Receiving milk for working in harmful environment I just got a job in a chemical/biological lab (post-Soviet Country). Chemists here receive milk for "harmfulness of the work" (i .e. their work involves working with all kind of substances/reactives). I'm not a chemist; I do their analysis. The tradition of receiving 0.5 liters of milk a day comes all the way from the Soviet Era. I found this question here: Does milk drinking prevent long-term chemical poisoning?

However, I would like to know if milk is not that great for preventing chemical poisoning (as seen from the accepted answer), why is there still such a tradition of giving milk? And why did this tradition appear in the first place? And do people working in chemistry labs in other countries also get milk? (I'm not sure, but I think in UK they do.)
I know that in India there was a very similar law extant at least back till the 1990's when I had encountered it. Not sure if it is still on the books. 

The association with the USSR makes sense: during the cold war a whole bunch of Indian factories were constructed with Soviet aid. And the conventions, technology, etc. came along. 

I had heard of several alternative explanations for the milk-law; not sure which (if any) were true. Maybe partly all were. 


The Vitamin D or Calcium in milk competing against absorption of Lead or some other nasty element, I forget which the workers were exposed to in chemical factories.
The Milk just contributing to the general health of factory workers in an otherwise grossly malnourished nation (remember, this is cold war era India). Presumably due to the attendant health hazards of chemical factory work, keeping a worker there healthy was more crucial.
Just having the stomach full of a competing innocuous substance (e.g. milk) reduced the propensity of competitive absorption of other nasties in accidents, fugitive exposures etc.