In recent years, occupational diseases have become an area of intense interest to medicine, public health, industry, and labor. Whole new areas of medical and public health specialization have developed since the end of World War II, partly in response to the detection of carcinogens in the workplace, dust in the air that workers breathe, and human-made chemicals that workers touch, taste, or inhale. Black lung (coal workers’ pneumoconiosis), brown lung (byssinosis), and white lung (asbestosis) are three industry-specific diseases that have gained international attention and highlighted the role of occupation in the creation of illness. Laborers as well as physicians have become acutely aware of the dangers posed by substances and materials at work in a host of industries from steel to petrochemicals.

The growing attention to the hazards of the industrial workplace has alerted workers even in “clean” worksites to occupational disease. Physical dangers are posed to office workers by video display terminals, poorly designed furniture, noise, and vibrations. Stress at the workplace is now seen as important in the creation of the modern epidemics of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. The very definition of disease has been altered by a rising popular and professional consciousness of the importance of occupation as a source of illness.