Sign 7 - Change House

At the beginning of each production line consisting of three ordnance-loading buildings (receiving, pouring, and assemble) was a change house for men and women workers.  Eleven change houses were built using the same design that featured a one-story rectangular structure 75 feet wide by 40 feet deep.

Workers, who had to pass a physical before being hired, were not permitted to wear their street clothes in the plant and had to change into working clothes before their shift began.  They also had to bathe before leaving the plant at the end of the day to prevent TNT poisoning from inhalation, skin absorption, or oral ingestion.

Careless handling of TNT stains the skin of hands yellow and discolors hair to a reddish blond; in severe cases, the liver is affected, leading to jaundice and ultimately death.

 The precautions at the Bethlehem loading Company's Mays Landing Plant were so rigid that not a single case of TNT poisoning developed.  However, during the first 7 and 1/2 months of World War I, 17,000 poisoning cases occurred, resulting in 475 deaths at other munitions factories in the United States.