In New York, in 1996, a sanitation worker was killed when a bag of trash filled with hydrochloric acid exploded and drenched the man picking it up.
Nagle describes the injuries sustained by sanitation workers as being poked by strange needles, cut by broken glass, and killed by improperly disposed of chemicals. Not only do sanitation workers suffer automobile injuries, but they are also often injured on the job as well when people are reckless with their garbage. People rarely acknowledge their presence, insult them, and tragically, sanitation workers can even end up under the wheels of our cars, contributing to the extremely high mortality rate of 34.1 fatal injuries per 100,000. The general public does not perceive sanitation workers the same way as others around them. Nagle explains that when sanitation workers put on their uniforms, they become invisible to the world. According to Nagle, garbage workers are often stigmatized and discerned to be at the lowest level in society teachers warn students to work harder in class to avoid becoming garbage men, and dating websites even use quotes such as “Why settle for a garbage man when you can have a stockbroker?”īecause we are so reluctant to hear about trash, we are also reluctant to hear about the people who work in the trash, and we often dehumanize them. It makes us feel guilty, so we turn a blind eye to anything related to trash, including the people who work among the trash. Trash is dirty and ugly and it reminds us of our never-ending waste. Society does not pay much heed to workers in the trash industry. As soon as an object becomes trash, we no longer want to be even remotely associated with it. “Throwing” implies that we want it as far from us as possible, and “away” signifies a place we cannot see. Just this construction of the phrase represents our relationship with the trash we produce. She explains that there is no such thing as putting our trash in a place. Robin Nagle, an anthropologist from New York City who joined The City of New York Department of Sanitation for several years, reports about her experience on the job in her book, Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. If sanitation workers are such a critical part of our daily lives, why are they so underappreciated and why is their job so incredibly dangerous?ĭr. Without sanitation workers, trash would accumulate in our streets, leak into our water supply, and spread devastating diseases, such as yellow fever and cholera, across our overcrowded cities. Many of us cannot imagine what our lives would be like if nobody took away the approximate 250 million tons of trash we produce every year. However, sanitation workers are critical to the health of our population. According to TIME Magazine, sanitation work is the fifth most dangerous job in the United States, with 34.1 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers, only behind logging workers, fishermen, roofers, and aircraft pilots. Sanitation work is one of the most overlooked, yet important, jobs in America, but many don’t expect it to be one of the most dangerous. Similarly, when we think of people on the front lines of protecting the health of our cities, on the front lines of public health, we may think of researchers, doctors, public health officials, and maybe even politicians. Many of us do not think about our garbage man. When we think of dangerous jobs, we often think of the police officer on the streets fighting crimes or the firefighters rushing into a burning house to rescue families.
This article was originally published in our Fall 2018 print issue.
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