Lead, Saturn and the Romans
Hence gout and stone afflict the human race;
Hence lazy jaundice with her saffron face; Palsy, with shaking head and tott’ring knees.
And bloated dropsy, the staunch sot’s disease;
Consumption, pale, with keen but hollow eye,
And sharpened feature, shew’d that death was nigh.
The feeble offspring curse their crazy sires, And, tainted from his birth, the youth expires.
(Description of lead poisoning by an anonymous Roman hermit, Translated by Humelbergius Secundus, 1829)(4)
Roman mythology is rich with gods and goddesses made in the image and likeness of man. One such god was Saturn. The ancient stories say that Saturn leads his brothers and sisters in a revolt against their father and he becomes king of the gods. He marries Rhea and they have six children. Because of a prediction that one day one of his children will dethrone him, Saturn eats each of his newborns until the last one, the one Rhea protects.(1)
Ancient Rome also lent Saturn’s name to a form of lead intoxication known as saturnine gout. The Romans noticed similarities between symptoms of this disorder and the irritable god, and named the disease after him. Lead touched many areas of Roman life. It made up pipes and dishes, cosmetics and coins, and paints. For winemakers in the Roman Empire, lead was an integral part of the process. When boiling crushed grapes, Roman vintners insisted on using lead pots or lead-lined copper kettles.(2)
“For, in the boiling,” wrote Roman winemaker Columella, “brazen vessels throw off copper rust which has a disagreeable flavor.”
Lead’s sweet overtones, by contrast, were thought to add complementary flavors to wine and to food as well.(3)
Eventually, as a host of mysterious maladies became more common, some Romans began to suspect a connection between the metal and these illnesses. However, the culture’s habits never changed. Roman aristocrats never dreamed of drinking wine except from a golden cup, but they thought nothing of washing down platters of lead-seasoned food with gallons of lead-adulterated wine. The result, according to many modern scholars, was the death by slow poisoning of the greatest empire the world has ever known.(5)
By the twentieth century another empire, the US, had emerged as the world’s leading producer and consumer of refined lead. According to the National Academy of Science’s report on Lead in the Human Environment, the US was, by 1980, consuming about 1.3 million tons of lead per year. This quantity, which represents roughly 40 percent of the world’s supply, translated into a usage rate of 5,221 grams of lead per American per annum: a rate of dependence on lead and lead-containing products nearly ten times greater than that of the ancient Romans! According to Jerome O. Nriagu, the world’s leading authority on lead poisoning in antiquity, the comparable Roman rate of lead usage was approximately 550 grams per person per year.
Lead in the Workplace
People who work in;
- lead smelting and refining industries
- brass/bronze foundries
- rubber products and plastics industries
- soldering, steel welding and cutting operations
- battery manufacturing plants and;
- lead compound manufacturing industries
may be exposed to lead.
- construction and demolition workers and people who work at municipal waste incinerators
- pottery and ceramics industries
- radiator repair shops, and other industries that use lead solder
- painters who sand or scrape old paint
may also be exposed.
Between 0.5 and 1.5 million workers are exposed to lead in the workplace. In California alone, more than 200,000 workers are exposed to lead. Families of workers may be exposed to higher levels of lead when workers bring home lead dust on their work clothes.
Safe Lead Threshold?
The modern understanding of the small amount of lead necessary to cause harm did not come about until the latter half of the 20th century. No safe threshold for lead exposure has been discovered—that is, there is no known amount of lead that is too small to cause the body harm.
The current threshold for lead toxicity, defined as a blood lead level of 10 μg/dL, was adopted by the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1991 and the World Health Organization in 1995. Since that time, adverse health outcomes at blood lead levels below this threshold have been well demonstrated. Most concern probably relates to children of pre-school age; an international pooled analysis has demonstrated lead-associated intellectual deficits at blood lead levels well below 10 μg/dL.
Lead and the Brain
Effective brain function depends on the efficient signaling from one neuron to the next, a process that depends on a quick release of neurotransmitters at synapses. Exposure to lead during early childhood and even later in life has long been known to affect the release of these critical neurotransmitters. However, the precise mechanism by which lead ions (Pb2+) impair this process has remained unknown. New synapses are formed throughout a healthy person’s lifespan, but there is an multitude of synapse formation during a child’s early brain development. During development, packets of pre-assembled proteins arrive at presynaptic active zones, which are highly specialized regions designed to provide fast efficient neurotransmitter release.
Memory and learning occur when the neurons and synapses reorganize and strengthen themselves through repeated usage. Disruption of this normal developmental process can impair brain function throughout life—as is the case with early lead exposure.
