Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning

by Christian Warren

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

Genres: History, Health

384 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2001

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really cool look at America’s conflicted relationship with lead and lead poisoning. I’m not a huge medical history person, but being of the right age that the Mattel lead paint scandal meant my mom made me put away all my toys to avoid poisoning, this was an interesting look at 20th century views of lead poisoning and the varying constructions of it in popular consciousness.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book which grasps quite well the interplay of capitalist tendencies and legitimate health risks. I found it fascinating that lead in petrol was removed only after it was observed that it breaks down the catalysts in the cars.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warren provides an excellent overview of the crisis of lead poisoning in the USA from 1920-2000. The chapters are breezy, the ideas sound, and the research is extensive. One of the best books on the topic, although somewhat dated.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbelievably great document ! So well done, I had a hard time putting it down. I knew a lot of the history of lead from other works but this was the icing on the cake. Basically a chronicle of this country's (USA) experience with Lead Poisoning from the late 1800's thru to just recently. Full of essential people like Dr. Alice Hamilton (creator of Industrial Hygiene), Dr. Harriet Hardy - Toxicologist, Jack Newfield - Reporter, Clair Patterson - Geochemist and the Young Lords - a Puerto Rican version of the Black Panthers. It took all of these people and many more to identify, publicize and begin to correct a never ending problem. And it only took 60 years to get the ball rolling with any velocity.
Not a single person in this long march forward could prevent or foresee general medicine's inability or unwillingness to diagnose this problem properly with an overbearing reliance of the recently discovered germ theory. In fact, many lead poisoning cases were misdiagnosed as TB,Flu, Polio and Appendicitis.
This history does not bode well for any creativity in the medical profession. As a matter of fact, we are repeating the pattern with Mercury and other heavy metals, even today and we get minutia as explanations and management of symptoms as good medicine. Read and learn, it is good for your health.

[Anna Engel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I work in environmental consulting and because I majored in (and very much enjoyed) history in college. "Brush with Death" describes the intertwined histories of the lead industry (production, marketing, products used), workers' rights, and industrial hygiene. The book started out as the author's doctoral thesis and is scholarly in style, but it's still very accessible to the interested reader.

The book is important because it explores the relationships between employers, employees, and the developing medical field.