Alice Hamilton was born in New York in 1869. She attended Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies and then studied science with a high school teacher in Fort Wayne and anatomy at Fort Wayne College of Medicine for a year before enrolling at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1892. In 1895, she studied bacteriology. Hamilton was a tireless worker in industrial hygiene and safety. Her findings compelled lawmakers to pass laws that promoted safety for both workers and the public at large. After her death in 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act to improve workplace safety in the United States.

I found the content of this book on lead poisoning to be particularly interesting. I was just discussing with a coworker the other day about an area of the city we live in being a former EPA Superfund site due to lead and other contamination from a foundry that was formerly located there. There are limits to the amount of fish you can consume per year from our river (we sit between nuclear power plants and downriver from others) due to heavy metals. I didn't realize that this book would discuss lead poisoning, it was just next on my list of unread Audible books. It had a tremendous amount of information about lead and other elements of industrial manufacturing. I thought this was a really wonderful and educational book.