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This article examines the relationship between women munitions workers, the 'munitionettes,' in WWI-era Glasgow and Paris and the radical anti-government labor unions. These two cities were the centers of industrial production in Britain and France during the war, and each contained radical, male-dominated labor unions that frequently challenged state authority. In hindsight, the munitionettes were ideal candidates for these radical unions, as they were underpaid and increasingly militant. Despite this, these unions undermined the munitionettes' work and opposed their movements for better wages and working conditions. This article explores how male-dominated WWI-era labor radicalism failed to incorporate women in the workplace due to gendered notions of work, patriotism and identity. It demonstrates how women developed their own working-class identity, militancy and unions, as they became the most effective strikers during WWI, despite their rejection by the radical labor unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the issue in the United States (U.S.) over whether to support a compensation program for workers who had become ill while laboring in the government's nuclear weapons complex. Congressman leading the opposition to compensation program for nuclear workers; Support of U.S. Defense Secretary Bill Richardson for nuclear workers' claims; Information on the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act.

T his article examines the political economy of nutrition as a state-sponsored strategy to extract greater productivity from industrial workers in both wartime and peacetime. During World War II, the state, together with its munitions-industry allies, broadly considered workers' nutritional health as a critical component to achieving maximum wartime industrial production. Following the war, both the state and industry imagined the nutritional health of workers' bodies as crucial to Canada's postwar prosperity. Facilitating as well as frustrating these largely state-directed nutrition agendas was a combination of medico-scientific knowledge, the sometimes uncertain and unpredictable participation of both employers and workers, and wider national and international historical contexts. C et article examine l'économie politique de la nutrition en tant que stratégie parrainée par l'État pour accroître la productivité des travailleurs industriels, en temps de guerre comme en temps de paix. Au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l'État et ses alliés de l'industrie des munitions ont largement considéré la santé nutritionnelle des travailleurs comme un élément essentiel pour parvenir à une production industrielle maximale en temps de guerre. Après la guerre, l'État et l'industrie ont tous deux estimé que la santé nutritionnelle des corps des travailleurs était essentielle à la prospérité du Canada d'après-guerre. Faciliter mais aussi frustrer ces programmes nutritionnels largement dirigés par les États était une combinaison des connaissances médicales et scientifiques, une participation parfois incertaine et imprévisible des employeurs et des travailleurs, et des contextes historiques nationaux et internationaux plus vastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobilisation on the Australian ‘home front’ during the Second World War enabled some women to move temporarily into employment usually reserved for men, and to earn significantly higher wages than they were accustomed to, but the benefits of this have been often overstated. Focusing on South Australian women in the city and rural areas who took up the new working opportunities — in munitions factories and the Australian Women’s Land Army in particular — this article demonstrates that relatively few women were entitled to higher wages, such wages were lower and paid later in South Australia than in other states, and that working conditions were unattractive and often dangerous. At the war’s end, the social imperative to marry and raise children, coupled with demands that they give up their place for male workers, then saw many women return to domesticity or less-rewarded and lower status ‘female occupations’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the result of a survey on Russia's nuclear workers by sociologist Valentin Tikhonov, released in May 2001. Monthly wage received by the majority of nuclear experts in several Russian cities; Percentage of the respondents who claimed that their standard of living has declined since 1992; Percentage that would be willing to work in the military field for a foreign country.

The article talks about the series titled "Hands That War" by journalist and author Rebecca West that addressed the experiences of female munitions workers during the First World War.

