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Lead industries have a history of downplaying or shifting the blame to avoid accountability for the deleterious effects of lead on public health, especially in vulnerable populations like children. As of the year 2002, about 35 percent of all low-income housing had lead hazards (Jacobs et al, 2002). Though another more recent analysis stated that 38 millions homes in the US (about 40 percent of homes) contained at least trace levels of lead, which was added to the paint before the use of lead in residential paint was banned in 1978. The American Healthy Homes Survey showed that 37.5 millions homes had at least some levels of lead in the paint (Dewalt et al, 2015). Since lead paint is more likely to be found in low-income households, public housing (Rabito, Shorter, and White, 2003) and minorities are more likely to be low-income, then it follows that minorities are more likely to be exposed to lead paint in the home—this is what we find (Carson, 2018; Eisenberg et al, 2020; Baek et al, 2021; McFarland, Hauer, and Reuben, 2022). The fact of the matter is, there is a whole host of negative effects of lead on the developing child, and there is no “safe level” of lead exposure, a point I made back in 2018:

There is a large body of studies which show that there is no safe level of lead exposure (Needleman and Landrigan, 2004; Canfield, Jusko, and Kordas, 2005; Barret, 2008; Rossi, 2008; Abelsohn and Sanborn, 2010; Betts, 2012; Flora, Gupta, and Tiwari, 2012; Gidlow, 2015; Lanphear, 2015; Wani, Ara, and Usmani, 2015; Council on Environmental Health, 2016; Hanna-Attisha et al, 2016; Vorvolakos, Aresniou, and Samakouri, 2016; Lanphear, 2017). So the data is clear that there is absolutely no safe level of lead exposure, and even small effects can lead to deleterious outcomes.

This story reminds me of a similar story, which I will discuss at the end, one of Waneta Hoyt and SIDS. I will compare these two and argue that the underlying issues are the same, privileging genetic factors over other, more obvious environmental factors. After discussing how Big Lead attempted to downplay and shift the blame of what lead was doing to these children, I will liken it to the Waneta Hoyt case.

Big Lead’s downplaying of the deleterious effects of lead on developing children

We have known that lead pipes were a cause of lead poisoning since the late 1800s, and lead companies attempted to reverse this by publishing studies and reports that showed that lead was better than other kinds of materials that could be used for the same purpose (Rabin, 2008). The Lead Industries Association (LIA) even blocked bans against lead paint and pipes, even after being aware of the issues they caused. So why, even after knowing that lead pipes were a primary cause of lead poisoning, were they used to distribute water and paint homes? The answer is simple: Corporate lobbying and outright lying and downplaying of the deleterious effects of lead. Due to our knowledge of the effects of lead in pipes and consequently drinking water, they began to be phased out around the 1920s. One way they attempted to downplay the obviously causal association between lead pipes and deleterious effects was to question it and say it still needed to be tested, one Lead Industries of America (LIA) member noted (quoted in Rabin, 2008):

Of late the lead industries have been receiving much undesirable publicity regarding lead poisoning. I feel the association would be wise to devote time and money on an impartial investigation which would show once and for all whether or not lead is detrimental to health under certain conditions of use.

Lead industries even promoted the use of lead in paint even after it was known that it leads to negative effects if paint chips are ingested by children (Rabin, 1989; Markowitz and Rosner, 2000). So we now have two examples on how Big Lead arranged to downplay the obviously causal, deleterious effects of lead on the developing child. But there are some more sinister events hiding in these shadows, and that is actually putting low-income (mostly black) families into homes with lead paint in order to study their outcomes and blood, as Harriet Washington (2019: 56-57) wrote in her A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind:

But Baltimore slumlords find removing this lead too expensive and some simply abandon the toxic houses. Cost concerns drove the agenda of the KKI researchers, who did not help parents completely remove children from sources of lead exposure. Instead, they allowed unwitting children to be exposed to lead in tainted homes, thus using the bodies of the children to evaluate cheaper, partial lead-abatement techniques of unknown efficacy in the old houses with peeling paint. Although they knew that only full abatement would protect these children, scientists decided to explore cheaper ways of reducing the lead threat.

So the KKI encouraged landlords of about 125 lead-tainted housing units to rent to families with young children. It offered to facilitate the landlords’ financing for partial lead abatement—only if the landlords rented to families with young children. Available records show that the exposed children were all black.

KKI researchers monitored changes in the children’s health and blood-lead levels, noting the brain and developmental damage that resulted from different kinds of lead-abatement programs.

These changes in the children’ bodies told the researchers how efficiently the different, economically stratified abatement levels worked. The results were compared to houses that either had been completely lead-abated or that were new and presumed not to harbor lead.

Scientists offered parents of children in these lead-laden homes incentives such as fifteen-dollar payments to cooperate with the study, but did not warn parents that the research potentially placed their children at risk of lead exposure.

Instead, literature given to the parents promised that researchers would inform them of any hazards. But they did not. And parents were not warned that their children were in danger, even after testing showed rising lead content in their blood.

Quite obviously, the KKI (Kennedy Krieger Institute) and the landlords were a part of an unethical study with no informed consent. The study was undertaken to test the effectiveness of three measures which cost a differing amount of money (Rosner and Markowitz, 2012) but this study was clearly unethical (Sprigg, 2004).

The Maryland Court of Appeals (2001) called this “innately inappropriate.” This is also obviously a case in which lower-income (majority black) people were already exposed to the higher levels of lead, and they then put them into homes that were “partially abated” of lead and comparing them to homes that had no lead. They knew that only full lead abatement would have been protective but still chose to place them into homes with “partial abatement” but they knowingly chose the cheaper option at the cost of the health of children. They also didn’t expose the parents to the full context of what they were trying to accomplish, thereby putting unwitting people into their clearly unethical study.

