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In the early years of this century, the multidisciplinary American Public Health Association, reflecting national concerns, broadened its focus on the mere survival of the individual over disease to include the occupational and social diseases accompanying industrial and urban expansion. Such papers as "The Mortality from Industrial Diseases" (1908), "A Study of the Hygiene Condition of the Air in Certain Textile Mills with Reference to the Influence of Artificial Humidification" (1913), and "Some Economic Aspects of Factory Hygiene" (1912), were among those considered at APHA Annual Meetings and in its Journal.
With the increasing industrialization of the nation, there was no doubt that APHA had an important role to play in promoting safer, healthier working conditions. Such topics as industrial lead poisoning, prevention of accidents and protection of women and children at work fell directly within the Association's objective of "the advancement of sanitary science and promotion of organizations and measures for practical application of public hygiene." A 1914 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, noted that it would be "only a matter of time when the man at the machine would have to be regarded, not as a part of the machine, but as a human being and not only as a human being, but as one in need of protection from his environment, even from his own carelessness."
There was a growing...