Non-Medical Issues Presented by the Pregnant Worker

Abstract

Several years ago, I was privileged to serve as chairman of a small group of extraordinarily knowledgable and hardworking occupational physicians and obstetricians who were concerned about the health of the pregnant worker and the child she was bearing. We were helped by a dedicated staff provided by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AGOG), financial support from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the generous contributions of two expert panels: one of clinicians and scientists from all of the relevant fields and disciplines; and the other of people who could reflect the views of labor, management, the women’s movement, the law and other groups with vested interests in this problem. Quite arbitrarily, we decided to limit our focus to the period of pregnancy and delivery and our concern to the purely clinical aspects of the potential impact of work and the work environment on the health of the worker and her fetus and the outcome of her pregnancy. For more than a year, we studied and discussed the latest scientific information and the best current practices in obstetrics and occupational medicine and, finally, produced the report, “Guidelines on Pregnancy and Work,” that was published by ACOG in 1977 and subsequently reprinted by NIOSH.¹

Keywords

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Reprinted from Journal of Occupational Medicine 21(2), 1978: 403–408, with permission of the publisher.