A very important section of this part of the Act is s. 79, which empowers the home secretary to certify any particular process as dangerous and thereupon to issue regulations to obviate the dangers involved. Great progress has been made during the last 20 years with regulations under this section. There are now codes of regulations for the following industries :—Manufacture of aer ated water; casting of brass; bronzing; building; manufacture, manipulation and storage of celluloid; chemical works; manu facture of cinematograph film ; stripping of cinematograph film., loading or unloading, etc., at docks; manufacture or repair of elec tric accumulators ; generation, transformation, distribution or use of electricity; vitreous enamelling of metal or glass: manufacture of felt hats, with aid of inflammable solvent ; file-cutting by hand; spinning and weaving of flax and tow; grinding of cutlery and edge tools; grinding of metals (miscellaneous industries) ; spinning and weaving of hemp, jute, and hemp or jute tow; handling of hides and skins ; use of horsehair from China, Siberia or Russia; manufacture of india rubber; smelting of materials containing lead, manufacture of red or orange lead and of flaked litharge; manufacture of certain compounds of lead; use of locomotives and wagons on lines and sidings; spinning by means of self-acting mules; painting of vehicles with lead paints; manufacture of paints and colours; manufacture and decoration of pottery, making of lithographic transfers, frits or glazes; crushing, grind ing, etc. of refractory material, and the manufacture of silica bricks; construction and repair of ships in shipbuilding yards; tinning of metal hollowware, iron drums, and harness furniture; use of wood-working machinery ; use of East Indian wool ; sorting, willeying, washing, combing and carding wool, goat hair and camel hair; lifting of heavy weights in woollen and worsted textiles; heading of yarn dyed by means of a lead compound. Most of
these regulations are very detailed and highly technical. They are aimed at every kind of special industrial risk,—risk of poisoning, risk of infection, risk from injurious fumes and from excessive or injurious dust, risk of accident, risk of overstrain. Duties are expressly laid upon workers as well as upon employers, requiring them, under penalty, to do their share in carrying out the regula tions. One of the more recent sets of regulations, the Woollen and Worsted (Lifting of Heavy Weights) Regulations of 1925, controls especially the acts of the workers concerned. These regulations expressly prohibit persons employed in the processes concerned from lifting any yarn, cloth, etc., exceeding a certain weight, though they make the employer likewise responsible in so far as he carries on the processes in question by his agents or workmen.
One of the most interesting sets of regulations and quite the most elaborate is the code for the pottery industry drawn up in 1913 after that trade had been subjected to an exhaustive investi gation by a departmental committee. Every process and branch of this complicated industry is dealt with in detail, and the rules applicable to each process vary according to whether lead is used in the glaze or not, and to the quantity of lead used. Nor is it only from lead-poisoning that pottery workers are protected. The potter's traditional enemy, dust, is also combated by regu lations prescribing exhaust draught for dusty operations and for preventing the dispersion of dust in the air in conveying dusty substances about the factory. Women and young persons are protected from overstrain in carrying and lifting heavy weights and other heavy work in potteries, either by the exclusion of some or all such persons from certain processes, or by requiring medical certificates giving permission to work in them. Hours of work in certain dangerous processes are restricted, even in some cases for adult men. These regulations also require one or more persons to be entrusted by the occupier of the factory with the special duty of seeing that the regulations are observed in all departments. In connection with the regulation of specially unhealthy trades, the Women and Young Persons (Employment in Lead Processes) Act of 192o must also be mentioned. This Act contains, amongst others, some general rules to be observed whenever any woman or young person is employed in contact with lead compounds, whether the place is a "factory or workshop" or not. Regulations have also been issued under the Act prescribing the cloak-room, mess-room and washing accommodation to be provided. It must be noted that this Act overlaps with the dangerous trades orders under the Factory and Workshop Act, and in some ways extends outside it. It is chiefly important in having been adopted in order that British law might conform to a recommendation of the International Labour Organization. It is contrary to the spirit of the British method of regulating danger ous trades, which had always aimed at protecting the health of all workers not only that of women and young persons.