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Thomas v. Mallett7/15/2005
in this fashion once in so often.
Although less than unassuming, the lead industry at least finally acknowledged what researchers had been confirming for decades.
The LIA still saw the problem as a "headache" and a public relations issue, not a public health disaster. In 1959, in its annual report, the LIA wrote:
The toxicity of lead poses a problem that other nonferrous industries generally do not have to face. Lead poisoning, or the threat of it, hurts our business in several different ways. While it is difficult to count exactly in dollars and cents, it is taking money out of your pockets every day.
In the first place, it means thousands of items of unfavorable publicity every year. This is particularly true since most cases of lead poisoning today are in children, and anything sad that happens to a child is meat for newspaper editors and is gobbled up by the public. It makes no difference that it is essentially a problem of slums, a public welfare problem. Just the same the publicity hits us where it hurts.
Secondly, it means that we are often subjected to unnecessarily onerous regulations, either in the use of our product or in its labeling. This may mean either an added expense in labeling or in control equipment in your or your customers' plants. It may even mean that your product won't be used at all because your potential customer doesn't want the problems that the use of lead may involve.
By 1972, the LIA now characterized the problems of childhood lead poisoning as "harrowing." The LIA recognized that childhood lead poisoning was not limited to urban slums but also reached "young children in small towns and rural areas." Further, the LIA recognized that childhood lead poisoning could not be attributed to defective children, as it had earlier believed, because "young children . . . will often taste anything that gets into their hands."
F. Promotion
With approximately 85 percent of all sales, National Lead dominated the white lead pigment market in 1900. Through its advertisements and promotions, National Lead promoted and reinforced the perception that no paint was as good, or as safe, as white leaded paint. Despite numerous articles showing that lead was a potent poison by the 1920s, in 1923, one of National Lead's ads declared that lead paint helps guard health by preventing a resting place for germs. Although there were warnings from the medical communities about the dangers of white lead paints in schools and hospitals, National Lead also specifically targeted those institutions from the 1920s into the 1930s. National Lead repeatedly claimed that its lead paint protected public health, as it was a deadly enemy of tuberculosis and other germs. In 1931, National Lead contended that its lead paint helped "speed patients' recovery."
Between 1910 and 1925, three new major pigment manufacturers entered the market: Sherwin-Williams, Anaconda, and Glidden. National Lead's market share fell to between 60 and 70 percent during this time. Sherwin-Williams did not manufacture white lead until 1910, when it began operating a newly constructed white lead manufacturing plant in Chicago . Although Sherwin-Williams recognized the dangers of lead paint in a 1904 publication, and cautioned the War Department about the dangers of lead poisoning from lead paint in 1917, in 1922 it advocated using lead-based paint on children's toys.
During the mid-1920s, Sherwin-Williams continued to recommend using white-lead based paint (paint which contained upwards of 75 percent white lead) on interior surfaces, including walls, woodwork, doors, and ceilings. From 1936 until the 1940s, Sherwin
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