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Cover image of Brush with Death
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Brush with Death

A Social History of Lead Poisoning

Christian Warren

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Winner of the Arthur Viseltear Award for Outstanding Book in the History of Public Health from the American Public Health Association

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

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...

Winner of the Arthur Viseltear Award for Outstanding Book in the History of Public Health from the American Public Health Association

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

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 epidemiological tools that arose in response to lead poisoning.

Today, many children undergo aggressive "deleading" treatments when their blood-lead levels are well below the average blood-lead levels found in 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, giving rise to modern environmentalism and fundamentally altered jurisprudence.

Reviews

Reviews

Fascinating and stimulating... Brush with Death examines in an interesting and parallel fashion the evolution of thought and actions regarding occupational exposure to lead, lead poisoning during childhood, and the main population-wide risk of exposure to airborne lead from automobiles.

For those interested in the history of medicine and particularly, public health and epidemiology, this is a must read.

It is a chilling story, with morals for other countries too.

A rich, nuanced discussion of Americans' use of lead and the resulting struggle with the harmful effects of this powerful poison that insidiously permeated American culture and Americans' bodies.

In this highly engaging study, Christian Warren develops a broad critique of the lead industries, gas and paint manufacturers, and the scientific authorities who, for the most part, worked for them in the twentieth century.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
384
ISBN
9780801868207
Illustration Description
20 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction - What's Lead in the Bone...
Chapter 1: Plumbing the Depths
Chapter 2: Childhood Lead Poisoning before 1930
Chapter 3: Toxic Purity: How the United

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction - What's Lead in the Bone...
Chapter 1: Plumbing the Depths
Chapter 2: Childhood Lead Poisoning before 1930
Chapter 3: Toxic Purity: How the United States Became a Nation of White-Leaders
Chapter 4: Occupational Lead Poisoning in the Progressive Era
Chapter 5: Protecting Workers and Profits in the Lead Industries
Chapter 6: Company Doctors on the Job
Chapter 7: Introducing Leaded Gasoline
Chapter 8: Defining Childhood Lead Poisoning as a Disease of Poverty
Chapter 9: Urban Physicians Discover the Silent Epidemic
Chapter 10: The Screaming Epidemic
Chapter 11: Facing the Consequences of Leaded Gasoline
Chapter 12: The Rise and Fall of Universal Childhood Lead Screening
Chapter 13: Regulating "Low-Level" Lead Poisoning
Appendix - Reports on Lead PoisoningNotes
Index

Author Bio