“Lead Poisoning - the Silent Epidemic”-
[Selected] quotes from video by Joan
LUCKHARDT
Quotes selected and transcribed by Michelle Calvert-Kilburn, Education Officer and
President, The LEAD Group Inc, from the early 1990s video produced for the New
Jersey Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. The full transcript and video have been
web-published by The LEAD Group Inc at:
https://lead.org.au/bblp/silent-epidemic.html;
ACCESSIBLE VIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcenQajyG9g
Dr. Steven MARCUS, MD, Director New Jersey Poison Control Centre.
“All lead is too much lead. There is not a single body system, there is not a
single enzyme within the human body or for that matter any animal that I
know of that requires lead.
Lead is always considered a contaminate.”
There is just about no level of lead that any individual can have that we cannot
demonstrate that it is causing some problem.
Dr. Michael WEITZMAN MD, Boston City Hospital:
“I think that it is important that people recognise that as we’ve become more
sophisticated over the past two to three decades that people have realised that
there are a wide range of effects of lead poisoning and that probably no level of
lead is safe for children.”
Dr. John ROSEN, MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine:
“I think it is very important to understand that lead, per se, at the
concentrations that we’re seeing, even at very low concentrations which are
even barely measurable, has the capability of irrevocably impairing that child
for life.”
Dr. Joseph GRAZIANO, Ph.D., Columbia University
“The firing cap of a bullet has a lead compound in it. That little puff of smoke
that you see when a gun is fired contains lead and so men who work at the
firing range, who are around this kind of smoke all day, do get exposed to
quite high levels of lead in an indoor firing range.”
Robert K. TUCKER, Ph.D., New Jersey Department of Environmental
Protection.
Marine applications and painting bridges - it will only be when the realisation
comes that these are additional unacceptable sources of lead and when it can
be shown that these are also exposure sources to children that are causing
health effects, unacceptable health effects, I think then the pressure will be put
on to phase out lead in these other uses.
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Dr. John GRAEF MD, Boston Children’s Hospital
“If you bring lead along when a child is 12 months, 13 or 14 months is learning
to acquire speech - it’s like putting glue into the gas tank of an engine - it will
slow down in rather selected ways different parts of that process. Now if you
continue that slowing down over a period of several months - then by the time
you come out the other end you’ve already gummed up the learning process
for that child and as far as we know this is an irreversible gumming - it’s not
something that you can turn the clock back on.”
Dr. Steven MARCUS, MD, Director New Jersey Poison Control Centre.
“Lead interfering with brain function during that period of time interferes
therefore with the acquisition of language and the closest link to future
intelligence is the acquisition of language.
So you have a double whammy, you have a child that is undergoing a
tremendous amount of development during that period of time and he is also
at the stage where he explores his environment with his mouth and so
therefore is more likely to put something in his mouth and if there is lead
around he is more likely to put lead into his mouth and then get damaged at
the time where he is undergoing this incredible amount of development.
So that the child is at a tremendous risk for future defects because of that little
window of vulnerability between about a year and three years of age.”
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