Breath and Justice

The force of the Quaker admonition to “speak truth to power” was vividly demonstrated a few weeks ago when sixty members of the Carolina Brown Lung Association testified in Washington, D.C. before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the Labor Department, and the federal agency responsible for industrial health standards and enforcement. The sixty people representing the two year old organization had all been forced to retire from their jobs as textile workers, some while in their 40s and 50s, because they had developed byssinosis, or brown lung disease.

This disease, caused by breathing cotton dust generated in the textile mills, affects not only the lungs but also the heart and the nervous system.

The members of the Carolina Brown Lung Association came to Washington with bottles of medication, oxygen tanks, and breathing machines necessary for their survival; some came in wheelchairs. They represented thousands of other afflicted textile workers in this country. Their disease could be controlled or eliminated through cleaner and healthier work environments in the mills.

The retired textile workers of the Carolina Brown Lung Association spent years working in conditions that were physically hazardous, with low pay, no benefits, no medical compensation, and no representation by unions. The Carolina Brown Lung Association’s concern is not only compensation for themselves, but to create conditions in the mills which would prevent future generations of workers from developing the disease.