Dan Agin: Public Health Politics: Lead Exposure and Adult Cataract

Published: August 22, 2007, 7:26 pm

With all the recent publicity about the perils of lead pollution for children, the focus has shifted away from certain insidious effects of lead exposure on adults, effects that may ordinarily not be recognized as due to lead exposure. The fundamental problem is that after almost 80 years of neglecting toxic levels of lead in the American environment (a neglect due mostly to the efforts of the Ethyl Corporation, the lead battery industry, the gasoline industry, and their Congressional supporters), the American environment -- air, soil, and water -- is so thoroughly polluted with lead that even after Congress did finally act there's still enough lead around to be a serious hazard to everyone. Most adults continue to have potentially dangerous levels of lead in their bodies without even knowing about it. (Have you ever had your blood and bone lead levels measured?) Lead accumulates in the body during a person's lifetime. Much of the lead that goes into the body is incorporated

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