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The following is a resolution by the American Public Health Association holding the lead paint   industry responsible for our child lead poisoning problem.


Responsibilities of the Lead Pigment Industry to Support Efforts to Address Lead Poisoning

01/01/1997
9704

The American Public Health Association,  
Noting that the US Department of Health and Human Services considers lead poisoning to be one of the most common and serious environmental diseases in young children in the US, completely preventable;l and  

Noting that early and recent research has found neurodevelopmental delays in children at increasingly lower levels of lead exposure;2-12 and  

Recognizing that 4.4% of children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels above 10 mcg/dl;13 and  

Noting that children who live in poorly maintained, older housing are at disproportionate risk of being lead-poisoned;1,13,14 and  

Noting that the single most important source of lead poisoning in children in the US is lead paint;1,14 and  

Noting that over 50 million housing units in the US have lead paint;15 and  

Noting that the cost of abating the nation's residential lead paint hazards and treating the short- and long-term effects of lead poisoning is many billions of dollars,15 and

that there is no source to fund abatement efforts on a consistent, large-scale and long-term basis, which means that the public health problem will remain fundamentally unaddressed; and  

Understanding that lead paint was recognized as a source of lead poisoning in young children as early as 1904;16 and

Being aware that scores of articles on child lead paint poisoning were published in medical and scientific journals between 1904 and 1950;17,18 and  

Noting that the major lead paint and lead pigment manufacturers became well aware of the dangers of lead paint to children in the early 1900s, yet continued to sell lead paint well beyond 1950;17 and

Understanding that lead pigment manufacturers, despite the knowledge of the hazards, continued campaigns to promote and increase the sale of lead-based paint and minimize the public and governmental knowledge of the hazards;17,19 and  

Recalling that the principle of "polluter pays" is well-established in cases of environmental damage and public health problems, some examples being: tobacco (taxes, state government law suits);20-23 asbestos (governmental24 and private law suits); Superfund (trust fund, governmental law suits);25 Florida Everglades pollution from sugar production (state constitutional amendment requiring that the polluter pay);26 and  

Noting that over the 1920-1936 period alone, the lead pigment industry sold over $455 million (in 1920-1936 dollars) worth of white lead pigment;27,28 and  

Noting that the largest manufacturers of lead pigment in this century, or their successors, are still in business as profitable companies (combined net assets in 1995 of approximately $30 billion)29,30 and have not been held financially accountable for the damage caused by their products; and  

Recalling that there are precedents (such as the cases of asbestos,24 cigarettes,20-23 Superfund25) for governments suing polluting companies to recover damages; and that doing so in the case of lead paint poisoning could help increase public visibility of the issue; and that doing so may help discourage corporations from engaging in future irresponsible behavior that damages the environment or the public health; and  

Recognizing that residential lead-based paint abatement has been found overall to be safe and effective in reducing children's exposure to lead,3l-34 despite some conflicting data;35,36  

Noting that data are lacking on the optimal methods of lead paint abatement to maximize safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness;  

Recognizing that HUD-proposed standards and EPA guidance levels for lead in dust and soil do not adequately protect children from sub-clinical lead toxicity. In fact, these standards and guidance levels are 4- to 10-fold higher than levels estimated to be associated with 10% of children having a blood lead level in excess of 10 mcg/dl.37
therefore

  1. Supports efforts to increase the resources devoted to lead abatement, reduction of lead hazards in housing, and community-based prevention and health education;  

2. Supports efforts to raise such resources through a variety of means including litigation against manufacturers of products that contain lead (such as lead manufacturers), legislation, negotiation, and fees;  

3. Urges the federal government to pass legislation establishing a tax on the production of lead to be used for a trust fund for removing lead paint hazards in low-income housing and for community-based prevention and risk reduction health education;  

4. Reaffirms the recommendations provided by APHA policy statement #8909: Reducing Health Risks Related to Environmental Lead Exposure; 

5. Urges the EPA to promulgate a health-based standard for house dust and residential soil that are adequate to protect preschool children from unacceptable lead exposure;  

6. Urges HUD to conduct a national survey of housing, incorporating sources of lead exposure and children's blood lead levels; and  

7. Urges HUD, EPA and CDC to collaboratively fund or conduct research on the optimal methods of abatement to maximize safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

References

1.          Centers for Disease Control. Preventing Lead Poisoning in Young Children. Atlanta: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1991.

