The Secret History of Lead (Pt-2)

by Jamie Lincoln Kitman | March 2, 2000
(This piece appeared originally in The Nation) 

Alfred Sloan, ca 1920

You can choose whether to smoke, but you can't pick the air you breathe, even if it is contaminated by lead particles from automobile exhaust. Seventy-five years ago, well-known industrialists like GM's Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering (remembered today for having founded the prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) and the powerful brothers Pierre and Irénée du Pont added to their substantial fortunes and did the planet very dirty by disregarding the common-sense truth that no good can come from burning a long-known poison in internal-combustion engines.

The steady emergence of improved methodology and finer, more sensitive measuring equipment has allowed scientists to prove lead's tragic toll with increasing precision. The audacity of today's lead-additive makers' conduct mounts with each new study weighing in against them. Because lead particles in automobile exhaust travel in wind, rain and snow, which know no national boundaries, lead makers and refiners who peddle leaded gasoline knowingly injure not only the local populations using their product but men, mice and fish tens of thousands of miles distant.

GM and Standard Oil sold their leaded gasoline subsidiary, the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, to Albemarle Paper in 1962, while Du Pont only cleaned up its act recently, but all hope to leave their leaded gasoline paternity a hushed footnote to their inglorious pasts.

The principal maker of lead additive today the Associated Octel Company of Ellesmere Port, England) and its foremost salesmen (Octel and the Ethyl corporation of Richmond, Virginia) acknowledge what they see as a political reality: Their product will one day be run out of business. But they plan to keep on selling it in the Third World profitably until they can sell it no longer. They continue to deny lead's dangers while overrating its virtues, reprising the central tenets of the lead mythology chartered by GM, Du Pont and Standard lifetimes ago.

These mighty corporations should pay Ethyl and Octel for keeping their old lies alive. They'll need them, in their most up-to-the-minute and media-friendly fashion: Because of the harm caused by leaded gasoline they have been joined to a class-action suit brought in a circuit court in Maryland against the makers of that other product of lead's excruciating toxic reign: lead paint. Along with the makers of lead paint and the lead trade organizations with whom they both once worked in close concert, suppliers and champions of lead gasoline additives--Ethyl, Du Pont and PPG--have been named as defendants in the suit.

Though the number of cases of lead poisoning has been falling nationwide, the lead dust in exhaust spewed by automobiles in the past century will continue to haunt us in this one, coating our roads, buildings and soil, subtly but indefinitely contaminating our homes, belongings and food.

The problem with lead

 Lead is poison, a potent neurotoxin whose sickening and deadly effects have been known for nearly 3,000 years and written about by historical figures from the Greek poet and physician Nikander and the Roman architect Vitruvius to Benjamin Franklin. Odorless, colorless and tasteless, lead can be detected only through chemical analysis. Unlike such carcinogens and killers as pesticides, most chemicals, waste oils and even radioactive materials, lead does not break down over time. It does not vaporize, and it never disappears.

For this reason, most of the estimated 7 million tons of lead burned in gasoline in the United States in the twentieth century remains--in the soil, air and water and in the bodies of living organisms. Worldwide, it is estimated that modern man's lead exposure is 300 to 500 times greater than background or natural levels. Indeed, a 1983 report by Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution concluded that lead was dispersed so widely by man in the twentieth century that "it is doubtful whether any part of the earth's surface or any form of life remains uncontaminated by anthropogenic [man-made] lead."

While lead from mining, paint, smelting and other sources is still a serious environmental problem, a recent report by the government's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry estimated that the burning of gasoline has accounted for 90 percent of lead placed in the atmosphere since the 1920s. (The magnitude of this fact is placed in relief when one considers the estimate of the US Public Health Service that the associated health costs from a parallel problem--the remaining lead paint in America's older housing--total in the multibillions.)

Classical acute lead poisoning occurs at high levels of exposure, and its symptoms--blindness, brain damage, kidney disease, convulsions and cancer--often leading, of course, to death, are not hard to identify. The effects of pervasive exposure to lower levels of lead are more easily miscredited; lead poisoning has been called an "aping disease" because its symptoms are so frequently those of other known ailments.

Children are the first and worst victims of leaded gas; because of their immaturity, they are most susceptible to systemic and neurological injury, including lowered IQs, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity, behavioral problems and interference with growth. Because they often go undetected for some time, such maladies are particularly insidious.

In adults, elevated blood-lead levels are related to hypertension and cardiovascular disease, particularly strokes, heart attacks and premature deaths. Lead exposure before or during pregnancy is especially serious, harming the mother's own body, affecting fetal development and frequently leading to miscarriage. In the eighties the EPA estimated that the health damages from airborne lead cost American society billions each year.

In Venezuela, where the state oil company sold only leaded gasoline until 1999, a recent report found 63 percent of newborn children with blood-lead levels in excess of the so-called safe levels promulgated by the US government.

