Work, Health, and Environment: Old Problems, New Solutions [Paperback]

Charles Levenstein (Editor), John Wooding (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572302348 | ISBN-13: 978-1572302341 | Publication Date: July 18, 1997

The US is losing manufacturing jobs at an unprecented rate and many companies claim that increased safety or environmental regulations would force them to eliminate still more jobs. This double bind - between job security and occupational safety - has resulted in frequent clashes between organized labour and the growing environmental movement.; This text seeks to find common ground between trade unionists, environmental and community activists, and scientific and medical researchers. It also identifies major health and safety hazards, describes their impact on workers and communities, and surveys a range of possible solutions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Version I:
"Wooding and Levenstein have put together an indispensable collection on the crisis of worker health and safety in the United States. This collection offers an all-important lesson for the labor movement: that problems of occupational health and safety are not merely technical problems but rather problems relating to workers' lack of control over the organization of capitalist production."

OR Version 2:
"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, capital has treated labor as a disposable ¿commodity.' The effects have been an unmitigated disaster in terms of the health and safety of workers. Wooding and Levenstein's collection brilliantly illustrates why this has happened, and convincingly argues that struggles for occupational health and safety must go hand in hand with struggles for greater worker and community control over the organization of capitalist production. A 'must-read' for anyone--scholar or activist--who is concerned about the degrading and dangerous work conditions in which millions of Americans toil everyday, and who also needs to know what we can do to change it." --Daniel Faber, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University; Co-founder and former Research Director, Environmental Project On Central America (EPOCA), Earth Island Institute; Co-founding editor of Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism (CNS); Coordinator of the Boston Editorial Group of CNS.
Author of Environment Under Fire: Imperialism and the Ecological Crisis in Central America; Editor of the forthcoming book, The Quest for Ecological Democracy: Movements for Environmental Justice in the United States.

"This anthology brings us the voices of progressives engaged in environmental and occupational health struggles. It helps to create the conversations, sometimes the arguments, we need to translate environmental concern into clean production, and worker health and safety into a lived reality. It provides scientific insight and historic background in a political and economic context. In short, it offers a model for understanding why we currently have so much disease and injury in our workplaces and, equally, how we could get the economy we all really want--one that is at once generous, just and healthy." --Eve Spangler, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Boston College

"New Solutions is an outstanding book that incisively describes key occupational and environmental health problems and offers options for policy and action. It provides a useful understanding of the social, economic, and political context in which occupational environmental health problems arise and in which they need to be addressed. This is a highly valuable volume for students, and for individuals and organizations involved with any aspect of occupational and environmental health." --Barry S. Levy, MD, MPH, President, American Public Health Association; Adjunct Professor of Community Health, Tufts University School of Medicine; Senior Co-Editor, Occupational Health: Recognizing and Preventing Work-Related Disease; Co-Editor, International Perspectives in Environment, Development, and Health: Toward A Sustainable Future

(2 versions)
1.
"Those concerned with protecting the health and safety of working people draw heavily on scientific knowledge about risks and their prevention. While this knowledge is easily shared internationally, even in the developed world there are great differences in the success of worker protection. Levenstein and Wooding's reader, New Solutions: Politics and Policy of the Work Environment, provides critical insight on this conundrum. The New Solutions reader helps both to explain why scientific knowledge fills only part of the need and to provide new understanding about options and alternatives that bring together science and policy to prevent work-related disease and injury." --David Wegman, MD, MS, Chair, Work Environment Dept., University of Massachusetts

2.
"Why is it that scientific knowledge about worker risks and their prevention is easily shared internationally, and yet even in the developed world there are great differences in the success of worker protection? Levenstein and Wooding's reader, New Solutions: Politics and Policy of the Work Environment, provides critical insight on this conundrum. The articles collected from New Solutions, the journal of environmental science and policy, have been organized into a reader designed to achieve two goals: first to explain why scientific knowledge can fill only part of the need and second to bring focus on the options and alternatives that exist in a democracy to bring science and policy together to prevent work-related disease and injury. This reader should prove invaluable to occupational health professionals from a variety of backgrounds who wish to have their work make a real difference." --David Wegman, M.D., M.S., Chair, Work Environment Dept., University of Massachusetts

About the Author

Charles Levenstein, PhD, Professor of Work Environment Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, is editor of New Solutions: A Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health Policy. An economist and leading researcher on social factors in occupational health, especially occupational lung diseases, he has been active in worker and community health and safety education in the United States and abroad.
John Wooding, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Chair of the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development. His research interests include occupational safety and health regulation, regulatory politics, and the politics of environmentalism. He serves on the editorial boards of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and New Solutions.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 536 pages
• Publisher: Guilford Press (July 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572302348
• ISBN-13: 978-1572302341
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,216,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)