2.          Byers R, Lord E. Late effects of lead poisoning on mental development. Am J Dis Child 1943;66:471-494.

3.          Needleman HL, Gunnoe C, Leviton A, Reed R, Peresie H, Mager C, Barrett P. Deficits in psychologic and classroom performance of children with elevated dentine lead levels. N Engl J Med 1979;300:689-695.

4.          Winneke G, Lilienthal H, Kramer U. The neurobehavioural toxicology and teratology of lead. Arch Toxicol 1996; 18(Suppl):57-70.

5.          Landrigan PJ, Todd AC, Wedeen RP. Lead poisoning. Mount Sinai J Med 1995;62:360-364.

6.          Bellinger D, Dietrich KN. Low-level lead exposure and cognitive function in children. Ped Annals 1994;23(11):600-605.

7.          Needleman HL. The current status of childhood low-level lead toxicity. Neurotoxicol 1993;14(2-3):161-166.

8.          Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The Nature and Extent of Lead Poisoning in Children in the United States: A Report to Congress, 1988. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service.

9.          Needleman HL, Gatsonis CA. Low-level lead exposure and the IQ of children. JAMA 1990;263:673-678.

10.          Schwartz J. Low-level exposure and children's IQ: A meta-analysis and search for a threshold. Environ Res 1994;65:42-55.

11.          Shukla R, Dietrich KN, Bornschein RL, Berger O, Hammond PB. Lead exposure and growth in the early preschool child. Pediatrics 1991;88:886-892.

12.          Needleman HL, Riess JA, Tobin MJ, Biesecker GE, Greenhouse JB. Bone lead levels and delinquent behavior. JAMA 1996; 275:363-369.

13.          Centers for Disease Control. Update: Blood lead levels-United States, 1991-1994. MMWR 1997;46:141-146.

14.          Sargent JD, Brown MJ, Freeman JL, Bailey A, Goodman D, Freeman DH. Childhood lead poisoning in Massachusetts communities: its association with sociodemographic and housing characteristics. Am J Public Health 1995;85:528-534.

15.          HUD. Comprehensive and Workable Plan for the Abatement of Lead-Based Paint in Privately Owned Housing. Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1990.

16.          Gibson JL. A plea for painted railings and painted walls of rooms as the source of lead poisoning amongst Queensland children. Australian Medical Gazette 1904;23:149-153.

17.          Rabin R. Warnings unheeded: a history of child lead poisoning. Am J Public Health 1989;79:1668-1674.

18.          Lin-Fu J. Lead poisoning and undue lead exposure in children: history and current status. In: Needleman HL (ed): Low Level Lead Exposure: Clinical Implications of Current Research. New York: Raven Press, 1980.

19.          Environmental Defense Fund. The Hour of Lead. Washington, DC: Environmental Defense Fund, 1992.

20.          Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Philip Morris, Inc. et al., Civil No. 95-7378, Massachusetts Superior Court.

21.          Moore v. The American Tobacco Co. et al., CN 94-1429, Chancery Court of Jackson County, Mississippi.

22.          McGraw v. The American Tobacco Co. et al., 94-C-1707, Circuit Court of Kanawha County, West Virginia.

23.          The State of Florida, Lawton M. Chiles Jr., Individually and as Governor of the State of Florida, Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and the Agency for Health Care Administration v. The American Tobacco Co. et al., CN 95-1466, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm Beach County, Florida.

24.          State v. Owens Corning Fiberglass, et al., Massachusetts Superior Court, Civil docket #90-3791-A.

25.          Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, US Congress.

26.          State of Florida Constitution, Amendment No. 5.

27.          US Bureau of Mines: Minerals Yearbook. Washington, DC: US Bureau of Mines, 1921-1935.

28.          Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter: Lead, zinc pigment sales: 1936. June 28, 1937.

29.          Moody's Investors Service. Moody's Industrial Manual. New York: Moody's Investors Service, 1996.

30.          Moody's Investors Service. Moody's OTC Industrial Manual. New York: Moody's Investors Service, 1996.

31.          Farfel MR, Chisolm JJ. An evaluation of experimental practices for abatement of residential lead-based paint: report on a pilot project. Environ Res 1991;55:199-212.

