It's completely an incorrect statement and this has been studied at great lengths any place there is molten lead / lead alloys. At normal atmospheric pressure,

It's completely an incorrect statement and this has been studied at great lengths any place there is molten lead / lead alloys. At normal atmospheric pressure, lead does not boil until over 1700 degrees C. These people constantly mistake melting point with boiling point. Unless you have very low partial pressures, there is no lead being gassed off when you melt lead at normal liquid lead temperatures. When people 'smell' something when soldering or pouring molten lead, the are smelling aeromatics that are gassing off the materials, not lead particles suspended in air. The overwhelming danger, and the reason so many people who did work with lead back in the day have high blood levels of lead, is simple contact via their hands with the materials. This guy was likely picking up lead lines, lead ingots to melt, leaded solder all day and then not washing his hands before eating lunch, or rubbing his eyes, etc. In rare cases dust with lead particles could have been inhaled but this is even pretty rare unless they were literally belt sanding lead alloy metals in an enclosed space.