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Thomas v. Mallett7/15/2005
oted lead paint for use on toys at this time.
Also in December 1945, the LIA launched "The Safety and Hygiene Program" to undercut the growing medical literature regarding the toxicity of lead that it characterized as faulty. Recognizing that the lead industry "must be losing a vast amount of business each year because of the fact that lead has such unpleasant connections in the minds of so many Americans," the LIA persisted in complaining about how the lead industry "continues to be plagued unfairly by attacks made upon lead products because of their toxicity" and indicated it would "meet attacks on lead due to its toxic qualities by correcting published erroneous statements."
In 1946, to counter the findings of Byers and Lord, the LIA organized a conference on lead poisoning with the American Medical Association. At the conference, the LIA strongly rejected claims that lead was dangerous. The LIA Secretary rebuked a doctor's account of how a child's crib was traced to three cases of lead poisoning. According to the Secretary, interior white paint no longer contained lead, and thus he denied the importance of lead poisoning in children due to paint.
Kehoe still disagreed with the LIA Secretary's assessment, stating:
More lead poisoning in children has occurred than we would like to think about. The number that are actually reported in medical literature have very little relationship to the number that actually occur. Lead poisoning in a child is a serious disease.
Moreover, Markowitz and Rosner also note that the LIA and the Pigment Manufacturers continued to promote and sell white lead paints for interior use well after the mid 1940s. In addition, in their estimation, "by this date it was abundantly clear that hundreds of children were dying of lead poisoning each year."
Kehoe later reviewed a report written by the LIA Secretary that iterated the benign qualities of lead, and Kehoe warned the LIA against taking this extreme position. In particular, Kehoe objected to the LIA Secretary's denial of the importance of lead poisoning in children due to lead paint, stressing that the connection between childhood lead poisoning and lead paint was sound. A few years later, in 1953, Kehoe recommended largely eliminating use of lead paints for interiors to protect children:
most effective solution of this problem . . . to eliminate the use of paints . . . of more than very minor lead content for all inside decoration in the household and in the environment of young children. If this is not done voluntarily by a wise industry concerned to handle its own business properly, it will be accomplished ineffectually and with irrelevant difficulties and disadvantages through legislation.
The LIA did not accept his proposal.
By the late 1940's, Markowitz and Rosner submit that warning the public of the dangers of lead was still out of the question for the LIA. In 1948, after comparisons between the toxicity of lead and zinc products were being published, the LIA formalized its informal agreement with the American Zinc Industry that prevented the Zinc Industry from advertising the toxicity of lead-based paints.
In 1955, the LIA characterized the problem of childhood lead poisoning as "a major 'headache' and a source of much adverse publicity." The LIA wrote:
With us, childhood lead poisoning is common enough to constitute perhaps my major "headache," this being in part due to the very poor prognosis in many such cases, and also to the fact that the only real remedy lies in educating a relatively ineducable category of parents. It is mainly a slum problem with us, estimat
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