5 ms·

This is extremely cool, although it's a little unnerving to see people working with so much lead with bare hands, especially considering a lot of them had the j

This is extremely cool, although it's a little unnerving to see people working with so much lead with bare hands, especially considering a lot of them had the job for decades. Was lead poisoning an occupational hazard among typesetters?

ttul 9y ago
This was my first thought. Although, they were also exposed to enormously high levels of lead just walking around outside because of leaded gasoline.
opencl 9y ago
Solid lead is not really a problem if you wash your hands before eating after handling it because it doesn't absorb through the skin. Whether or not these people actually did that, I have no idea. But to this day there's still plenty of solid lead stuff that hasn't been banned: fishing weights, bullets, etc. The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation: soldering results in inhaling lead fumes, machining/sanding lead resulted in inhaling lead dust, exhaust from cars using leaded gas (this was the big one that affected basically everyone), etc.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  Lead bullets are actually slowly starting to get banned. California is phasing in a ban on their use in hunting, for instance (see https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Nonlead-Ammunition https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Nonlead-Ammunition), and the Obama Administration's Interior Department issued a ban on their use in federal wildlife refuges. That latter one was later repealed by the Trump Administration (see http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322058-interior-secretary-repeals-ban-on-lead-ammunition http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322058-interior...), but given the hazards lead poses to the environment that's unlikely to be the last word we ever hear on the subject. Beyond hunting, the military is moving in the same direction; the Army has switched to using lead-free bullets as its standard rifle ammunition (https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/5/21/testing-the-army-s-m855a1-standard-ball-cartridge/ https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/5/21/testing-...), for example.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    But surely that's due to environmental pollution, not any (human) health concerns?
    - jcranmer 9y ago
      Yes, environmental, not human, concerns are the primary reason for banning lead bullets.
- biggieshellz 9y ago
  The amount of lead fumes you'll inhale from soldering is minimal -- the temperature at which the work is done is almost always below the temperature at which the lead will vaporize. See https://diamondenv.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/lead-exposure-during-soldering/ https://diamondenv.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/lead-exposure-du... -- low-temperature melting of lead (below 500 degrees Celsius) "is not liable to result in significant exposure to lead".
  - jjt-yn_t 9y ago
    We had one linotype man in the shop. Several times yearly I'd be tasked on the back open air dock to melt down the lead type in a cauldron of sorts as his assistant. No ones job in that shop was without low pay occupational hazards... save, by necessity probably, the owners...
  - azinman2 9y ago
    There is no safe amount of lead.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation In addition to those mechanisms, I think another popular one is cigarette smoking. If you were handling lead, it could get absorbed into the cigarette and inhaled that way.
kyoob 9y ago
I got to take a tour of a little "Newseum" in the New York Times building that displayed some of the lead lines and brass matrices. One person on the tour asked if printers got sick from handling lead and our guide said, "Oh, yes!" People are surprised how industrial the process used to be, and how tough and unregulated industrial jobs were back in the 70's and the decades prior. Our guide told us that in the old NY Times building (the one shown in this film) there was a hospital on the 13th floor for people who got burned or (his word) mangled during the hot type process. The New York Times had doctors on staff for printers who got hurt badly enough that an ambulance ride uptown would take too long. A couple of the workers in the movie are wearing paper hats. That's to keep ink that's floating around in the air out of their hair. No masks! But at least their hair would be clean.
jcranmer 9y ago
Lead isn't quite the danger that people think it is--a lump of solid lead that you hold with your hands isn't going to hurt you. The problem is when you ingest lead flakes or dissolved lead (lead compounds tend to be weakly soluble, but this is pH-dependent--that's what caused problems in Flint). The real danger in the newsroom is in the hot metal press, because you've got hot metal (likely causing some problematic airborne lead) running around at high speeds. The composing proofs themselves are going to be very minor in comparison to the linotype and printing machines, which are going to be occupational safety hazards for sure.
biggieshellz 9y ago
More unnerving to me is seeing people around all that noise without hearing protection. They mention in the video that many of the printers were deaf -- I wouldn't be surprised if those that weren't to start, ended up that way!
- jbuzbee 9y ago
  My father ran a newspaper and he said that the state school for the deaf trained linotype operators. It was a good job for them because the high noise-level wouldn't be an issue.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

ttul 9y ago

This was my first thought. Although, they were also exposed to enormously high levels of lead just walking around outside because of leaded gasoline.

