It has much of interest within it for the social historian of medicine and adds to a vibrant genre of research in the occupational and environmental health history field which is growing on both sides of the Atlantic. “ provocative and superbly written account which lies within the intersection of medical and labour history. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. She shows how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. Michelle Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. As Michelle Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors.

This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into being: how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers-mostly women-protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States.

Labor and Working-Class History Associationīefore 1980, sick building syndrome did not exist.

Association for Middle East Women's Studies.

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