32.          Farfel MR, Chisolm JJ, Rhode CA. The long-term effectiveness of residential lead paint abatement. Environ Res 1994;66:217-221.

33.          Staes CJ, Matte T, Copley G, Flanders D, Binder S. Retrospective study of the impact of lead-based paint remediation on children's blood lead levels, St. Louis. Am J Public Health 1994;139: 1016-1026.

34.          Swindell SL, Charney E, Brown MJ, Delaney J. Home abatement and blood lead changes in children with class III lead poisoning. Clin Ped 1994;September:536-541.

35.          Farfel MR, Chisolm JJ. Health and environmental outcomes of traditional and modified practices for abatement of residential lead-based paint. Am J Public Health 1990;80:1240-1245.

36.          Aschengrau A, Beiser A, Bellinger D, Copenhafer D, Weitzman M. The impact of residential lead-based paint hazard remediation and soil lead abatement among children with mildly elevated blood lead levels. Am J Public Health 1997;87:1698-1702.

37.          Lanphear BP, Weitzman M, Winter NL, Tanner M, Yakir B, Eberly S, Emond M, Matte TD. Lead-contaminated house dust and urban children's blood lead levels. Am J Public Health 1996;86:1416-1421.

38.          Rabinowitz M, Leviton A, Needleman H, Bellinger D, Waternaux C. Environmental correlates of infant blood lead levels in Boston. Environ Res 1985;38: 96-107.

39.          Clark S, Bornschein R, Succop P, Roda S, Peace B. Urban lead exposures of children in Cincinnati, Ohio. Chemical Speciation Bioavailability 1991;3:168-171.

                   ***********************




Additional Readings

1.  Markowitz G, Rosner D. "Cater to the children": the role of the lead industry in a public health tragedy, 1900 - 1955. American Journal of Public
Health 2000; 90:36-46.*

2.  Rabin R. Warnings unheeded: a history of child lead poisoning. American Journal of Public Health 1989; 79:1668-1674.* (To read this article click the icon to the left, but if you don't have an Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here first.)

3.  Lin-Fu J. Lead poisoning and undue lead exposure in children: history and current status. In: Needleman HL (ed): Low Level Lead Exposure:
Clinical Implications of Current Research. New York: Raven Press, 1980.

4.  Burnham JC. Biomedical communication and the reaction to the Queensland childhood lead poisoning cases elsewhere in the world. Medical History 1999; 43:155-172.

5.  Environmental Defense Fund. The Hour of
Lead. Washington, DC: Environmental Defense Fund, 1992.

6.  Fee E. Public health in practice: an early confrontation with the "Silent Epidemic" of childhood lead poisoning. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science 1990; 45: 581.

*to read this article click on this link (and follow the link to "articles on the lead industry")






The United States Daily
November 20, 1930

Presenting the Official News of the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of the Federal Government and of Each of the Governments of the Forty-Eight States


Lead-free Paint on Furniture and Toys to Protect Children

Lead poisoning as a result of chewing paint from toys, cradles and woodwork is now regarded as a more frequent occurrence among children than formerly, and all children's hospitals, realizing the extent of the dangers from this source, are coming to use a lead-free paint on their beds, toys, furnishings and interior decorations, it was stated orally Nov. 19 on behalf of the Public Health Service.

Children are very susceptible to lead, it was stated, and show a higher fatality rate than adults.  Frequently, it was said, small amounts of lead which may cause only chronic lead poisoning in an older person may be of sufficient quantity to cause acute poisoning, leading to death, in an infant.

The following information was also furnished by Dr. Russell:

The most common sources of lead poisoning in children are paint on various objects within the reach of a child and lead pipes which are used to convey drinking water.  Various manufacturing companies, however, are now beginning to make paints for indoor porposes which are lead-free and lead is being replaced in pipes by other metals.

Lead poisoning in infants is not so often heard of because the condition is frequently unrecognized by physicians.  The poisoning creates certain disturbances which are common to various diseases which occur during infancy.

Acute lead poisoning in children is very painful, one of the symptoms being severe cramps in the stomach.  The poisoned child becomes intensely irritable and has convulsions and tremors.  Chronic lead poisoning leads to a gradual deterioration of numerous parts of the body.  The nervous system in general is affected and the result may be nervousness, insomnia and neuritis.  The kidneys and blood vessels are also affected.  In general, lead poisoning is apt to lead to chronic invalidism.

