This book is about an ongoing grand human experiment in which we as a society are unwitting subjects. It is about a test that is taking place on all of us, a test of thousands of existing materials and chemicals, like mercury and PCBs, and new chemicals and materials whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects are unknown. None of the industries that are introducing these new chemicals and materials have told us that they are unsure of the potential harm these products may cause, nor have we consented to be part of this “study.”
We tell of this grand experiment through the modern history of the oldest and perhaps most widely dispersed environmental toxin, lead, a material that has ofttimes been marketed as an essential ingredient in industrial society. For the past hundred years mining concerns, pigment manufacturers, the auto and chemical industries, and a host of other companies have based their profits on this material. But for the past hundred years it has also been known that lead was killing workers in the factories that used it and children in the homes that were painted with it. Now scientists are learning that even those adults who thought they had escaped its immediate effects are at higher risk of heart disease, kidney damage, and even dementia. In Deceit and Denial, we detailed the early history of the industry’s knowledge of lead’s dangers, showing how lead was sold to the American public through advertisements and marketing campaigns that “catered to the children” and portrayed lead products as essential to American life.
This new book takes a wider view. It attempts to show how, in the case of lead, growing scientific understanding of the effects of the grand experiment has led to the “Lead Wars” of the title—sharp contests among advocates for children’s well-being, the lead industry and other interests that have played out in federal, state, and local government; the media; the courts; and the university. These contests have involved everything from the meaning of disease, primary prevention, and abatement to who should bear responsibility for risk and poisoning in the nation. For a century, children, poisoned primarily by leaded gasoline fumes and lead paint in their homes, have borne the overwhelming burden of this grand experiment in the form of permanent brain damage, school failure, loss of intelligence, and even death.
In these contests over lead exposure the public health profession has played a critical role, and it accordingly has a prominent position in this book; the struggles within it offer a microcosm of the contending forces as they have played out in the larger society over how best to regulate our environment and how to protect our children. As we showed in our earlier work, the lead industry ensured that children would be forced, as one physician put it, “to live in a lead world.”4 But the task of protecting children was left to a public health profession divided within itself that, despite some remarkable successes, has neither the resources nor the authority to do what’s needed on its own. The remedies that do exist have so far proven to be politically unfeasible. In the meantime, the nation continues to sacrifice thousands of children yearly, deeming them not worthy of our protection.
Acknowledgments
The journey we have taken over the past decade writing about the lead wars has given us the opportunity to meet and work with an extraordinary group of dedicated people. We have gotten to know and to learn from public health scientists who, at various times, have been invaluable guides through the maze of the science and politics as well as the moral and ethical dimensions of our story. We are indebted to the people we have interviewed and who provided us with primary documents, including minutes of meetings at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other government agencies and public forums.
Paul Mushak was particularly helpful, forwarding boxes of documents from his personal files as well as providing us with extremely useful interviews. He generously and quickly responded to our numerous requests for information and clarification as we drafted portions of our book. Bruce Lanphear has also been an invaluable source of information and critical comment. He twice read the entire manuscript and provided detailed and thoughtful criticisms that have proved enormously important to us. Dave Jacobs, whose work with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was a critical part of lead’s history but largely lies outside of this account, was another extremely generous source. We spent days in his home sorting through the files he had accumulated from his years at HUD as well as other boxes of material of his wife, Kathryn R. Mahaffey, whose work on the dangers of mercury, lead, and other heavy metals while at various government agencies (including the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the EPA), deserves its own special attention. We will never forget Dave’s generosity, despite his still-recent loss. Don Ryan, founding executive director of the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, and whose career we briefly outline, was another important source and generous colleague. He too gave unstintingly of his time, documents, and insights. One of the special pleasures we had was visiting Jane Lin-Fu at her home in suburban Washington, D.C. The day we spent with her provided us with invaluable information and perspectives on her efforts to awaken the federal government to the lead-poisoning epidemic. Herbert Needleman, of course, is a hero for public health practitioners, both for his pioneering research as well as his willingness to confront powerful forces that sought to undermine his work. We are forever grateful for his advice over the years. Two of the early pioneers, then young researchers, Philip Landrigan and Ellen Silbergeld, were always supportive and enthusiastic about our efforts, helping us understand how important it was to get the science right and always explaining how their scientific work was part of a broader effort to improve the lives of Americans.
Over the years, chance encounters played a role that could not possibly be predicted. New York’s subway system, always a source of amusements and interactions among the city’s citizens, led us to strike up morning conversations with Robert Mellins, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia. Through these discussions we learned that he began his career with the U.S. Public Health Service in Chicago, documenting and treating lead-poisoned children. We had referred to his work, but only through the happy accident of meeting him on the 7:30 AM Broadway local did we put two and two together. He soon sent us his personal files from the early 1950s, which again gave us insight into the importance of lead in the lives of pediatricians and public health workers during that decade and beyond.
It is not uncommon to hear plaintiffs’ attorneys be denigrated as “ambulance chasers” solely interested in exploiting the legal system and their clients. But over the years we have developed a very different view of plaintiffs’ lawyers, many of whom decided to represent workers, children, and consumers, people who otherwise would never have had a voice in the courts or the history books. In fact, many of the lawyers we met are truly public health advocates dedicated to their clients, particularly the children. Neil Leifer, Jack McConnell (who has since been appointed by President Obama as a federal district court judge for the District of Rhode Island), Fidelma Fitzpatrick, Robert McConnell,