{"id":3224,"date":"2018-05-02T15:59:28","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T19:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2025-01-15T00:07:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T05:07:49","slug":"workplace-safety-heros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2018\/05\/02\/workplace-safety-heros\/","title":{"rendered":"Rest in Power: Workplace Safety Heroes John Mehring and Samuel Epstein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John
John Mehring (1953-2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sam
Sam Epstein (1926-2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The workplace safety movement lost two of its heroes in March — one fairly well known (enough to get an article in the NY Times) and one not so well known except to the people he worked with and the workers he worked for.<\/p>\n

Samuel Epstein (1926-2018):\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sam Epstein was warmly remembered by those of us who got into this field in the late 1970s and 1980s. Epstein died of cardiac arrest on March 18 in Chicago at the age of 92. The New York Times<\/a> calls him the “Cassandra of Cancer Prevention.” (Cassandra<\/a> was\u00a0“given the gift of prophecy, but was also cursed by the god Apollo so that her accurate prophecies would not be believed.”)<\/p>\n

Epstein was best known and admired by\u00a0environmentalists, consumer groups and organized labor for his\u00a01978 book, \u201cThe Politics of Cancer.\u201d\u00a0 The was embraced by\u00a0 but derided by the chemical industry and some fellow scientists. One expert called the book an\u00a0\u201cindictment of industry malfeasance, research impotence and regulatory incompetence.\u201d Needless to say, the chemical industry was not so enthused. Epstein was known for blaming<\/p>\n

greedy manufacturers, lax regulators, misguided researchers and complicit charitable groups for what he saw as a coming cancer epidemic. A widely read author and widely heard lecturer, Dr. Epstein was venerated by some as an environmental prophet and reviled by others as an overzealous toxin avenger. He outlived many of his critics, perhaps because he had practiced what he preached about prevention in his own life.<\/p>\n

Epstein helped draft the federal Toxic Substances Control Act and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act in the mid-1970s; was president of the Rachel Carson Trust for the Living Environment and he was a consultant for the AFL-CIO, Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) and Textile Workers Union. He also was a founding member of the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health (SOEH) and wrote numerous blog posts for the Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can check him out here describing the “Precautionary Principle,” toxics use reduction and transparent decision making about carcinogens.