The Dangers of Lead Paint Become National News
In December 1943 the issue of lead poisoning from paint among children, already familiar to those in the industry and to some pediatricians and public health professionals, became national news. Time magazine reported on an article by pediatrician Randolph Byers and psychologist Elizabeth Lord in the American Journal of Diseases of Children. The Time article noted that parents' lack of understanding of the dangers of lead-based paint led many to use this toxic material on toys, cribs, and windowsills. When children chewed the painted surfaces, a variety of physical and nervous disorders resulted.
"All but one child, Dr. Lord discovered, were school failures. Only five had normal I.Q.s, and four of the five were so erratic that they could not learn easily. The reaction of the LIA secretary was to deny the reliability of Byers and Lord's data; he went so far as to pay a personal visit to Byers in Boston. In a preliminary report on the Time piece, the LIA maintained that the assumption regarding the relationship between lead poisoning in early infancy and later mental retardation had not been proven and that many of the cases of lead poisoning had "never been conclusively proven."
The LIA's denials of the dangers posed by lead paint came despite detailed warnings from Robert Kehoe that the association's position was indefensible. Shortly after publication of the Byers and Lord article and the Time article, Robert Kehoe wrote to Wormser, "I am disposed to agree with the conclusions arrived at by the authors, and to believe that their evidence, if not entirely adequate, is worthy of very serious consideration."
He informed the head of the LIA that in his own work he had seen "serious mental retardation in children that have recovered from lead poisoning". Kehoe left no doubt that he would be willing to assist the board of LIA, but he objected to Wormser's denial of the importance of paint in causing lead poisoning in children. Kehoe argued that the position of the LIA was insupportable.
"Unfortunately for Wormser's thesis, comparable results have been obtained in almost every other area of the United States where there have been facilities that enable accurate investigation of this type to be made.
"Small children crawl about on the floor and contaminate themselves pretty generally with every kind of dust or dirt that is within their environment. Eventually everything they get on their hands goes into their mouths, and therefore considerably greater opportunities exist for the dangerous exposure of small children of a variety of Materials."
But the LIA refused to accept the mounting research and evidence of lead poisoning. In December 1945, the association proposed a campaign to counteract the "medical and public misinformation usually amounting to actual prejudice against lead, because of its toxic qualities, [and which] is a subject of vital importance to all the lead industries in the United States."
The LIA complained, "If anything, the problem has become even more serious in the last five years than ever before, owing primarily to the spread of considerable anti-lead propaganda and also to occasional faulty medical research which has penetrated deep into medical annals and caused many physicians and hospitals to assume erroneous positions on the question of lead poisoning."
The LIA believed that the issue was "so fundamental" to the future welfare of the lead industries and the continued manufacture and use of many important lead products, such as white lead, red lead litharge, sheet lead, and pipe lead, that unless immediate attention were paid to the problem "the opposing forces may grow strong enough to do us injury which it would take years of work to correct." As a result, the LIA outlined a safety and hygiene program, one purpose of which was to address the existing literature saying that lead represented a health hazard to the worker and the consumer.
In 1946 the problem intensified: Wormser reported to the LIA that:
"attention to the serious problem faced by all the lead industries because of the toxic nature of our metal is occupying a growing rather than a diminishing amount of the Association's time. This is largely owing to attacks upon lead that cannot be ignored for, if unchallenged, they may very easily lead to the sponsoring of totally unwarranted State and Federal legislation of a regulatory or prohibitive character... Suffice it to say here that this is an unending battle from which we can only withdraw at our peril."
In general, Wormser continued to argue that the danger to the public was minimal.
As late as 1952, the LIA continued to promote the usefulness of white lead in both interior and exterior coverings. In its book Lead in Modem Industry, the LIA noted that "white lead adds more desirable qualities to paint than any other white pigment and has practically no undesirable qualities to nullify its advantages." The book continued, "the profitable application of white lead is not confined to exterior use. Pure white lead paints can be utilized to advantage for interioor decoration, particularly m public and traditional buildings where elaborate decoration is used and it is very expensive and inconvenient to repaint often.
In summaries of his activities in 1952, the director of health and safety of the LIA, Manfred Bowditch, called childhood lead poisoning "a major 'headache' and a source of much adverse publicity." He counted 197 reports of lead poisoning in nine cities, of which 40 cases were fatal, although he noted that this was an "incomplete" estimate, especially for New York City. In New York, 44 cases were reported, of which 14 were fatal. Between 1951 and 1953, according to George M. Wheatly of the American Pediatrics Association, "there were 94 deaths and 165 cases of childhood lead poisoning ... in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Baltimore."
Reports from health departments, publicized in the popular press, were demonstrating the widespread nature of the lead paint hazard In 1952 the LIA collected "nearly 500 newspaper clippings featuring lead poisoning, often in sizable headlines. In 1956 the LIA noted that a headline in the New York Daily News, "Lead Poisoning Killed 10 Kids in Brooklyn in '55, Highest Toll in the City," was "based largely on data from the Health Department. In addition to "the common run of newspaper studies on childhood and other types of plumbism," the LIA noted 2 "items of adverse publicity transcending [them] in importance:' In July 1956 Parade magazine, which reached more than 7 million readers of 50 newspapers across the country, ran an article titles, "Don't Let YOUR Child Get Lead Poisoning," and the CBS television network carried a broadcast on childhood lead poisoning.
Next: Blaming the Victims
