Environmental Risks

Takatorige, Toshio; Hirose, Yukio; Nagamatsu, Shingo

Tuberculosis is an infection caused by tubercle bacillus. Tubercle bacilli are passed to human only from human. It was the number 1 cause of death in Japan during the 1900s to the 1920s when it spread throughout the country due to poor lifestyles and nutrition. The lack of systems to protect factory workers caused the nationwide spread of the disease. Under the Japanese government's promotion of the textile industry producing cotton yarns and cloth and the silk industry, a large number of young female workers lived in dormitories built adjacent to the spinning mill factories. They were far away from home and worked in day and night shifts with bad labor conditions. Poor nutrition and living environment caused sickness to some of the female workers who were laid off. They spread the tuberculosis they had caught after they returned to their home country, and the disease spread in cities and countryside all over the nation.