Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health

The Industrial Determinants of Health

David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, and Merlin Chowkwanyun, launched a website, Toxicdocs, with millions of previously unseen documents from a variety of industries. These internal documents detail activities around occupational and environmental diseases and corporate responses to danger. This project is a joint undertaking of the Center, CUNY, and the Center for Public Integrity, the watchdog journalism organization that has been hailed in the past for its investigative reporting. The database is being built from documents that Rosner and Markowitz gathered through a variety of lawsuits over environmental and occupational hazards including vinyl chloride, asbestosis, silicosis, lead and PCBs. CPI is providing the documents that have been gathered through its Pulitzer prizing winning investigative reports on the chemical industry. Chowkwanyun developed the innovative search engine setting a new standard when the site launched in 2015.

  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (2014). Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Future of America’s Public Health. Berkeley: University of California Press/Milbank Fund. View abstract. (Named one of top books on environment, 2013, USA Today). 
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (2013) Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. University of California Press/Milbank Memorial Fund. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (2013). Persistent Pollutants: A Brief History of The Discovery of the Widespread Toxicity of Chlorinated Hydrocarbons. Environmental Research. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (2012). With the Best Intentions, Lead Research and the Fate of America’s Children. American Journal of Public Health. View abstract.
  • Fairchild, A., Rosner, D., Colgrove, J., Bayer, R., & Fried, L. (2010). The Exodus of Public Health: What History Can Tell Us about Its Future. American Journal of Public Health. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. (2009). Trials and Tribulations: What Happens When Historians Enter the Courtroom. Law & Contemporary Problems. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (2005). Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the On-Going Struggle to Protect Workers' Health. New and expanded edition, University of Michigan Press. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (2006). Are We Ready? Public Health Since September 11th. Milbank/University of California Press. View abstract. (Named as “American Schools of Public Health Deans’ List of Recommended Books, 2007). 
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (2000). Cater to the Children: The Role of the Lead Industry in a Public Health Tragedy, 1900-1955. American Journal of Public Health. View abstract.
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (1995). The Limits of Thresholds, Silica and the Politics of Science, 1935 to 1990. American Journal of Public Health. View abstract.
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (1990). Street of Walking Death. Journal of American History. View abstract.
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (1989). The Illusion of Medical Certainty, Silicosis and the Politics of Industrial Disease. Milbank Quarterly. View abstract.
  • Markowitz, G. & Rosner, D. (1996) Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center. University Press of Virginia.
  • Rosner, D. (1995). Hives of Sickness, Epidemics and Disease in New York. Museum of the City of New York and New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (1989). Dying for Work: Safety and Health in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Noted as an "Outstanding Academic Book of 1987" by Choice).
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (1987). Slaves of the Depression: Workers' Letters about Life on the Job. Cornell University Press.
  • Rosner, D. & Markowitz, G. (1985). A 'Gift of God'? The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline During the 1920s. American Journal of Public Health. View abstract.
  • Rosner, D. (1982). A Once Charitable Enterprise, Hospitals and Health Care in Brooklyn and New York, 1885-1915. Princeton Legacy Library. View abstract.