Observations on munitions workers are organized to examine the relationship between their output each week, their working hours and days each week, and their working hours and days in adjacent weeks. The hypothesis is that workers need to recover from work, and a long working week results in greater fatigue and stress, and yet provides insufficient time for recuperation before the next week's work opens. Workers require time off the job to restore their physical, mental and emotional capacities, and if a long working week provides inadequate time to repair, then their subsequent work performance suffers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observations on munition workers, most of them women, are organised to examine the relationship between their output and their working hours. The relationship is non-linear: below an hour's threshold, output is proportional to hours; above a threshold, output rises at a decreasing rate as hours increase. Implications of this finding for the estimation of labour supply functions are considered. The findings also link up with the current research on the effects of long working hours on accidents and injuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triaminoguanidinium-1-methyl-5-nitriminotetrazolate (TAG-MNT) is a nitrogen-rich energetic compound being developed as a potential component of insensitive munition formulations. The purpose of the present study was to assess the toxicity of TAG-MNT to the green alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata as well as to determine whether the high N content of TAG-MNT could result in increased algal growth in aquatic systems and potentially contribute to eutrophication using a 96-h algal growth bioassay in N-limited test media. Results were compared with algal exposures to current-use energetics 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and royal demolition explosive (RDX). The TNT exposure resulted in a lowest-observed-adverse-effect concentration (LOAEC) for algal growth of 1.72 mg/L and a 50% inhibition concentration (IC50) and 95% confidence limits of 0.972 mg/L (0.955, 0.973). The RDX algal growth LOAEC was 0.10 mg/L, and the RDX IC50 was 0.635 (0.416, 0.875). Neither TNT nor RDX exposure resulted in stimulation of algal growth. In repeated testing, TAG-MNT exposure resulted in LOAECs of 0.55 and 5.20 mg/L. Stimulation of algal growth was observed at 0.06 mg/L at a mean increase of 163.2% (± 71.7) relative to the control in TAG-MNT test A and at the 0.005 mg/L treatment at a mean increase of 174.3% (± 59.9) in TAG-MNT test B. The authors' results indicate the potential for high-N energetics to significantly stimulate algal growth at low concentrations in N-limited systems. Environ Toxicol Chem 2014;33:616-620. © 2013 SETAC. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Older yet still abundant munitions such as tetryl present easily forgotten health hazards and associated needs for worker protection. Case presentation: Symptoms and findings from 22 workers who were exposed to tetryl are summarized. Conclusions: This study highlights the health hazards from exposure to tetryl. Occupational health professionals need to maintain vigilance to protect workers from the risks of handling older munitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the presence of beryllium surface contamination in a U.S. conventional munitions plant as an indicator of possible past beryllium airborne and skin exposure and used these measurements to classify job categories by potential level of exposure. Surface samples were collected from production and nonproduction areas of the plant and at regional industrial reference sites with no known history of beryllium use. Surface samples of premoistened wiping material were analyzed for beryllium mass content using inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and results expressed as micrograms of beryllium per 100 square centimeters (μ g/100 cm2). Beryllium was detected in 87% of samples collected at the munitions plant and in 72% of the samples collected at regional reference sites. Two munitions plant samples from areas near sanders and grinders were above 3.0 μ g/100 cm2 (U.S. Department of Energy surface contamination limit). The highest surface level found at the reference sites was 0.44 μ g/100 cm2. Workers in areas where beryllium-containing alloy tools were sanded or ground, but not other work areas, may have been exposed to airborne beryllium concentrations above levels encountered in other industries where metal work is conducted. Surface sampling provided information useful for categorizing munitions plant jobs by level of past beryllium airborne and skin exposure and, subsequently, for identifying employees within exposure strata to be screened for beryllium sensitization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that cinema was an important social space for young, female munitions workers in Britain during the First World War. Unlike the public house, the cinema erected no social barriers to a female presence. Additionally, the cinema trade was promoting films to a youthful audience which was attracted to movies that emphasised active female roles such as those in the serial queen melodramas. In munitions areas such as Gretna and Carlisle in the Borders young female workers flocked to the cinema while attendances declined in some non-munitions areas. State-run cinemas in the Gretna area also encouraged their presence, but incurred the anger of the film trade by attempting to divert workers away from commercial outlets, with limited success, however. The wartime public visibility of young female workers in social spaces such as the cinema increased pre-war concerns about the content of film, particularly when dealing with themes of social relationships and morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five structurally related nitrobenzenes (1,2-dinitrobenzene, 1,3-dinitrobenzene, 1,4-dinitrobenzene, 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, and picric acid) and Meisenheimer complex [1-(S-glutathionyl)-2,4,6- trinitrocyclohexadienate] were evaluated as possible inhibitors of affinity purified mammalian glutathione transferases (GSTs) isolated from human liver or human term placenta and rat liver. The results suggest that the degree of GST inhibition depends upon both the chemical in question and the enzyme source. Among the nitrobenzenes tested, 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene (TNB) was found to be the most potent inhibitor of GST activity toward 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) from all the sources, whereas 1,3-dinitrobenzene (1,3-DNB) was the least effective. TNB-caused inhibition of GST activity toward CDNB appeared to be isozyme specific in that compared to the enzyme from human term placenta (GSTP1-1), the degree of inhibition of the mixture of GST isozymes present in the livers of adult rats and humans was low. The enzyme assays conducted with 3,4-dichloro-1-nitrobenzene (DCNB), ethacrynic acid (EA), and 4-nitropyridine N-oxide also suggested the isozymespecific inhibition of rat liver GST activity by TNB. The nature of TNB-caused inhibition of GSTP1-1 was competitive with respect to CDNB and yielded a K[sub i] value of 12.5 θM. With EA, a specific substrate for GSTP1-1, an IC[sub 50] value of ~16 θM was estimated for the GSTP1-1 inhibition by TNB. The Meisenheimer complex, the product of nonenzymatic GSH conjugation with TNB by different GSTs, was found to be the most potent inhibitor of mammalian GSTs, and IC[sub 50] values ranged between 1 and 4 θM when the enzyme activity was assayed using CDNB. The nature of GSTP1-1 inhibition was noncompetitive with respect to CDNB, with a K[sub i] value of 1θM for Meisenheimer complex. Although a precise mechanism was not identified, it is postulated that GSH depletion and/or GST inhibition may contribute, at least partly, to the target organ toxicity caused by exposures of animals to different nitrobenzenes reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the adjustment of labor disputes incident to production for war in the U.S. The only governmental agency for dealing with the labor disputes which might arise incident to war time production at the beginning of the participation by the U.S. in the war was the U.S. Department of Labor. The work of building cantonments for the National Army was the first field of the government's war work in which it seriously encountered the labor problem. Any system of adjustment adopted by the government for the quick adjustment of wage disputes for the sake of insuring continuous production of munitions and supplies, will encounter scores of different crafts and grades of labor.

The author of this article, once a member of the Institute's laboratory staff, is now Personnel Manager of a Munitions Factory. He has investigated the important subject of absenteeism among over 700 of its employees, during the period July to December, 1941. He classifies its causes, comparing their frequency, or that of absenteeism in general, and lateness in relation to kind of employment, full- and part-time employment, entry into the factory before and during the war, sex, marital status and age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of the Health of Munition Workers Committee, which was appointed in 1915, is well known for the light it threw on war-time problems of industry and for the stimulus it gave to subsequent peace-time improvements in industrial working conditions. At the present moment there is some danger that lessons learnt in the last war may be forgotten; it is therefore pertinent that some of the Committee's findings should be recalled. The following article by Dr. H. M. Vernon is based on his experience as investigator to the Committee. In it he deals particularly with output, hours of work, night work, and accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]