Next, learn how a cheap, easily accessible additive to prevent 'knock' was abandoned by industry in favor of a more profitable, if deadly alternative.

Clint Didier Panders to the Gun Nuts

Clint Didier addresses some of the 1,500 gun owners and enthusiasts attending the Guns Across America rally at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013. Didier told the crowd they should bury food, resources, ham radios and everything you will need to survive independently in an uncertain future. “This president is not my president,” he said. The organization held events at capitol buildings in many states to show support for the 2nd Amendment and opposition to new gun control measures. Photo by Daniel Berman/www.bermanphotos.com

Owed an Apology

Clint Didier says a lot of buffoonish things. Most can be forgiven as inflated campaign rhetoric or echoes from the Glenn Beck playbook of conspiracy theories. But when Didier insists that global warming and human influence on it is a hoax, he is calling our family, friends, and neighbors frauds and liars. Many of the people contributing to climate science and the overwhelming evidence that human activities are warming the planet are scientists at PNNL, researchers at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, and at the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State, as well as many other northwest universities and colleges. These are intelligent, dedicated people to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for enhancing our understanding of global warming and the threat it poses. Mr. Didier owes them an apology.

Communicating Climate Science

This is an interesting discussion in RealClimate on the Victor & Kennel article in Nature titled "Ditch the 2 °C warming goal."

Another interesting article is one in the September 20-21 WSJ Review by Steven E. Koonin, former DOE Undersecretary for Science in President Obama's 1st term. His article is headlined, "Climate Science is Not Settled." The crux of the matter for Koonin is not whether the climate is changing, nor whether human activities are influencing that change, but rather how the climate will change over the next century under both natural and human influences.

In my view, these articles and others I've seen on climate change herald a change in the dialogue from global warming isn't happening; through it's happening but it's not us; to it's happening, it's us, but we're not sure enough about it to make policy. A concomitant of the latter position is that the costs of doing anything about climate change outweigh the benefits.

This shift demands that those advocating for action on climate change promote a greater engagement of risk analysts and economic analysts in the discussion. The problem is that risk and economic analysts, much like climate scientists, write articles that are only read by their peers. Thus, the community needs people like Neil deGrasse Tyson as spokesmen. But there aren't enough of these people to cover the bases, so the scientists themselves need to become more proficient (and, of course, active) in communicating their research to lay persons. As it happens, there's a workshop on this in San Francisco, 15-19 December 2014. The deadline to apply is the end of this month, October 31, 2014.

A "Testy Exchange"

The Tri-City Herald (9/24/14) used the incident of a man brandishing a gun in a dispute over a parking space to highlight plans for expanded parking at the Kadlec Regional Medical Center. The photo accompanying the article was captioned, “Limited parking near Kadlec leads to testy exchange.”

“Testy exchange?” Have we become so inured to gun violence in America that brandishing a gun in a dispute over a parking space is labeled “testy?” Have we lost our collective mind? Or have we just lost heart over the seeming inability to do anything about America’s gun violence?

In the same week we read about the “testy exchange” in a hospital parking lot, we read about a Florida man who shot his daughter and six grandchildren to death, then killed himself. We read about a “weapons enthusiast” in Pennsylvania who shot to death a Pennsylvania police officer and wounded another in an ambush.

As of the writing of this piece, other “testy exchanges” since January 1, 2014, have resulted in 8,972 gun deaths and 16,293 injuries.

It’s time we overcame the pernicious influence of the NRA and the gun industry and did something about America’s gun violence, at least here in Washington. Pass I-594.

Auroa Forecast Reimagined

The Sixth Extinction

I-591 vs I-594

With no good reason for passing Initiative-591, and defeating Initiative-594, the gun lobby resorts to the well-worn but widely accepted NRA shibboleths; registry and confiscation.

Let’s get somethings straight. Despite the inflammatory rhetoric incorporated in Philip Watson’s 8/31/14 argument for passing I-591, the much needed Initiative-594 would not create or enable a gun registry, nor enable future confiscation of lawfully owned firearms. Firearms cannot be seized without due process, and I-594 does not change that. Law enforcement is not now permitted to “enter your home and search your bedroom...without a warrant or court order,” nor would they be so authorized under I-594, no matter what the object of the search. There is no sensible reason for not passing I-594, and no good reason to pass I-591, which would prohibit Washingtonians from determining their own future.

I-594 is straight-forward. “All firearms sales or transfers are subject to background checks unless specifically exempted by federal or state law.” This requirement applies to all sales or transfers in whole or in part in Washington, including sales and transfers at gun shows and online. There are numerous exemptions that serve to protect Second Amendment rights, including the fact that gifts between family members are exempt from the background check.

I-594 is a step forward in protecting us from gun violence by criminals and the mentally ill. I-591 is a leap backward.

Vote "YES" on I-594. Vote "No" on I-591.