Blaming the Victims
The LIA recognized as early as 1952 that to continue fighting a rearguard action attacking the extent of the lead poisoning problem would be "prohibitively expensive and time-consuming." But the association continued to deflect responsibility for this tragedy away from the industry itself, placing the blame on poverty, not on the lead industry: "The major source of trouble is the flaking of lead paint in the ancient slum dwellings of our older cities, [and] the problem of lead poisoning in children will be with us for as long as there are slums." Bowditch acknowledged "that the overwhelmingly major source of lead poisoning in children is from structural lead paints chewed from painted surfaces, picked up or off in the form of flakes, or adhering to bits of plaster and subsequently ingested." But who was responsible for this condition? According to Bowditch and the LIA, "Childhood lead poisoning is essentially a problem of slum dwellings and relatively ignorant parents." He maintained that lead poisoning was "almost wholly confined to the older cities of the eastern third of the country" and that "until we can find means to (a) get rid of our slums and (b) educate the relatively ineducable parent, the problem will continue to plague us.
The president of the NPVLA, Joseph E Battley, elaborated on this theme but used contemporary psychological explanations to rationalize away corporate responsibility for the pollution of children's environments. There might be dietary deficiencies, he said, but even "a well-fed child may still be emotionally hungry because he does not receive as much loving attention as he needs. Another may suffer from a sense of insecurity. To gain the comfort and reassurance they crave, they often place inedible objects [ie., flaking paint] in their mouths." As late as 1959, lead poisoning was still "a headache' for the industry.
In the 1940s and early 1950s, state and local health departments sought to warn consumers about the dangers lead paint presented to children and others. The industry organized to oppose these efforts. Early labeling regulations in California in 1945 and Maryland in 1949 were opposed by the LIA and NPVLA, and the LIA took credit for the repeal of Maryland's statute. Confronted with pressure in a number of localities and states for increased regulation, the NPVLA's counsel suggested that "the best course to Pursue from the standpoint of the industries interested in the use of lead as a pigment and otherwise is to launch a campaignof education at the legislation to forestall any further unnecessary legislation.
In May 1954, the New York City Health Department proposed a sanitary code provision that would have harmed the sale in the city of paints containing more than 1% lead and would have required lead paint to be labeled as poisonous and not for interior use. This was consistent with the recommendations of the American Medical Association, which suggested labels saying "WARNING: This paint contains an amount of lead which may be POISONOUS and should not be used to paint children's toys or furniture or interior surfaces in dwelling units which might be chewed by children." Both the NPVLA and the LIA opposed such wording. They supported and helped to develop the standard adopted in 1955 by the voluntary American Standards Association, which did not require the use of the word "poison." New York City's regulation limited the amount of lead in interior paints to 1% but did not include the more explicit warning, and the industry adopted the same voluntary standard. Even in 1958, the LIA continued to oppose "any legislation of a prohibitory nature."
Although the industry claimed that it had stopped using lead in interior paints in the 1940s, and it is clear that other pigments increasingly replaced lead during that time, lead continued to be present in paints sold for interior use well into the 1950s. In one survey commissioned by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, "about one third of [Pittsburgh's] dwelling units built in [1940-19591 had surfaces with high (2mg/cm2 or more) concentrations of lead and nearly 10 per cent of the rooms tested had such lead levels. In 1970, federal legislation prohibited the use of lead paint in federally financed and subsidized housing, and the Consumer Products Safety Commission prohibited the use of all lead paint after February 27, 1978. Yet in 1971, the New York City Health Department tested 76 paints and "found eight of them with amounts of lead ranging from 2.6 to 10.8 percent".
Next: A Terrible Legacy
