
Here is the Division of Industrial Hygiene at work on a research project,
a study of the hazards of changing pressures, which affect tunnel workers and more important
to defense, aviators.
In this pressure chamber, the temperature and pressure of different altitudes
can be reproduced.
On solid ground, the effects of flight on the flier's body can be observed and studied.
There is danger to the aviator in the swift and sudden high climb of the plane and danger,
too, in the hard-driving power dive.
Out of this laboratory study, the division hopes to take a weapon with which to fight
these dangers.
The job of saving a day starts in the laboratory. But it has to be finished in the plant.
With the advice and assistance of the Public Health Service and state health department,
many industries are doing their part of the job with programs of their own.
They are introducing free employment examinations, which tell them if a man is physically fit
for the job.
And with a regular check-up, they make sure that the men who are healthy, stay healthy.
And those who need treatment, get it.
Every one of these precautions help to save a day for the worker and his family.
For industry. For the nation.
And the well-run, well-equipped dispensaries of industry save many days, too.
They keep a cut from becoming a dangerous infection, and a minor eye injury
from becoming blindness.
And equipment, like the x-ray seen here, helps diagnose the broken bones, the lung
infection, and points the way to treatment.
In studying the health needs of our industrial army, the Public Health Service works with
other government agencies.
For example, a call from the War Department comes through to Dr. Townshend,
Chief of the Division of Industrial Hygiene,
asking that an investigation be made of government-built and government-operated arsenals.
Dr. Townshend and Sanitary Engineer Bloomfield discuss the problem.
They decide to put a field unit on the job.
The decision made, testing apparatus is carefully checked and then carefully loaded.
They take instruments for measuring ventilation,
instruments for determining dust concentration and for analyzing gases and vapor.
It is not long from the time the call comes to Dr. Townshend, to the time the doctor and
engineer, the field unit crew, leave for the arsenal.
Ready to start their work. Ready to track down the cause of a high accident rate,
or a strange skin rash,
or the feelings of dizziness that have suddenly attacked a group of workers.
The health forces of the nation unite with the production forces to protect the health
of the workers.
To save a day, wherever possible.
And there are industrial hygiene units which render similar services to industries
throughout the nation.
Units which are maintained by the state health department in cooperation with the
Public Health Service.
The men of a unit search out hazards and find a way of removing them.
Dry drilling -- there is danger here.
The engineer takes a sample of the dust-laden atmosphere to find out exactly
how great the danger is.
This is a type of dust that leaves scars on men's lungs,
that may bring on tuberculosis, that sometimes takes men's lives.
Then, back in a hotel room only a few miles from the mine, the engineers set up their
equipment and make their tests.
These tests will determine the number of dust particles, their size, and their nature.
On the basis of this information, the extent of the hazard is measured and
the proper controls recommended.
After controls recommended by the Health Department have been introduced, a stream of water keeps
the dust down.
Keeps it out of the air - out of the worker's lungs.
Bagging powdered mineral is another industrial operation in which dust is a danger.
The engineer comes to the plant to check and analyze the hazard and make recommendations
that will lead to its removal.
The operation is made safe by an exhaust system which draws off the dust
and leaves the air clear.
The engineer tests the exhaust system to see if it draws strongly enough to take dust out
of the room.
The powder that seeps out of the bag no longer fills the room like a cloud, but is sucked
into the exhaust.
But there are conditions that cause illness that are harder to find and harder to correct.
And here, too, the industrial hygiene units do their work.
They analyze gases, chemicals, and metals,
investigate the causes of sickness among workers. And the simpler things like recommending goggles
and gloves and machine guards.
That, too, is part of their job.
State health departments and the Public Health Service are determined not to let ill health
become a bottleneck in this crisis.
To fight this danger they're expanding their work in industrial hygiene.
Some state units are building trucks that will make it possible to take the laboratory
and the clinic right into the field.
To the gates of the factory, to the mouth of the mine.
In these trucks, material can be tested.
Men x-rayed and examined thoroughly.
Whatever the causes of ill health, all must fight to wipe them out.
Federal and state officials. Industry and workers.
To industry, the Public Health Service says:
"Follow the recommendations of the Industrial Hygiene Division of your
state department of health."
To the men on the job:
"Find the safe way to do it, and do it the safe way."
That is the way to save a day.
Save a day to keep him rolling!
Save a day to keep him flying!
Save a day that Americans of tomorrow may live in a land of peace, in a land where freedom reigns.
[The End]
[U.S. Public Health Service. 1798]