By Peter Reich, Consulting Author
Environmental Defense Fund
Toxic Chemicals Program
1875 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009
Karen Florini, Program Chair
Originally published in June 1992
After a great pain, a formal feeling comes-
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
of Ground, or Air, or Ought-
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone-
This is the Hour of Lead-
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
Emily Dickenson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson , Johnson, T.H., Ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. l62. Though the poet was describing emotions rather than lead poisoning, the poem aptly describes some of the symptoms of lead intoxication.
Introduction
1. Early History of the Lead Industry
For most of the 20th century, a few firms operated mines smelters, and refineries in the upper Mississippi Valley, the Tri-State Area, and the Far West, and controlled most of the U.S. Lead production and manufacturing.
2. "Toxicity of Habitation"
Medical literature established the risks of childhood lead poisoning form pigments as early as 1887. In Europe, white lead was banned early in the 20th century.
3. "Harmless," "Normal," and Safe
Discovery of the remarkable effect of tetraethyl lead on automobile engine performance stimulated research at the Kettering Lab and at Harvard which purported to show that lead was "normal" and "harmless."
4. "Save the Surface"
The lead industry vigorously promoted the use of white lead for domestic and public interiors during the 1920's and 30's.
5. The Lead Industries Association
The Lead Industries Association and the National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association worked to delay regulation of lead while promoting white lead for interior surfaces.
6. The Postwar Lead Industry, 1946-1963
Manufacturers of lead products quashed a warning by the U.S. Children's Bureau, 1948-49, and at a 1963 conference, Kehoe reasserted the normalcy and safety of lead in humans.
7. Legislation & Regulation 1965-1992
A 1965 article by a geochemist saying that Kehoe was wrong by two orders of magnitude triggered development of federal and state controls on lead in paint and automobile fuel. Regulation of lead proceeded slowly.
8. The Lead Industry, 1965- 1992
During the period of regulation, there was consolidation in the industry although smelting and refining ownership remained stable. The LIA continued its opposition to further regulation.
In very small quantities lead poisons the immature brain. Children with moderate long-term exposures-but no immediate symptoms -- show reduced short term memory, delayed reaction time, reduced ability to concentrate and diminished scores on IQ tests. [1] Although no comprehensive data are currently available, the federal government estimates that about 15 percent of all U.S. preschoolers now have unacceptable levels of lead in their blood, levels that cause subtle but significant impairment of learning skills. [2] Decades of use of lead in paint, gasoline, plumbing systems, and myriad other products have left these high blood lead levels as their poisonous legacy. Exposures most often result from dust contaminated by lead-based paint -- some of which contained up to 50% lead by dry weight in the early decades of this century. [3] Nearly three quarters of U.S. homes constructed before 1980 contain some lead paint; [4] an estimated three million tons of lead still coats the walls and woodwork of American homes. [5]
How did the lead get there?
For many decades, firms that made lead and sold lead products aggressively promoted the use of lead-based paint for the interiors and exteriors of homes. At that time the public perceived "White lead"- which could be tinted a variety of colors -- to be the best protective coating, and it was available in abundant supply. Families used lead paint not only on their walls, but on their cribs, toys, woodwork, and furniture as well.
Infants and toddlers routinely place things in their mouths as a part of normal development. It is not surprising then that cases of lead poisoning in children caused by ingestion of lead paint began to appear in the English language medical literature before the turn of the century. In 1897, Australian researchers identified lead in paint as the cause of a "Toxicity of Habitation," and the first US. case was reported in 1914. [6] By 1917, U.S. medical authorities had established that childhood lead poisoning from lead paint was a common problem. "A child," wrote a medical commentator in 1924, "lives in a lead world." [7]
Most lead paint then in use was based on lead carbonate, known as white lead. The product was manufactured by subjecting lead to corrosion, yielding a white powder. After some processing, the powder was sold as "dry white leads" to paint manufacturers, or ground with linseed oil and sold the product as paint.
After 1922, another important source of domestic lead wafted into the child's world: lead from automobile exhaust. When scientists discovered that a small amount of tetraethyl lead added to automobile fuel significantly improved performance and efficiency, the lead industry launched a campaign of medical research and political arm-twisting to assure that lead, this "Gift of God," would not be restricted. [8] Despite warnings from a Yale University physiologist that poisonous dust from exhaust fumes would fill U.S. cities, the industry view prevailed. During the next half-century, about 7 million tons of lead churned into the air from automobiles [9] while industry-funded medical experts asserted that lead exposure was "harmless" and "normal." [10]
Even though most of the industrialized world moved to control white lead paint by the turn of the century and curtailed its use soon after World War I, U.S. policymakers ignored medical and industrial labor reports from home and abroad. The lead industry proceeded to gain control over the conduct of medical research, the setting of public health priorities, and the dissemination of information to warn the public. Through a trade association, the nation's lead producers, refiners, and manufacturers disputed claims of lead poisoning and worked actively to discount such reports and thwart regulation. [11] When competition from non-toxic paints became a problem in the 1930's, the association by-passed the marketplace and worked to assure that lead paint would be required in public housing projects and other public buildings.
The sheer weight of dead bodies of acutely lead poisoned children began to stir pediatricians and legislators into action in the 1950's, but federal regulation of lead paint was another two decades in coming. [12] Today, despite significant restrictions on use of lead in paint and automobile fuel, the child still lives in a lead world and millions of children across the United States are poisoned as a result.
FOOTNOTES
1. See generally, Centers for Disease Control. Preventing Lead PoisoninG in Young Children. Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991. Back to text.
2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Strategy for Reducing Lead Exposures, p. 5,1991. Back to text.
3. Centers for Disease Control, Preventing Lead Poisoning in Young Children. Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991, p.l8. Back to text.
4. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Comprehensive and Workable Plan for the abatement of Lead-Based Paint in Privately Owned Housing - Report to Congress. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1990, p.xvii. Back to text.
5. U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Nature and Extent of Childhood Lead Poisoning in the United States - Report to Congress. Washington, D.C. Department of Health and Human Services, 1988., p. 11-5. Back to text.
6. See section 2. Back to text.
7. Ruddock, J.C., Lead Poisoning in Children, Journal of the American Medical Association 82:1682-84,1924. Back to text.
8. See Rosner, D. and Markowitz, G., A 'Gift of God'?: The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline during the 1920s, American Journal of Public Health 75:344 -352,1985. Back to text.
9. Nriagy, J.O., The Rise and Fall of Leaded Gasoline, The Science of the Total Environment , 92:13-28,1990. Back to text.
10. See section 3. Back to text.
1I. See section 5. Back to text.
12 See section 7. Back to text.
Title: "The Hour of Lead"
Price: $5
Publication Code: PHL