Lack of a comprehensive lead-safety
program placed workers at risk
This
website originally published at www.bellsystemleadpoisoning.com and
re published with kind permission on www.lead.org.au
The
library on this page contains computer files of scanned manuals,
reports, pamphlets, transcripts, etc. cited as references in
narratives and stories on this web site. Only files that do not
knowingly infringe copyright have been included. Visitors may
download any file. This library is a work in progress and may be
added to from time to time.
On
May 20, 1925 the United States Public Health Service hosted a
conference of physicians, leaders from public health and labor, oil
industry executives, and government researchers, in
Washington DC. The purpose of the conference was to determine
"whether or not there is a public health question in the
manufacture, distribution, or use of tetraethyl lead
gasoline". The gasoline was sold at service
stations as "leaded gasoline" or simply as "Ethyl". The proceedings of this conference are
considered a seminal
event in the history of lead exposure and lead poisoning in the
United States.
The transcript of that
entire meeting has been included here. Due to the size of the
computer file the transcript has been broken into eight segments.
Each segment may be downloaded. The segments may then be reassembled
into a single document using available software, if
desired.
As American factories churned out war
material, the American Public Health Association’s Committee on Lead
Poisoning, while faithfully sounding the alarm on the ongoing
problem of occupational lead poisoning, had by 1943 already shifted
support away from workers and towards management. Whether intended
or not this change - made obvious by comparing the committee’s
published guidance from that year with that from 1930 -by the nation’s preeminent public health watchdog group,
would have made any claim of disability from lead poisoning much
harder to prove at a time when unprotected lead exposure was in
sharp ascent.
Concerns about lead poisoning's long
term consequences, suspected but unproven in the middle of the last
century and treated with derision and scorn in the 1943 document but
with respect and caution in the 1930 document, have subsequently
been shown to be valid. Read the American Public Health
Association’s Committee on Lead Poisoning’s guidance from APHA
LEAD Poisoning 1930 and
APHA
Occupational Lead Exposure and Lead Poisoning 1943.