“What this work shows is that we are beginning to understand a comprehensive mechanism by which lead exposure alters the basic molecular biology of brain synapses,” says Dr. Guilarte, who is also Leon Hess Professor of Environmental Health Sciences.
Violent Crime
When different scientists using different approaches reach similar conclusions, it’s called ‘converging evidence’. According to Roger Masters, Chair of the Executive Committee of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research and Nelson A. Rockefeller, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and colleagues, such a body of converging evidence implicates toxic heavy metals as culprits in America’s epidemic of violent crime.
Masters and colleagues say seven studies of prison inmates all found that hair levels of either manganese or lead and cadmium were significantly higher in violent offenders than in non-violent offenders or controls. Research strongly links sub-clinical lead poisoning to learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder-both risk factors for deviant behavior, they add. Masters et al. created a dataset of all U.S. counties, integrating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory for lead and manganese, crime reports from the FBI, alcoholism statistics from the federal government, and socioeconomic and demographic data from the Census Bureau.
Controlling for such conventional factors as income, population density, and ethnic composition, environmental pollution had an independent effect on rates of violent crime, the researchers say.
In two studies of lead, Masters et al. note;
lead uptake at age 7 was significantly predictive of juvenile delinquency or increased aggression in teenage years and early adulthood.
Furthermore, the researchers say, counties with industrial lead pollution and higher than average rates of alcoholism
have rates of violent crime over three times that of the national average.
These findings were published in 1997.
In 2008, based on long-term data from a childhood lead study in Cincinnati, Ohio, Kim Dietrich, PhD, and his team have determined that elevated prenatal and postnatal blood-lead concentrations are associated with higher rates of criminal arrest in adulthood.
“Previous studies relied on indirect measures of exposure” explains Dietrich, principal investigator of the study and professor of environmental health at UC. “We have monitored this specific sub-segment of children who were exposed to lead both in the womb and as young children for nearly 30 years,” he adds.
“We have a complete record of the neurological, behavioral and developmental patterns to draw a clear association between early-life exposure to lead and adult criminal activity.”
Researchers found that individuals with increased blood-lead levels before birth and during early childhood had higher rates of arrest–for both violent and total crimes–than the rest of the study population after age 18. The strongest association between childhood blood-lead level and criminal behavior was for arrests involving acts of violence. Dietrich says that although both environmental lead levels and crime rates in the US have dropped in the past 30 years, they have not done so in a uniform way.
Lower income, inner-city children remain particularly vulnerable to lead exposure.
Inner-city Areas
Although much progress has been made in reducing the prevalence of lead poisoning in U.S. children, lead remains an important problem for poor, inner-city, minority children. Nationwide it is estimated that 4.4 percent of children age 1 to 5 years have an elevated blood lead level. African-American children are 5 times as likely to have an elevated blood lead level as white children, and approximately one-quarter of low-income minority children residing in older housing have levels considered unsafe.
While studying the environmental impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, recent Texas Tech University-led research has discovered high concentrations of lead in the poorest and oldest parts of New Orleans. While the team’s findings indicated that levels of lead frequently exceeded regulatory thresholds, further research showed that many of the contaminants were present in high concentrations before the storm season and that lead may have posed a significant risk to New Orleans residents for years before Hurricane Katrina. This is substantiated by Rabito et al who found;
The highest concentrations of lead in New Orleans were observed in soils from the poorer sections of the city. The team also discovered that 15 percent of their samples contained lead concentrations that exceeded a regulatory threshold for safety. The highest concentrations of lead were found in the oldest parts of the city.
Older Housing
What policies have been implemented by the government in relation to the dangers of lead?
One policy is not to inform the public of the dangers facing them. A House investigative subcommittee concluded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made ‘scientifically indefensible’ claims in 2004 that high lead in the water was not causing noticeable harm to the health of city residents. As terrified District parents demanded explanations for the spike in lead in their water, the CDC hurriedly published its calming analysis, knowing that it relied on incomplete, misleading blood-test results that played down the potential health impact, the investigation found.(6)
The agency acknowledged, however, that its 2004 claim that no children had been found with lead poisoning was ‘misleading’, because it referred to only one part of its study. Another part showed that children living in homes serviced by a lead pipes were more than twice as likely as other D.C. children to have unsafe lead in their blood. The House report also raises concerns about children in 9,100 residences throughout the city with partial lead-pipe replacements. Their parents may not know CDC research has found that children in such homes are four times as likely to have elevated lead in their blood.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the subcommittee chairman, said the CDC report; ….”left the public health community with the dangerous and wrong impression that lead-contaminated water is safe for children to drink.”
