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Thomas v. Mallett7/15/2005
isoning from paint in 1908, Australian researchers went so far as to call for prohibiting the use of lead paint within the reach of children. They found:
Two conditions of painted surfaces would be more than usually liable to induce poisoning, viz., (a) freshly painted or at least sticky surfaces; (b) painted surfaces which have either been exposed to the sun and air, and whose paint has lost its oil and become a dry easily detachable powder, or which though not exposed have lost some of their oil and gloss, and which when rubbed yield a powdery substance to the touch and possibly distribute it to the dust of rooms.
During that same year, Australian researchers also connected paint powder stuck to children's fingers, which were then bit or sucked, with lead poisoning. Those researchers also recommended refraining from using lead paint on surfaces accessible to children.
In the early 1900s, children's particular susceptibility to lead poisoning was also gaining recognition. In Great Britain, the dangers of lead exposure to fetuses were identified, and women were later removed from working in the lead industries. In the United States, in 1908, Dr. Hamilton noted that "lead is a most potent producer of abortion, and it is very rare that a woman lead worker bears a healthy child at term." And, in 1912, researchers in the United States acknowledged that young people were more vulnerable to lead poisoning than adults. In its 1912 annual report, National Lead noted that it did not employ women in its factories, except as occasional messengers or other similar jobs, or boys.
In 1914, a physician from John Hopkins Hospital who was also professor at the John Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Kenneth D. Blackfan, chronicled a case of a five-year-old boy from Baltimore who died of lead poisoning from white lead paint bitten from his crib's railing. Blackfan concluded that lead poisoning in children "appears to have a special effect on the meninges and the central nervous system and that it may not infrequently be the unsuspected cause of so-called serious meningitis." In 1917, Blackfan wrote another article that detailed lead poisoning cases from a home in Baltimore. After noting that children were particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning, Blackfan forewarned that a key source of lead poisoning for children was gnawing on lead-painted objects, specifically white paint on cribs.
Despite this growing awareness of child lead poisoning and children's susceptibility to lead poisoning, the knowledge was not yet mainstream. For example, between 1911 and 1920, the U.S. Bureau of the Census listed only eight reported child lead poisoning fatalities.
Consistent with the prior decade's little official data and literature on the extent of lead poisoning, some medical journal articles in the early 1920s described child lead poisoning as rare. However, in 1924, Dr. John C. Ruddock, M.D., wrote that child lead poisoning "may easily be overlooked, because the average physician has never had his attention called to the fact, and also because the clinical picture is usually very different from that in similar poisoning in adults." The following year, another doctor emphasized that most cases of lead poisoning in general were missed or otherwise misdiagnosed. By 1926, another physician submitted that " ead poisoning is of relatively frequent occurrence in children." As one historian concluded, the growing theme during this time was the more doctors knew to look for lead poisoning, the more they found it.
During the mid to late 1920s, the view that children were more susceptible to lead poisoning was almost universal. A number of articles appeared in m
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