ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Management of Silicosis during the Mao Era: Changing Standards, Treatment Experiments, and Workers' Anxieties

• In Event: Hazards, Accidents, and Knowledge Production in Modern Industry

English Abstract

This article examines two key aspects of China’s management of silicosis during the Mao era: environmental prevention and medical treatment. Unlike industrial injuries, silicosis developed in a gradual manner. It could be felt by workers through breathlessness, feebleness, rumours of early death, and being an undesirable object in marriage market. These fears generated pressure from below, pushing the state to intervene not only on ideological grounds but also to stabilize industries in the 1950s. Efforts to regulate dust in working environments were based on the 2 mg/m³ limit, a US–Soviet imported industrial hygiene standard. Since the mid-1950s, this standard was repeatedly adjusted during the PRC’s political campaigns. During the Great Leap Forward, some factories treated the limit as a campaign target, pursuing low numbers. In 1962, the standard of 2 mg/m³ was restored under Premier Zhou Enlai. Approaches to silicosis treatment experienced a similar shift. Early reliance on traditional Chinese medicine, propagated as a significant medical breakthrough in the 1950s, reflected post-1949 efforts to mobilize available medical resources. By the late 1960s, the state attempted to find solutions that were both indigenous and scientifically modern, including kexi ping—a PVNO therapy drawing on research from West Germany. These trajectories show the co-production of scientific knowledge and socialist governance. In the industrial sphere during the Mao era, technical solutions took shape through the interaction of political pressure, material conditions, and the sensory and emotional realities of workers.

Author

• Rui Zhang, Douglas College