Benzene: a historical perspective on the American and European occupational setting

Since the 1897 report of Santessen, who observed aplastic anaemia among young women engaged in the manufacture of bicycle tyres in Sweden, and the report in the same year by LeNoir and Claude, who observed haemorrhaging in a young man engaged in a dry-cleaning operation in France, benzene has been known to be a powerful bone marrow poison. Similar reports of workers developing benzene-related diseases of the bone marrow increased dramatically through the first half of the 20th century.