Children who have been exposed to lead should have a diet rich in calcium and vitamins.  Fruits are very desirable and sunshine aids greatly.











MORE OLD STUFF


...it would seem advisable to prohibit the use of lead containing paints for toys, children's furniture, and for interior work.  Such regulations have been in force in France since about 1915.
          John Ross and Alan Brown, Poisonings Common in Children - Symposium on Common Poisonings,  Canadian Public Health Journal,
1935; 26: 237-243.


R. M. a girl, aged 2 1/2 years, was admitted to the hospital because of anorexia, drowsiness and tremors of three days' duration.  For three months she had vomited, suffered from abdominal cramps and been constipated.  The history revealed that for four and a half months she had been chewing paint from the woodwork and furniture of the hose.  After admission to the hospital she remained in a stuporous state, refused food, continued to vomit almost everything taken, had constant tremors of the extemities and periodically suffered from generalized convulsions.
          Charles McKhann and Edward Vogt. Lead poisoning in children. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1933; 101:1131-1135.


In children, [lead encephalitis] is not infrequent....Encephalitis in children, as in adults, has a bad prognosis.  From available figures one concludes that the prognosis in children and the outlook for complete recovery are even somewhat worse than in adults....strenuous efforts must be devoted to eliminating lead from [children's] environment.
          Robert Kehoe (lead industry consultant).  Transactions of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Medical Association, June 12-16, 1933.


Chronic lead poisoning occurs much more frquently among infants and young children than has been generally supposed.  It would be a more prominent item in both morbidity and mortality records but for the fact that the condition is often unrecognized by physicians.  This conclusion is based upon an inquiry recently made by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company among a number of prominent pediatrists.  Large numbers of such poisonings among children were disclosed in the practice of these doctors.
          Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
Statistical Bulletin, 1930; vol. 11, no. 10., p. 4-5.







THE NEW HUD REGULATIONS: AN EXAMPLE OF WHY WE NEED TO GO AFTER THE DEEP POCKETS

A good example of why we should force the lead/paint industries to part with a good portion of their ill-gotten gains is the recent conflict over new regulations of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  These rules require, when renovations are made on federal or federally-funded housing, that certain basic precautions be taken to minimize lead exposure to the occupants.  The conflict arose between two groups that should be allies: lead poisoning and other child health advocates vs. providers of, and advocates for, low-income housing.  The former group has historically pressured HUD to provide funds and to implement regulations that would help reduce lead paint poisoning.  These latest lead regulations that call for measures to minimize lead dust exposure during renovations are one more step in that direction.  Housing advocates, on the other hand, have focused on the provision of housing for low-income populations.  The concern of this group is that such lead regulations may reduce the already scarce resources for low-income housing, particularly since personnel trained in so-called "lead-safe" procedures are in short supply.  So here we have a situation in which two groups have the welfare of essentially the same population - poor people in need of safe, decent housing - fighting over scarce resources.

Does this situation sound familiar?  Labor unions and environmentalists have been at odds for many years.  The latter want to preserve our forests and clean up our water, air and soil.  Organized labor and its allies say that's fine  but not at the cost of jobs.  Meanwhile, those who control the wealth - the industrial corporations and agribusinesses that pollute our environment, lay off workers and re-locate in cheaper regions and countries  - have benefited from this division.  Some of the farsighted union and environmental leaders have seen the advantage in uniting to oppose corporate policies.  A case in point is the so-called Superfund for workers, proposed by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, in which workers who are laid off because of regulations that prohibit or restrict the use of certain chemicals would be fully compensated and offered training in decent-paying jobs.  A few environmental organizations eventually agreed not to support environmental legislation that did not incorporate this principle.  But the potential for labor-environmental cooperation in opposition to those that control the resources truly became apparent at the anti-WTO demonstration in November, 2000 in Seattle.  There "turtles" and Teamsters marched and demonstrated together in opposition to a global system, personified by the World Trade Organization, that destroys the environment and pays the lowest wages possible.

The point, of course, is that those who ultimately caused the lead poisoning scourge and have the resources to help eliminate it should not be let off the hook, while people who may have somewhat different agendas, but who agree on the need to deal with lead paint in housing, must unite to confront the lead paint industry. 

