Campaign Against Lead Poisoning
Beginning in 1965, with the publication of Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man, Patterson tried to draw public attention to the problem of increased lead levels in the environment and the food chain due to lead from industrial sources. Perhaps partly because he was criticizing the experimental methods of other scientists, he encountered strong opposition from recognized experts such as Robert A. Kehoe.
In his effort to ensure that lead was removed from gasoline (petroleum), Patterson fought against the lobbying power of the Ethyl Corporation (which employed Kehoe), against the legacy of Thomas Midgley — which included tetra-ethyl lead and chlorofluorocarbons) — and against the lead additive industry as a whole. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson notes that following his criticism of the lead industry he was refused contracts with many research organizations, including the supposedly neutral United States Public Health Service. In 1971 he was excluded from a National Research Council panel on atmospheric lead contamination, which was odd considering he was the foremost expert on the subject at that time.
Patterson's efforts ultimately led to the Environmental Protection Agency announcing in 1973 a reduction of 60-65% in phased steps, and ultimately the removal of lead from all standard, consumer, automotive gasoline in the United States by 1986. Lead levels within the blood of Americans are reported to have dropped by up to 80% by the late 1990s.
He then turned his attention to lead in food where similar experimental deficiencies had masked the increase. In one study he showed an increase in lead levels from 0.3 to 1400 nanograms per gram in certain canned fish compared with fresh, whilst the official laboratory had reported an increase of 400 to 700. He compared the lead, barium and calcium levels in 1600 year-old Peruvian skeletons and showed a 700 to 1200 fold increase in lead levels in modern human bones with no comparable changes in the others.
In 1978 he was appointed to an NRC panel which accepted many of the increases and the need for reductions but argued the need for more research. His opinions were expressed in a 78-page minority report which argued that control measures should start immediately, including gasoline, food containers, paint, glazes and water distribution systems. Thirty years later, most of these have been accepted and implemented in the United States and many other parts of the world.
Read more about this topic: Clair Cameron Patterson
Famous quotes containing the words campaign, lead and/or poisoning:
“The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
““Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.””
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)