Brush with death : a social history of lead poisoning / Christian Warren.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Warren, Christian.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lead poisoning--United States--History.

Lead poisoning.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xiv, 362 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Summary:

During the twentieth century, lead poisoning killed thousands of workers and children in the United States. Thousands who survived lead poisoning were left physically crippled or were robbed of mental faculties and years of life. In Brush with Death, social historian Christian Warren offers the first comprehensive history of lead poisoning in the United States. Focusing on lead paint and leaded gasoline, Warren distinguishes three primary modes of exposure -- occupational, pediatric, and environmental. This threefold perspective permits a nuanced exploration of the regulatory mechanisms, medical technologies, and epidermiological tools that arose in response to lead poisoning.

Because of profound shifts in the definition of childhood lead poisoning, children today undergo aggressive "deleading" treatments when their blood-lead levels reach one-third of the average blood-lead levels for urban children in the 1950s. Warren links the repeated redefinition of lead poisoning to changing attitudes toward health, safety, and risk. The same changes that transformed the social construction of lead poisoning also transformed medicine and health care, gave rise to modern environmentalism, and fundamentally altered jurisprudence.

Contents:

Introduction: What's Lead in the Bone 1

1 Plumbing the Depths 13

2 Childhood Lead Poisoning before 1930 27

3 Toxic Purity: How the United States Became a Nation of White-Leaders 44

4 Occupational Lead Poisoning in the Progressive Era 64

5 Protecting Workers and Profits in the Lead Industries 84

6 Company Doctors on the Job 101

7 Introducing Leaded Gasoline 116

8 Defining Childhood Lead Poisoning as a Disease of Poverty 134

9 Urban Physicians Discover the Silent Epidemic 152

10 The Screaming Epidemic 178

11 Facing the Consequences of Leaded Gasoline 203

12 The Rise and Fall of Universal Childhood Lead Screening 224

13 Regulating "Low-Level" Lead Poisoning 244

Appendix Reports on Lead Poisoning 259.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [263]-348) and index.

ISBN:

0801862892

OCLC:

42393544