Brown Lung Association

The Brown Lung Association (BLA) and related organizations (Brown Lung Legal Center, Carolina Brown Lung Association, and Southern Institute for Occupational Health), operated chiefly in North and South Carolina, but also in Georgia and Virginia, ca. 1974-1986. The BLA conducted breathing clinics, carried out lobbying and media campaigns, and filed workers' compensation claims for textile workers who were victims of byssinosis, or brown lung disease.

In October 1974, Mike Szpak received a seed-grant from the Youth Project, a community-service agency based in Washington, D.C., to develop an organization that would combat the problem of byssinosis (brown lung) in the Carolinas. By early 1975, Szpak had successfully established a local brown lung association in Columbia, S.C., had initiated plans and fundraising for associations in several other locations, and had created the Southern Institute for Occupational Health to sponsor and coordinate organizational efforts to fight brown lung.

By the end of the year, the Carolina Brown Lung Association (later shortened to Brown Lung Association or BLA) had emerged out of these earlier efforts and assumed the form it would keep throughout the early 1980s. The Association organized local chapters (originally in the Carolinas, but later also in Georgia and Virginia), conducted breathing clinics, carried out lobbying and media campaigns, and filed workers' compensation claims for textile workers. The Brown Lung Association's major successes included the reform of South Carolina's compensation laws, passage of stricter federal cotton dust standards, attraction of media attention to brown lung, and the payment of workers' compensation to textile workers disabled by the disease.

The Brown Lung Legal Center grew out of the Brown Lung Association's Legal Committee in the late 1970s. This organization focused on the legal complications of receiving compensation for brown lung victims.

The activities of the Brown Lung Association decreased during the early 1980s as a result of deteriorating economic conditions in the textile industry and reforms in workers' compensation laws and industrial standards. By 1986, the Association was virtually inactive.