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Before there was alar, dioxin, or radon to terrify people that an unseen menace was poisoning them, there was LEAD. A malleable, durable metal, as old as civilization, as old as the lead-lined aqueducts that brought water to ancient Rome, as old as a medieval lead goblet hoisted to a friend's good health, lead has from the beginning had twin reputations as a valuable resource and deadly poison. Even in Hippocrates' time, Greek shipbuilders knew that long days of pouring lead into molds for keels would leave workers retching and delirious. Overtime meant death.

In the late 1700s, Ben Franklin described various environmental and occupational effects which he attributed to lead, affecting trades, such as printers, plumbers, and painters. These descriptions are found in a letter that Franklin wrote to a friend.

In the early 1900s, detailed information on the hazards began to appear. First, a study in Britain linked exposures to lead with high rates of infertility, stillbirths, and first year infant deaths. About the same time, an Australian study observed lead poisoning among children and identified household dust and paint as the sources of the lead. Childhood activities, such as nail-biting, thumb-sucking, and eating with fingers contaminated with lead are the ways lead was introduced into the body.

In this way, lead differs from many of the more recently minted environmental toxins; no need to wonder whether a substance that seems subtly dangerous in test tube experiments or animal studies might also pose a threat to humans. The evidence has been blatant for centuries. Eat a little lead often enough and you get sick; eat a little more and you can die.

But the idea that the metal might damage the mind long after other physical symptoms have abated, or even before they develop, has been slower to catch on. It was Herbert Needleman's mentor, a courtly Boston doctor named Randolph Byers, who provided some of the first clues.

As a Harvard professor and pediatrician at the Children's Hospital lead clinic in 1939, Byers treated inner city toddlers who had cut their teeth on the rails of lead-painted cribs or on window sills. Over the course of weeks or months, they developed the pallor, vomiting, and listlessness linked to overt lead poisoning. In those days doctors believed that if they could prevent the brain from swelling, there was no risk of long-term damage. After a few weeks of extra milk and cod liver oil, children treated for poisoning were sent home from the hospital "good as new".

On the hunch that damage from lead ran deeper than anyone imagined, Byers and Harvard psychologist Elizabeth Lord kept tabs on the children's mental development for several years. What they discovered worried them: By 1943, all but two of the 20 children in the study were having serious academic problems; several had not learned to read or write even by age eight or nine.

page 1 of 3

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  JP General Construction Inc.
300 W Golf Rd. Mt. Prospect, IL 60056
contact@jpconstruction.com		  
design: slyks.com
JP General Construction


Before there was alar, dioxin, or radon to terrify people that an unseen menace was poisoning them, there was LEAD. A malleable, durable metal, as old as civilization, as old as the lead-lined aqueducts that brought water to ancient Rome, as old as a medieval lead goblet hoisted to a friend's good health, lead has from the beginning had twin reputations as a valuable resource and deadly poison. Even in Hippocrates' time, Greek shipbuilders knew that long days of pouring lead into molds for keels would leave workers retching and delirious. Overtime meant death.

In the late 1700s, Ben Franklin described various environmental and occupational effects which he attributed to lead, affecting trades, such as printers, plumbers, and painters. These descriptions are found in a letter that Franklin wrote to a friend.

In the early 1900s, detailed information on the hazards began to appear. First, a study in Britain linked exposures to lead with high rates of infertility, stillbirths, and first year infant deaths. About the same time, an Australian study observed lead poisoning among children and identified household dust and paint as the sources of the lead. Childhood activities, such as nail-biting, thumb-sucking, and eating with fingers contaminated with lead are the ways lead was introduced into the body.

In this way, lead differs from many of the more recently minted environmental toxins; no need to wonder whether a substance that seems subtly dangerous in test tube experiments or animal studies might also pose a threat to humans. The evidence has been blatant for centuries. Eat a little lead often enough and you get sick; eat a little more and you can die.

But the idea that the metal might damage the mind long after other physical symptoms have abated, or even before they develop, has been slower to catch on. It was Herbert Needleman's mentor, a courtly Boston doctor named Randolph Byers, who provided some of the first clues.

As a Harvard professor and pediatrician at the Children's Hospital lead clinic in 1939, Byers treated inner city toddlers who had cut their teeth on the rails of lead-painted cribs or on window sills. Over the course of weeks or months, they developed the pallor, vomiting, and listlessness linked to overt lead poisoning. In those days doctors believed that if they could prevent the brain from swelling, there was no risk of long-term damage. After a few weeks of extra milk and cod liver oil, children treated for poisoning were sent home from the hospital "good as new".

On the hunch that damage from lead ran deeper than anyone imagined, Byers and Harvard psychologist Elizabeth Lord kept tabs on the children's mental development for several years. What they discovered worried them: By 1943, all but two of the 20 children in the study were having serious academic problems; several had not learned to read or write even by age eight or nine.

page 1 of 3

next page

  JP General Construction Inc.
300 W Golf Rd. Mt. Prospect, IL 60056
contact@jpconstruction.com		  
design: slyks.com