Subtitle: A Medical History of Childhood Lead-Paint Poisoning in the United States to 1980
Author: Peter C. English
Subject: History of Medicine/Public Health
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2987-5
Pages: 255 pp., 11 b&w illus., 1 table
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Read an excerpt from Old Paint
Description: A medical history of childhood lead-paint poisoning in the United States.
In the early twentieth century lead had many domestic uses: in solder for cans, as a gasoline additive to prevent "knocking" in engines, in water pipes, and, most prominently, in interior paint prized for its durability and ability to hold color. Far from being the toxic hazard we recognize today, lead was a valuable commodity. However, by the end of the century, lead had largely disappeared from our environment as physicians discovered the threat it posed to childrens health and mental development.
Old Paint documents the history of lead-paint poisoning in the United States and the evolving responses of public health officials and the lead-paint industry to this hazard up to 1980, by which time lead had been banned from gasoline and paint. Peter C. English traces lead poisoning from a rare, but acute problem confined to a small group of children to the discovery by the end of the 1940s of the dangers of the crumbling lead-painted interiors of inner-city dwellings. He draws on a wide range of primary materials not only to illuminate our understanding of how this health hazard changed over time, but also to explore how diseases are constructed and evolve.
Peter C. English, M.D. is a professor of history and a professor of pediatrics at Duke University. He is the author of Rheumatic Fever: A Clinical, Scientific, and Epidemiological History (Rutgers University Press).
Praise for Old Paint
"Medical historian English provides a valuable historical account of childhood lead-paint poisoning from its discovery in Australia in the late 1800s to about 1980. . . . Well written and very well researched."Choice
"A compelling history, and a fascinating account of how perceptions of disease change in response to scientific and cultural circumstances. An outstanding, highly recommended book."Kenneth M. Ludmerer, author of Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care
Excerpt from Old Paint
"I see the history of childhood lead poisoning as a dynamic epidemiological evolution. It is fair to say that a childrens doctor in 1900 would scarcely perceive the worries of a pediatrician a century later. The nature of the disease has radically changedfor victims, parents, and public health officials. Lead in the childs domestic environment has greatly lessened and the sources altered. Medical understanding of the lead hazard has evolved and with it have come changes in public health responses. Policy over the past century has been forged through interactions among child health officials, public health communities on the local, state, and national levels, the lead-paint industry, and researchers."from Old Paint: A Medical History of Childhood Lead-Paint Poisoning in the United States to 1980