While Washington maybe attempting to cover up the dangers of lead exposure to children, Senators in the state of Delaware are fast becoming alerted to the dangers. Legislation that will increase the frequency of lead-poisoning testing in high-risk children was approved on 22nd June 2010 in the state Senate. The bill now heads to the House.
Senate Bill 300, sponsored by Sen. Patricia Blevins, D-Elsmere, would require lead testing for children when they are 2 years old if the child has a high risk, including living in an older home, attending day care in an older home or having a parent who works in an industry with lead exposure.
How long will all this take to be implemented?
It may be a while yet. Take for example a rule, ordered by Congress in 1992, requiring contractors who fix up older homes and other buildings occupied by children to take simple precautions to avoid creating and spreading lead dust finally took effect in April 2010. The rule affects professional contractors who renovate or repair homes, schools or child-care centers built before 1978, when lead-based paint was banned for residential use.
Nearly 38 million U.S. homes contain some lead-based paint, Assistant EPA Administrator James Gulliford states. Gulliford acknowledged that this rule was supposed to be finalized in 1996, and said his agency had been ‘actively engaged’ in the question since then. However, this week the EPA has decided to delay enforcing a new lead-paint regulation following pressure from home builders and members of Congress.
The delay follows an outcry from businesses and trade groups, including the National Association of Home Builders, Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos., as well as lawmakers in both parties. Industry groups charged the regulation would drive up costs and expose contractors to fines and litigation. Some also contended the regulation could derail Washington’s efforts to promote energy efficiency because EPA has not approved enough instructors for the required training programs. The rule aimed to reduce the amount of lead dust created during home renovation and repair.
Some of the precautions for contractors include covering floors with plastic sheeting and dressing workers in protective clothing. The regulation would also have driven up costs for homeowners, though the amounts have been a point of dispute between the industry and the EPA. Gulliford estimated the cost was an average of $35 per renovation or repair job.
What’s the cost if they don’t implement safety precautions?
After an uncontrolled removal of a lead-based painted 75-year-old house, a report by Jacobs et al found;
- interior dust lead levels ranged from 390 to 27,600 [micro]g Pb/[ft.sup.2] (on floors and windowsills) and;
- bare soil lead levels ranged from 360 part per million (ppm) in the yard to 3,900 ppm along the foundation to 130,000 ppm in the child’s play area
…..well above applicable U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development/EPA standards.
The hard costs of decontamination were over $195,000, which greatly exceeds the incremental cost of incorporating lead-safe work practices into repainting. The case report highlighted the need to incorporate lead-safe work practices into routine repainting, remodeling, and other renovation and maintenance jobs that may disturb lead-based paint.
However, last month, the Senate voted 60 to 37 to bar the EPA from fining companies or individuals found to have violated the rule. The rule’s supporters expressed dismay about the EPA’s decision to delay enforcement.
Industry voices have apparently drowned out those of our nation’s children who bear the long-term ramifications of lead exposure,
said Rebecca Morley, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Healthy Housing.
Even if this rule is finally implemented, will her concern for the nations children be appeased?
- Not if she reads a report by the Environmental Law Foundation (“ELF”). Filed on June 9, 2010, the Notices of Violation of California Proposition 65 Toxics Right to Know law, alleges the toxic chemical lead was found in a variety of children`s and baby foods. The specific food categories included apple juice, grape juice, packaged pears and peaches (including baby food), and fruit cocktail.
(see a list of lead tainted products ).
The notices claim that the children’s foods contain enough lead in a single serving that they require a warning under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (aka “Proposition 65” or “Prop 65”). Toxicologist Barbara G. Callahan, PhD, DABT, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has spent two decades performing public health and environmental risk assessments, called the lead concentrations in the ELF test results “alarming.”
- Or if she takes a trip to the Mississippi River in Herculaneum, Missouri. There, Doe Run’s smelter’s blast furnaces convert vast amounts of lower-grade ore into more than 125,000 tons of nearly pure commercial-grade lead every year. In operation since 1982, this is both the nation’s largest primary lead smelter and its largest point source for lead emissions, with just over 59 tons of lead released to the air in 2005, according to the most recent figures from the National Emissions Inventory of the EPA.
By comparison, that year’s next-highest emitter—a Missouri lead recycling facility also operated by Doe Run—released 12.4 tons. Doe Run’s smelter in Herculaneum may be the nation’s largest point source for air lead emissions, but it’s not the only one.
The National Emissions Inventory, whose next release is expected 31 December 2010, lists 200 facilities emitting between one-half and 1 ton of the metal annually and 139 facilities emitting more than 1 ton.
Did we not learn any lessons from the Romans with regards to the dangers of lead? After all, it’s only been 2000 years… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
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