Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Fraser uses the stories of young people in the late 1960s and early 1970s to show that personal and structural violence marked the era. In the mid-1960s, teenagers Rodger Jones and Bill Baarsma worked dangerous jobs in Tacoma’s smelters, where, along with thousands of other workers, they were exposed to hazardous materials such as lead and arsenic. Jones was forced to resign his position in 1967 when he was seriously injured trying to prevent a chemical spill. When he returned to the smelters, it was with a union’s backing, and he began publishing The Smelterworker, an internal newsletter highlighting the issues that workers faced.

Despite having clear evidence of the dangers of long-term exposure to these types of chemicals (thanks to the work of scientists like Dr. Herbert Needleman), ASARCO officials redirected blame for health problems to other sources, like car pollution or dirty living spaces. In 1970, major additions to the Clean Air Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency signaled an apparent victory against smelters. However, ASARCO executives correctly predicted that most cities lacked the resources to enforce the new laws, and large-scale industrial work continued. ASARCO executives explicitly chose to pursue profits over the health of their workers and the surrounding communities, believing that they could still make a profit even if they had to pay millions in lawsuits.