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The galling thing is that this really should have been a much smaller problem, since the health issue with lead paint has been known since the early 20th centur

The galling thing is that this really should have been a much smaller problem, since the health issue with lead paint has been known since the early 20th century. Many countries started banning it for interior use around then, e.g. France in 1909, and the UK in 1926. The US eventually did so too, but not until 1978, meaning that a whole bunch of post-WW2 buildings were painted with lead-containing paint, when that was already well known to be a bad idea by that time. There would still be some old residences with lead paint even if it had been phased out in the 1920s, but the numbers would have been much lower. (Lead pipes have a similar history, phased out in many countries by the 1910s-20s, but installed in the US up until the 1960s.)

ideonexus 11y ago
I highly recommend the Neil DeGrasse Tyson Cosmos episode "The Clean Room" [1], which is about the prevalence of lead gasoline saturating our environment so thoroughly with lead that researcher Clair Patterson's research on the age of the Earth was rendered nearly impossible. Patterson made it his mission to get lead out of gasoline for the detrimental cognitive effects it would have on the populace, but corporations fought him (with the same tactics they use to fight climate scientists today) and lead was not phased out of gasoline until the mid-1970s [2]. It's unfortunate, research in recent years has shown a stronger and stronger positive correlation between lead in the environment during childhood and violent crime later in life [3][4][5]. This is why what happened in Flint Michigan is a crime against society. That community is going to suffer the consequences of the lead in their water supply for an entire generation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead [3] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbau... [4] http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_M... [5] http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_M...

ideonexus 11y ago

I highly recommend the Neil DeGrasse Tyson Cosmos episode "The Clean Room" [1], which is about the prevalence of lead gasoline saturating our environment so thoroughly with lead that researcher Clair Patterson's research on the age of the Earth was rendered nearly impossible. Patterson made it his mission to get lead out of gasoline for the detrimental cognitive effects it would have on the populace, but corporations fought him (with the same tactics they use to fight climate scientists today) and lead was not phased out of gasoline until the mid-1970s [2]. It's unfortunate, research in recent years has shown a stronger and stronger positive correlation between lead in the environment during childhood and violent crime later in life [3][4][5]. This is why what happened in Flint Michigan is a crime against society. That community is going to suffer the consequences of the lead in their water supply for an entire generation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead [3] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbau... [4] http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_M... [5] http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2007_Env_Res_Author_M...