One potential ally of lead poisoning activists is the real estate industry.  Of course, we must insist that individual property owners provide lead-safe environments, even though they may not have put the lead on their properties.  After all, a landlord who buys a house that already has electrical or plumbing violations is expected to fix them.  Nevertheless, the history of efforts to make older housing lead-free or lead-safe shows that forcing low- and medium-income property owners to comply on a large scale is not a winning proposition.  And it would seem that at least some property owners agree.  For example, when  a bill was introduced in Massachusetts in the early 1990s to facilitate lawsuits against the lead industry, one of the major real estate associations endorsed it.  More recently, a class action suit was filed by home owners in Maryland against the lead paint manufacturers.  In some circumstances, then, it may even be possible  to unite with this traditional adversary to confront an even more fundamental one.



   ********************************************



A STRATEGY FOR GETTING THE LEAD OUT

The following is a thoughtful piece on the problems and possible strategies for dealing with the lead paint problem in one state.


RI Committee on Occupational Safety & Health
News & Notesworthy 5/20001

A periodic RICOSH bulletin featuring updates, prescriptions and
descriptions of occupational and environmental health trends and
controversies.


Why Can't We Get the Lead Out??

The reason why childhood lead poisoning is so unyielding is that it is several connected problems, stratified one upon the other each bearing
its own significance and obstinacy. There is, first, the costs. Almost $10 million was spent in RI since 1994 to abate about 900 units (thats just rental units and not entire houses or whole properties). But there are almost 30,000 highly suspect units and over 300,000 statewide that contain lead paint.

The primary institutional cause of lead poisoning was the unrepentant marketing of scads of leaded products (including c ibs and children's toys) by the lead industry.  The dual benefits of Attorney General Whitehouse's suit and Senator Reed's Congressional proposal to allow the US Justice department to sue the responsible industry is that it calls to account those, at least ancestrally, morally responsible.  And it helps to address the cost issues.  There are, however, significant obstacles and opposition.

A second connected issue is that a complex of related streams feeds the pool of poisoned kids: poor housing, certain genetic predisposition,
political paralysis, cultural and dietary practice, and poverty and neighborhood viability. And yet we are mired in a response mode that address one poisoning case at a time.

And thirdly, the persistence of lead is amazing. Dust unto dust; and lead in dust is hard to remedy, but ever so easy to contact and absorb.
Children have been poisoned from activities ranging from kitchen remolding to opening and closing windows to playing on the porch!  While
we have an intuitive confidence that abating these surfaces will reduce the risk, kids have been poisoned in units certified as lead safe. Even
wood chemically stripped of lead paint may contain significant enough amounts of lead as CDC recently reported when furniture workers and their children were just so poisoned in LA.
 
Housing is a complex mix (especially in those urban areas most impacted) involving hard-nosed market forces, moving populations, complex
liability, insurance, mortgage and banking, and the attending politics that infuses code enforcement that resembles a plot in a Shakespeare play.  What has stymied traditional health practitioners and regulators is their unhappy encounter with this intractable reality.

The value of the Providence Journal's lead series(5/13-18/01) (http://projo.com/extra/lead/) may just be that we can all finally agree that the  environmental health issue of lead is at core a housing issue and that affordable quality housing and childrens' environmental health are fiercely connected.

Meanwhile, we lack both a command structure and a command strategy. That might be remedied with the establishment of a permanent assembly of the invested health and housing communities to help define an operational and changing strategy. Such a body would need serious political clout, access to all data regarding  inspections, citations, lead hazard reduction,  data measuring impact of  policy or legislative changes, funding for
research projects to better assess and evaluate programs and initiatives. The assembly would serve as a venue for proponents, activists and
authorities from other active areas to hear and discuss what other jurisdictions have done (are doing) and to discuss common problems,
projects, and strategies.  It would be a way to frankly discuss what works and what doesn't, and to help formulate more practical and strategic programs based on "evidence based medicine" to help us work towards primary prevention of lead
poisoning.


____________
RI Committee on Occupational Safety & Health
741 Westminster St.
Prov RI 02903
(401) 751-2015/jobhealth@juno.com







LEAD AND INDUSTRY-FUNDED RESEARCH

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) broadcast a program, "Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report," on the chemical industry in early 2001.  It revealed for the general public how chemical companies have routinely hidden the dangers of their products to both consumers and workers.

