Workplace surveillance fails to detect respiratory diseases
In 1981, a worker at the Maxwell House coffee factory in Houston died from what was reported at the time to be "bronchial asthma." She was 46, a mother of three. In 1982, another worker at the plant died — from the same thing.
The deaths were not recorded in a national database of occupational illnesses that could have alerted public health specialists to a potential problem. Nobody linked the sicknesses to the workplace.