Author: Rajen N. Naidoo
Source: Glob Health Action 2013, 6: 20512
Summary:
Mining has played a central role in the development of South Africa – from the importation of European labour through to the migrant labour system that characterised apartheid, our mineral resources have molded our political, social, and economic paradigms over the last 140 years. The current turmoil on the mines emphasises this legacy and its centrality in our history. The mining industry not only shaped the early development of legislation to protect the health of workers in the 1900s, but it also allowed South African researchers to produce groundbreaking research in mining-related respiratory diseases throughout the last century. Gill Nelson’s work is located within this context and provides new directions for mining-related occupational respiratory diseases.