Osvaldo-SuperBlog#2--The Dangers of Lead Based Paint: A Historical View On This Public Health Crisis In The 20th Century.



    For my first source I am choosing to display this image used by the Dutch Boy company which was actually the cover to a children’s book. The image dates back to 1926 and more than just a cover of a book, it also served for marketing purposes. As many of these companies often promoted the use of lead based paint as harmless and the ads and way of marketing was always very kid friendly. Of course this seems very ironic, even a bit hypocritical, considering that the ones who suffer more due to lead poisoning are children. Therefore, this primary source will be part of my project to shine light on the reasons used by activists when they accuse paint companies of consciously selling harmful lead based paint to the public. 


Clair C. Patterson PhD (1965) Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man, Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal, 11:3, 344-360, DOI: 10.1080/00039896.1965.10664229 

    The Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man by Clair C. Patterson serves as a primary source because this geochemist was one of the first people who decided to educate the public by shining light on the lead poisoning issue which he witnessed as a professional. And this source is a primary source due to the fact that Patterson wrote about this issue in the mid 1960s and he dedicated part of his life to bring help to advocate for a less toxic environment. So really he was one of the important figures in the fight for policies and laws that would eventually make it a bit more safe for the public. In this article Patterson provides imperative data entailing how much and where does lead exist. In doing so he also explains how much lead has been used for paints and its contributing factors in making the environment more toxic.

Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead Wars : The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,, 2013.

 

    This third source called Lead Wars : The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children is a very profound book that has helped me understand the history of lead poisoning of the public. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s secondary source gives the audience a well written book about lead poisoning in the second half of the 20th century. However, what makes this book really insightful is the fact that it gives us a nice focus on the beginning cases that really pushed the fight for better regulations and policies. They even provide history on the beginning days against lead based paint that took place here in SOCAL.

 

        Lead paint, banned for decades, still makes thousands of L.A. County kids sick 

        https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-30/la-me-lead-poisoning-la-county

 

    This article from the Los Angeles Times helps my project as a secondary source because of its topic about the long term effects that lead-base painted homes have left for the people of South LA. It really just serves as a way to connect to the historical threat of lead poisoning via paint, because even though one might think that just because the issue has been fought for decades already then the problem should be nonexistent. However, the reality is that due to paint degradation from homes built before the banning of this paint in 1978, kids are still suffering from lead poisoning. So this just helps as a human connection to the issue because if you have any friends or family down in LA, they could be a victim of this poison. 



    This last source is another picture, but this time is a photo of a woman checking  for levels of lead on the degrading paint of a random house in Los Angeles. This was a pretty easy primary source since the house is one that was built before the official ban of lead based paint. To me it brings memories of my childhood home which suffered the same consequences, and by this I mean the degradation. It really takes me back to when I would run around the house and always saw that paint was degrading all over the house. As if the exposure of the house wasn’t enough, since it began to chip, it really made the house look ugly. And now that I go back in time and remember the neighborhood, it really brings back the notion that a lot of South LA homes look ugly due to paint degradation. Which just adds to the visual of poor urban areas as a result of environmental racism. 


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