It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

I'm reporter E.D. Rabinowitz, and this week we're answering a question about a woman you probably never heard of, but you should have because, well, her investigations into workplace toxins help save millions of lives.

So who was she?

Her name was Alice Hamilton.

She was a scientist in Chicago in the early 1900s.

The work that she did formed the foundation for the majority of labor reform that was happening at that time.

That's Nadia Maraga from the Hull House Museum in Chicago.

House Hamilton lived at the Settlement House, founded by social reformer Jane Adams.

Hamilton fought for workers' protections at a time when Chicago factories could literally be deadly.

She built the scientific case for reform by showing how factory toxins caused illness, or worse, death.

She was known for her shoe leather epidemiology, wearing out the souls of one's shoe bottoms by walking.

In her case, making visits to factories, homes,

hospitals, even saloons. Hamilton's work focused on several toxins, in particular lead,

a toxin she kept encountering in her factory visits, and one that still haunts Chicago today.

If you're crushing lead or you're burning it or you have lead dust

and you're pouring it onto some surface so that it could melt on there,

there would be clouds of lead dust.

And that's what the workers worked in the entire day.

Matthew Ringenberg co-wrote a biography about Hamilton.

He said when Hamilton was doing her

work, that lead dust permeated everything, even the workers' sandwiches. Workers had no masks

and just wore their regular clothes. The factories were poorly ventilated. There were really no

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