ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical account of the social and political struggles that ensued around benzene exposures in two important moments during the “life” of the Camacari complex. It discusses the benzene agreement, a negotiated compromise that represented a new standard-setting process in Brazil, whereby the three major players in the Brazilian corporatist tripartite regulatory environment—the state, labor, and business—built a cooperative venture to update the old benzene standard. The scientific validation of workers’ perception of the relationship between exposures to chemical hazards and adverse health effects came with the 1985 Fundacentro report. Fundacentro staff was called to perform a health-hazard evaluation (HHE) of Cetrel’s work environment. At the time their experience in doing workplace inspections was minimal. During 1986, the Internal committee spread the word within Cetrel, without identifying the source of the information, that the HHE study had clearly found high exposures to toxic chemicals in Cetrel’s work environment.
