Accident insurance, sickness, and science: New Zealand's no-fault system

This article explores the process of seeking compensation for occupational illness under a no-fault accident insurance scheme. The author uses two case studies-firefighters who attended a fire at a chemical storage depot and timbermill workers who worked with pentachlorophenol-to illustrate how science can be used to deny compensation to sick and dying workers. The results of the studies suggest that a no-fault accident compensation scheme, considered to be a victory for workers, offers no guarantee of just outcomes for working people. And science can be co-opted and used to support business and state interests against workers; this ideological support is increasingly hidden behind the development of "objective" systems of assessing compensation claims.