The industrial revolution began in the 1830s and brought large number of workers into production facilities. If any worker got injured, they were replaced by another, with little or no consequences for the employer. This inequity caused some organizations to try to address hazardous work condition which resulted in worker injuries with a hodgepodge of interventions to reduce worker injuries.
Over the next 75 years public concern over the state of affairs motivated the various state to pass workman’s compensation legislation. This to some extent ensured that injured workers were provided medical care and some compensation. This motivated organization to more rigorously approach worker safety, resulting in a collection of best practices which grew out of trial and error, anecdotal information, unsubstantiated data, uncorroborated assumptions, thereby creating some myths. Over time, the prevailing wisdom came to be accepted into the fabric of our "safety" culture and therefore taken for granted