opencl 9y ago

Solid lead is not really a problem if you wash your hands before eating after handling it because it doesn't absorb through the skin. Whether or not these people actually did that, I have no idea. But to this day there's still plenty of solid lead stuff that hasn't been banned: fishing weights, bullets, etc. The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation: soldering results in inhaling lead fumes, machining/sanding lead resulted in inhaling lead dust, exhaust from cars using leaded gas (this was the big one that affected basically everyone), etc.

smacktoward 9y ago
Lead bullets are actually slowly starting to get banned. California is phasing in a ban on their use in hunting, for instance (see https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Nonlead-Ammunition https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Nonlead-Ammunition), and the Obama Administration's Interior Department issued a ban on their use in federal wildlife refuges. That latter one was later repealed by the Trump Administration (see http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322058-interior-secretary-repeals-ban-on-lead-ammunition http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322058-interior...), but given the hazards lead poses to the environment that's unlikely to be the last word we ever hear on the subject. Beyond hunting, the military is moving in the same direction; the Army has switched to using lead-free bullets as its standard rifle ammunition (https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/5/21/testing-the-army-s-m855a1-standard-ball-cartridge/ https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/5/21/testing-...), for example.
- mseebach 9y ago
  But surely that's due to environmental pollution, not any (human) health concerns?
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    Yes, environmental, not human, concerns are the primary reason for banning lead bullets.
biggieshellz 9y ago
The amount of lead fumes you'll inhale from soldering is minimal -- the temperature at which the work is done is almost always below the temperature at which the lead will vaporize. See https://diamondenv.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/lead-exposure-during-soldering/ https://diamondenv.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/lead-exposure-du... -- low-temperature melting of lead (below 500 degrees Celsius) "is not liable to result in significant exposure to lead".
- jjt-yn_t 9y ago
  We had one linotype man in the shop. Several times yearly I'd be tasked on the back open air dock to melt down the lead type in a cauldron of sorts as his assistant. No ones job in that shop was without low pay occupational hazards... save, by necessity probably, the owners...
- azinman2 9y ago
  There is no safe amount of lead.
wyldfire 9y ago
> The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation In addition to those mechanisms, I think another popular one is cigarette smoking. If you were handling lead, it could get absorbed into the cigarette and inhaled that way.

kyoob 9y ago

I got to take a tour of a little "Newseum" in the New York Times building that displayed some of the lead lines and brass matrices. One person on the tour asked if printers got sick from handling lead and our guide said, "Oh, yes!" People are surprised how industrial the process used to be, and how tough and unregulated industrial jobs were back in the 70's and the decades prior. Our guide told us that in the old NY Times building (the one shown in this film) there was a hospital on the 13th floor for people who got burned or (his word) mangled during the hot type process. The New York Times had doctors on staff for printers who got hurt badly enough that an ambulance ride uptown would take too long. A couple of the workers in the movie are wearing paper hats. That's to keep ink that's floating around in the air out of their hair. No masks! But at least their hair would be clean.

jcranmer 9y ago

Lead isn't quite the danger that people think it is--a lump of solid lead that you hold with your hands isn't going to hurt you. The problem is when you ingest lead flakes or dissolved lead (lead compounds tend to be weakly soluble, but this is pH-dependent--that's what caused problems in Flint). The real danger in the newsroom is in the hot metal press, because you've got hot metal (likely causing some problematic airborne lead) running around at high speeds. The composing proofs themselves are going to be very minor in comparison to the linotype and printing machines, which are going to be occupational safety hazards for sure.

biggieshellz 9y ago

More unnerving to me is seeing people around all that noise without hearing protection. They mention in the video that many of the printers were deaf -- I wouldn't be surprised if those that weren't to start, ended up that way!

jbuzbee 9y ago
My father ran a newspaper and he said that the state school for the deaf trained linotype operators. It was a good job for them because the high noise-level wouldn't be an issue.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]