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Mt. Sinai Hospital's occupational health program in New York City and prominent researcher of environmental and occupational hazards.


MOYERS: Have you come to any insight into industry-sponsored science?

LANDRIGAN: About 15 years ago, a colleague and I did an analysis of studies in the medical literature that looked at the impact of lead on the brains of children. The question that all of these studies were trying to answer was whether low-level exposure to lead could cause loss of IQ, change of behavior in children. We had about 40 studies to examine.
What we found was that of 20 studies supported by the industry, every one of those 20 studies claimed that there was no relationship between low-level lead exposure and loss of IQ. Of the 20 or so studies that had come from university groups, all but one found that there was a connection between exposure to lead and loss of intelligence in children. Then, when we looked a bit deeper, we found that the one academic study that failed to find a connection was, in fact, a study that had been sponsored by the industry. So we wrote that up. We published it as a letter to the editor in Lancet, which is a medical journal published in England.

MOYERS: What did you learn from that?

LANDRIGAN: The conclusion is that the piper pays the tune.

MOYERS: And gets the melody the piper wants?

LANDRIGAN: Yeah.

MOYERS: Do you think the public understands that science can be manipulated?

LANDRIGAN: No. I don't think that the general public understands that at all. I think the public has an image of scientists as a disembodied people in white coats, such as the coat I am wearing today, who are doing honest work in laboratories. Most folks don't understand that science is a profoundly human activity, that scientists have feelings and temptations and strengths and failures like everybody else. And they don't understand that science can be bought and paid for.

MOYERS: That you can get the results you want if you determine in advance what results you want?

LANDRIGAN: Unfortunately, yes.

MOYERS: Don't you think that journalists like the one sitting in front of you, when we interview scientists, should we inform the public of the scientist's affiliation, as you are now doing in your magazine?

LANDRIGAN: I think it's good honest journalistic practice to always get both sides of a story. Journalists do it all the time, and that's good. But I think when journalists do that and when they interview scientists, it is really incumbent upon them to identify the sources of support for the scientist whom they are interviewing.
MOYERS: What would we know? What could we know if there were more independent science? Would we know sooner rather than later what some of these dangers are? Would we save lives?

LANDRIGAN: I think if there were more independent science, we would undoubtedly save lives, and we would also prevent disease that is not necessarily fatal. For example, for 50 years in this country, we were putting thousands of tons of lead out the tailpipe of automobiles, because we were using tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent in gasoline.
In the mid-1970's when the use of tetraethyl lead was at its peak, we were putting 200,000 tons of lead particles into the air in this country every year. Finally, in 1976, we began the lead phase- down. In the 20 years since the lead phase-down began, we have reduced the average blood-lead level in American children by 93 percent. As a result of that, we have raised the average IQ of American children by 3 or 4 points. That is an enormous increase in the national intelligence that has occurred over this time.

MOYERS: And you are sure that the lead was causing this adverse impact on children's intelligence?

LANDRIGAN: Absolutely sure. The independent science that was done in the '50s and the '60s and the '70s and the '80s showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that lead was reducing children's intelligence. But if we had known that 30 years sooner, we could have prevented the whole tragedy.

MOYERS: So getting the science right is obviously very important. What else should we do?

LANDRIGAN: I think the first requirement is to get the science right. We have to separate science from industry funding. The more industry funds science, the more science is going to be bent. And there is a profound ethical dimension. Scientists have to understand that the highest goal is truth. Physicians have to understand that the first principle, the bedrock of the Hippocratic Oath, is to do no harm.

MOYERS: And that is an ethical and moral matter.

LANDRIGAN: It is absolutely ethical, and it's totally moral.






RHODE ISLAND ATTORNEY GENERAL TESTIMONY


On November 13, 2001 Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse gave testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Housing and Transportation.  The following is an excerpt in which he summarizes why the lead industry has a responsibility to help pay to clean up its mess, and the applicability of the legal theory of "public nuisance."

Blood, toil, tears and sweat were Winston Churchill's exemplars of effort. In Rhode Island, the blood is given by infants and small children who must be regularly tested, and in some cases have their blood chelated. The tears are shed by family members who discover, often too late, and often despite very reasonable levels of maintenance of their homes, that their child has become lead poisoned. The toil and sweat come from the men and women of these community organizations who every day administer to the many needs of families facing these uncertainties.

