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Showing posts with label David Rosner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Rosner. Show all posts

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Judge Orders Companies to Pay $1.1 Billion for Lead Paint Removal


Video Link: http://tinyurl.com/mwoqs3d
On Monday, a judge ordered three paint companies to pay $1.1 billion to remove lead-based paint in California homes in several jurisdictions, including Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, marking the end to a case that took 13 years to litigate.
According to the LA Times, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg ruled that ConAgra, NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams had exposed children to a known poison for decades when they sold lead-based paint for use in homes before it was outlawed in 1977 and created a “public nuisance” by their actions.
Public health historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner mentioned the trial to Bill earlier this year on Moyers & Company noting that a decision against the companies would mark only the second time in history that the industry has been compelled to pay for clean-up. A similar decision in 2006 in Rhode Island was later overturned by that state’s Supreme Court. Markowitz and Rosner warned that, for young children, there’s no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes across the country.
In the California ruling, the judge wrote, “The court is convinced there are thousands of California children in the Jurisdictions whose lives can be improved, if not saved through a lead abatement plan.” The LA Times reports that nearly 5 million homes in the 10 cities and counties that joined the lawsuit could require abatement. Many of...
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Thursday, October 17, 2013

This Is Your Brain on Toxins

The need for regulation and responsibility is the focus of this very interesting article that appears in The New York Times today. Today's post is shared from nytimes.org

“Lead helps to guard your health.”

That was the marketing line that the former National Lead Company used decades ago to sell lead-based household paints. Yet we now know that lead was poisoning millions of children and permanently damaging their brains. Tens of thousands of children died, and countless millions were left mentally impaired.

One boy, Sam, born in Milwaukee in 1990, “thrived as a baby,” according to his medical record. But then, as a toddler, he began to chew on lead paint or suck on fingers with lead dust, and his blood showed soaring lead levels.

Sam’s family moved homes, but it was no use. At age 3, he was hospitalized for five days because of lead poisoning, and in kindergarten his teachers noticed that he had speech problems. He struggled through school, and doctors concluded that he had “permanent and irreversible” deficiencies in brain function.

Sam’s story appears in “Lead Wars,” a book by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner published this year that chronicles the monstrous irresponsibility of companies in the lead industry over the course of the 20th century. Eventually, over industry protests, came regulation and the removal of lead from gasoline. As a result, lead levels of American children have declined 90 percent...
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