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The adverse effects of asbestos were well documented long before the Occupational Safety and Health Act. By 1918, U.S. and Canadian insurance companies had stopped selling life insurance policies to asbestos workers. In the early 1920’s, a new disease involving progressive scarring of the lungs leading to respiratory disability and heart failure was noted, and it was called asbestosis. By the 1930’s, there were suspicions that asbestos was a carcinogen; this was confirmed by British and American studies in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

In 1977 the Carter administration did not reappoint Dr. Morton Corn as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. In April, 1977, Eula Bingham was named to replace Corn. Like Corn, Bingham had a strong background in occupational health. She had served on the standards advisory committee for the coke oven emissions standard and had been a toxicologist at the University of Cincinnati. She quickly let it be known that she would prefer to err in favor of workers’ protection than in favor of industries’ compliance capabilities. Her top staff included Basil Whiting, who had worked on civil rights, community development, anti-poverty programs, and occupational safety and health for the Ford Foundation; Bertram Cottine, who had worked for Ralph Nader’s Health Research Group; Franklin Greer, who had worked for a public interest consulting firm; and Susan Nelson, Peggy Taylor, and Jeannie Warner, all of whom once worked for Senate and House committees overseeing OSHA.

United Nations’ efforts to disseminate information and promote good environmental practice in the iron and steel industry have been manifold. The Economic Commission for Europe published a review (UN, 1970) of the sources of pollution in the iron and steel industry as well as air and water pollution control devices and associated costs. UNIDO (1973) sponsored an international meeting on the iron and steel industry at which several presentations were devoted to environmental problems. The United Nations Environment Programme (1978) organized a workshop on the environmental aspects of the iron and steel industry. The Economic Commission for Europe published a study on low-waste and non-waste technology in the iron and steel industry (UN, 1081).

The jamb frame is one of the major structural elements of a coke-oven end-closure system. The structural behavior of the jamb interacting with other end-closure elements determines the sealing performance of the system as a whole. One of the main causes of poor sealing is the accumulation of reversible and/or irreversible jamb distortions. In particular, the jamb frame often deforms in its plane so that the posts deflect towards each other--a deformation called hourglassing.

Using diverse techniques relatively better experimental conditions for the reduction of simple and combined oxides of iron in the widest possible temperature range, it was possible to show that polymorphic, magnetic transformations and probably point defects and dislocations influence the activation energy (E) and sometimes the rate (V) of the reaction.

Current information suggests that chemical carcinogenesis is a multistage process; in this regard, one of the best studied models is the two-stage carcinogenesis system in mouse skin. Skin tumors can be induced by the sequential application of a subthreshold dose of a carcinogen (initiation phase) followed by repetitive treatments with a noncarcinogenic tumor promoter (promotion phase). The initiation phase requires only a single application of either a direct or indirect carcinogen at a subthreshold dose and is essentially irreversible. The promotion phase is brought about by repetitive treatments after initiation and is initially reversible but later irreversible. The mouse skin system can be used not only to determine the tumor-initiating and tumor-promoting activities of a compound: if the agent is given repeatedly by itself, one can also determine If it is a complete carcinogen (i.e., if it has both tumor-initiating and tumor-promoting activities).