Everyone in Rhode Island is working to clean up the lead paint mess. Municipal government, and thus municipal taxpayers, are pitching in. State government through many agencies, and thus state taxpayers, are pitching in. Federal efforts have been made through HUD, the EPA and the Department of Justice. Volunteers and staff of community organizations are pitching in. Families, of course, bear a terrible share of the burden: the lead poisoning of their children, the worry and woe of mothers and fathers, the displacement of families from their homes, even the minor trauma of holding your child as painful and frightening procedures are performed to test for lead poisoning or to chelate lead out of the child's blood. Landlords and homeowners are pitching in, cleaning up lead paint that may have been put on years before they bought the home. There is only one group not pitching in: the lead pigment companies who sold this toxic material for decades, profited from it, lied about it, and are now trying to evade even the most microscopic share of responsibility for cleaning up the mess they created.

After determining that the pigment companies were prepared to do essentially nothing about this problem, I filed a lawsuit, to determine what the fair share of responsibility of these companies isI know it is more than zeroand to get the companies to contribute that fair share to the remedy of this problem.

The lawsuit was filed on October 12, 1999. The defendants are The Lead Industries Association, Inc., American Cyanamid Company, Atlantic Richfield Company, E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company, The O'Brien Corporation, Conagra Grocery Products Company, The Glidden Company, NL Industries, Inc., SCM Chemicals and The Sherwin-Williams Company. The State of Rhode Island is represented by myself and my office, by a highly regarded Rhode Island law firm which represented the state with great success in litigation arising out of Rhode Island's 1991 bank failures, and by a national firm which has the depth to withstand the inevitable blizzard of paper. As Attorney General, I am directly involved in this case, guide its strategy, and successfully argued the case for the State against the motions to dismiss.

Our allegations fall into three groups. There are equitable counts; there is a statutory count under a Rhode Island state consumer protection statute; and there are a number of traditional tort counts which bear on the properties owned or maintained by the State of Rhode Island in its proprietary capacity. For example, the public nuisance count would enable the Rhode Island Superior Court within its equitable jurisdiction to impose a reasonable order allowing more rapid and complete abatement of lead paint than the state presently has resources to accomplish. As the Rhode Island General Assembly has noted: "Rhode Island presently does not have the public nor the private resources to handle the total problem."

I should point out that a public nuisance lawsuit, when brought by a responsible public official to vindicate a public harm, is not an ordinary piece of litigation. Its primary purpose is not to resolve a dispute between contending private parties, but rather to protect the public health, safety and welfare. A public nuisance lawsuit is, in some measure, an exercise of the police power of the state.

Public nuisance law in Rhode Island and in most jurisdictions in this country requires first, that there must be a public nuisance. That means there must be a harm either to a public right or to a sufficient number of members of the public as to implicate a public interest, and the harm must be serious and not merely trivial or annoying. This has been defined as an unreasonable interference that arises when "persons have suffered harm or are threatened with harm that they ought not have to bear." Second, it must be determined who is responsible for the public nuisance. The standard of responsibility is whether the defendant has created or maintained the public nuisance or contributed to or participated in the creation or maintenance of the public nuisance. Finally, if a public nuisance is proven to be a defendant's responsibility, the judge then has the authority to enter a reasonable order, consistent with the nature of the nuisance and with considerations of due process, as well as common sense and efficiency, for the protection of the public health.

What remedy do we seek that will relieve Rhode Island children of the hazard of lead paint poisoning? Ideally, all lead paint needs to be removed from residences where children may be exposed. With limited resources, the first priorities are (1) to remove lead from friction surfaces such as doors and windows, (2) to assure that repairs and maintenance are done in a way that does not expose residents to lead dust, and (3) to encapsulate lead surfaces, since it is lead's nature to chalk and form poisonous dust.

I will conclude my remarks by observing that I am just a small state Attorney General, and this lawsuit has provided me my first experience of national level spin. I will not bore you here with a description of the various characterizations of this lawsuit, characterizations of my motivations or characterizations of the facts of lead paint poisoning. It will suffice to say that we wish as quickly as possible to bring this case forward, so that we can present the state's case and the defendants can present theirs, and a decision can be made not on rhetoric or spin but on evidence and facts. One way or the other, our case will stand or fall on its factual and legal merit. We look for the outcome of that process to be a fair and sensible order requiring the defendants to contribute in a fair and sensible way to the clean up of the mess they made.

