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This article proposes to explain the contemporary modifications of union practices concerning occupational health in France. To this end, it examines the protests over the last ten years that were provoked by numerous employees’ exposure to a family of toxic chemicals, glycol ethers. This mobilisation took shape immediately following the asbestos crisis, which considerably affected the methods of collective action in the sphere of occupational health. Beginning with the notion of problematisation, this article demonstrates that the continuity between these two mobilisations are more complex than they seem : although when the dangers of glycol ethers were exposed by a certain number of French professional organisations resulting in a prolongation of the criticism initiated by the asbestos crisis, it also paradoxically had the political effect of making this criticism controllable.