Tire Building 1934

I grew up in Akron, Ohio the Rubber Capital of the World" during the 1950s and 1960s. My grandfathers both worked in the tire building and rubber manufacturing plants, as did my mother and most of my uncles. During the late nineteenth century, Ohio emerged as the leader of rubber production in the United States. Numerous rubber companies operated in or near Akron, Ohio. Among the large-scale rubber producers to have factories in the area were the B.F. Goodrich Company, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. The advent of the bicycle and then automobiles allowed these companies to earn tremendous wealth. B. F. Goodrich manufactured tires under the Brunswick name as the Brunswick Tire Company the focus of this clip. In 1913, the State of Ohio published a detailed study of the risk to health discovered in the rubber and tire industry. The hazards included varying temperature, dust, fatigue, hours of labor, opportunity for contracting communicable disease, as well as the effect of all the poisonous substances used in rubber manufacture. Lead poisoning was found as was cases of aniline poisoning. There was much ill health resulting from benzine vapors in many plants where tire building is done without precautions against those vapors. Workers in these departments complain chiefly of headache, dizziness, and stupefaction. Anemia was often seen due to the chronic effect of the benzine. The risk of carbon disulphide poisoning in cold vulcanizing was great. Ohio firms produced more than one-third of the tires and approximately thirty percent of all other rubber products used in the United States in the 1950s. The corporate offices of five of the six largest tire companies in the United States were located in Akron in 1950. In September 1935, a national convention of rubber workers met and organized the United Rubber Workers of America (URW). Convention delegates elected Sherman Dalrymple president and dedicated the URW international union to the betterment of working conditions for rubber workers and all working men and women. In 1950, more than 130 different companies manufactured rubber in Ohio. These firms employed more than eighty-five thousand workers and most were members of the URW with good contracts and decent middle class wages and benefits. The URW was the first union to have an industrial hygienist on staff to help to identify hazards and support the URWs efforts to improve the health and safety of rubber workers. In 1971 a pioneering agreement between the United Rubber Workers and the BF Goodrich Company had the Department of Industrial Hygiene at Harvard to conduct research on occupational health, industrial hygiene, and occupational epidemiology in the rubber-tire industry. Over a period of ten years, this work created a detailed picture of health effects in the industry and led to many improvements in health and safety. The principal adverse health effects found were cancer and respiratory effects (reductions in pulmonary function, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and other respiratory symptoms).For more, go to the NIOSH report at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/rubberhr.html . This is clipped from the 1934 film, Under the Tread, available at the Internet Archives.