If Rhode Island is to be considered the lead paint capitol of the United States, then let it as well be considered the capitol of lead paint solutions - solutions to a silent public health menace to our children and to children throughout the United States.



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Ethically-Challenged


The following quote comes from a memo from the vice-president of the Mautz Paint Co. (a paint company based in Wisconsin, recently acquired by Sherwin-Williams).  It was written in 1978, when federal regulations lowering the amount of lead allowed in paint was about to take effect.


I want you to begin the continual program with each of your dealers of making sure their stock is rotated with the older material being sold first.

This is a very important project due to the lead regulations.  At the present time we are cleaning up our material of heavy metals and putting
this into our stock items.

When the lead regulation is finally put into effect those dealers who have old material will not be able to sell it.  The only alternative they will
have is to dump it.

Let's do our dealers a favor now by rotating their new stock..
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This memo is quoted in a legal opinion by a state appeals court judge in Wisconsin, permitting the City of Milwaukee to proceed with its lawsuit against the Mautz Paint Co. and NL Industries.
The opinion can be found here:
http://www.courts.state.wi.us/ca/opinions/03/pdf/0
3-2786.pdf.




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This website is produced by Richard Rabin.  I welcome your questions and comments.  You may reach me by e-mail at
rickrabin@rcn.com


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CHILD LEAD POISONING AND THE LEAD INDUSTRY
CHILD LEAD POISONIING: WHO'S AT FAULT - AND WHAT CAN BE DONE?

The history of child lead poisoning in the U.S. is a tragic one.  The producers of lead and lead paint were well  aware that their product was severely injuring and killing large numbers of young children as least as far back as the 1920s.  Medical journal articles reporting that children were being poisoned by lead paint in their homes began appearing the in U.S. in 1914.  After that, article after article described how children - lead-poisoned from window sills, porch railings, cribs, toys and other painted surfaces in the home - were hospitalized suffering from severe stomach cramps, paralysis, blindness, and convulsions; and many died.

By the 1930s some reports provided data on the number of cases from particular hospitals or cities.  For example, the Boston Infants' and Children's Hospital reported a total of 89 cases from 1924 to 1933.  Such numbers of hospitalized children represent but a small percentage of poisoned children since medical tests for lead poisoning were not well-developed at that time, and few physicians were familiar with the symptoms of child lead poisoning.

Besides the publication of journal articles, a good deal of other evidence (presented elsewhere in this website) strongly suggest that the manufacturers of lead paint were well aware of the dangers of their product.  Nevertheless, they continued to sell lead paint for residential use well beyond 1950.

In fact, when the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industries proposed to ban the use of lead paint inside homes in 1933, a Lead Industries Association representative met with department personnel and persuaded them not to restrict the use of lead paint.  As the industry representative said:

"It was particularly important to obtain a hearing and settlement in Massachusetts otherwise we might have been plagued with [similar regulations] in other states, affecting the use of white lead."

Because of the irresponsibility of the lead and paint companies, millions of homes have lead paint, presenting a continuing threat to the health and well-being of huge numbers of young children.  To protect the nation's children a large number of those homes will eventually have to be deleaded.


What can we do?

There are many possible ways to draw attention to this history of industry callousness, and to force the industry to pay for much of the damage it has caused.  Lawsuits, legislation, boycotts, demonstrations and company shareholder resolutions are just a few of the methods that could be used to focus public attention on the lead/paint companies and to pressure them to provide the funds to help prevent further lead poisoning of our nation's children.

(For a more extended history,  click on the icon to the left.)
                    
NAMING NAMES


Before we go any further, let's name names (kicking butt will hopefully occur in court and elsewhere).  The corporations that produced almost all of the lead pigment that went into the lead paint in the U.S. (and probably have the most to lose in any successful lawsuits) were:

NL Industries (formerly called National Lead Co., of Dutch Boy Paint fame)

Sherwin-Williams

Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) (Bought out a former lead pigment company)

Glidden

Eagle Picher (was sued and declared bankrupt for its sale of asbestos!)

However, we should not forget that many other major corporations sold lead paint for many years, while buying the lead pigment from the above corporations.  Among them are