In 2002, Tamiko Jones and others brought on a suit against the owner of the apartment building and National Lead Industries, claiming that lead paint in the home was the cause of their children’s maladies and negative outcomes (Tamiko Jones, et al., v. NL Industries, et al. (Civil Action No. 4:03CV229)). Unfortunately, after a 3 week trial, the defendants lost the case and subsequent appeals were denied. But some of the things that the witnesses the defense brought up to the court caught my attention, since it’s similar to the story of Waneta Hoyt.

NL Industries attempted what I am calling “the gene defense.” The gene defense they used was that the children’s problems weren’t caused by lead in the paint, but it was caused by genetic and familial factors which then led to environmental deprivation. One of the mothers in the case, Sherry Wragg, was quoted as saying “My children didn’t have problems until we moved in here.” So the children that moved into this apartment building with their parents began to have behavioral and cognitive problems after they moved in, and they stated that it was due to the paint that had lead in it.

So the plaintiffs were arguing that the behavioral and cognitive deficits the children had were due to the leaded paint. Although the defense did acknowledge that the plaintiffs suffered from “economic deprivation”, which was a contributor to their maladies, they tried to argue that a familial history of retardation and environmental and economic deprivation explained the cognitive and behavioral deficits. But the defense argued that these deficits were explained by familial factors and genes which then explained the environmental deprivation. (Though the Court did recognize that the defense witnessed did not have expertise in toxicology.)

Plaintiffs first seek to strike two experts who provide arguably duplicative expert testimony that plaintiffs’ neurological deficits were most likely caused by genetic, familial and environmental factors, rather than lead exposure. For example, Dr. Barbara Quinten, director of the medical genetics department at Howard University, testified to her view that various plaintiffs had familial histories of low intelligence and/or mental retardation which explained  their symptoms. Dr. Colleen Parker, professor of pediatrics and neurology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, similarly testified that such factors as “familial history of retardation, poor environmental stimulation, and economic deprivation,” rather than elevated blood lead levels, explained the plaintiffs’ deficits.

So it seems that the defense was using the “genes argument” for behavior and cognition to try to make it ambiguous as to what was the cause of the issues the children were having. This is, yet again, another way in which IQ tests have been weaponized. “IQ has a hereditary, genetic component, and this family has familial history of these issues, so it can’t be shown that our lead paint was the cause of the issues.” The use of the genetic component of IQ has clearly screwed people groom ring awarded what they should have rightfully gotten. This is, of course, an example of environmental racism,

Parallels with the Waneta Hoyt case

The story of Big Lead and their denial of the deleterious effects of lead paint reminds me of another similar issue: That of the case of Waneta Hoyt and SIDS. This parallels this case like this: Waneta Hoyt was killing her children by suffocating them, and a SIDS researcher—Alfred Steinschneider—claimed that the cause was genetic, ignoring all signs that Waneta was the cause of her children’s death. This is represented by genes (Steinschneider) and environment (Waneta). In the case of the current discussion, this is represented by genes (Big Lead and their attempts to pinpoint genetic causes for what lead did) and environment (actual environmental effects of lead on the developing child).

There is a pattern in these two cases: Looking to genetic causes and bypassing the actual environmental cause. Genetic factors are represented by Steinschneider and Big Lead while they ignore or downplay the actual environmental causes (represented by Waneta Hoyt and the actual effects of lead on developing children). Selective focus like this, quite clearly, did lead to ignoring or overlooking crucial information. In the Hoyt case, it lead to the death of a few infants which could have been prevented (if Steinschneider didn’t have such tunnel vision for his genetic causation for SIDS). In the Big Lead case, NL Industries and it’s witnesses pointed to genetic factors or individual behaviors as the culprit for the causes of the negative behaviors and cognitive deficits for the children. In both cases, confirmation bias was thusly a main culprit.

Conclusion

The search for genetic causes and understanding certain things to be genetically caused has caused great harm. Big Lead and its attempted downplaying of the deleterious effects of lead paint while shifting blame to genetic factors reminds us that genetic reductionism and determinism is still here, and that corporate entities will attempt to use genetic arguments in order to ensure their interests are secured. Just as in the Waneta Hoyt case, where a misdirection towards genetic factors cloaked the true cause of the harm (which was environmental), the focus on genetics by Big Lead shifted shifted attention away from the true cause and put it on causes coming from inside the body.

The lobbying efforts of Big Lead damage for countless numbers of children and their families. And by hiding with genetic arguments, trying to deflect the harmful effects of what their leaded paint did to children, they chose to go to the genes argument, pushed by hereditarians as an explanation of the IQ gap. This, as well, is yet more evidence that IQ tests (along with association studied to identify causal genes for IQ) should be banned since they have clearly caused harms to people, in this case, not getting what they should have gotten by winning a court case that they should have won. Big Lead successfully evaded accountability here, and they did so with genetic reductionism.

Quite obviously, the KKI knowingly placed black families into homes that they knew had lead paint for experimentation purposes and this was highly unethical. This shows the environmental injustice and environmental racism, where vulnerable populations are used for nothing more than an experiment without their consent and knowledge. The parallels here are obvious in how Big Lead attempted to divert blame from the environmental effects of lead and implicate genetic factors and familial histories of retardation. This strategy is mirrored in the Waneta Hoyt case. Although Steinschneider didn’t have any kind of biases like Big Lead have, he did have a bias in attempting to pinpoint a genetic cause for SIDS which left him unable to see that the cause of the deaths was the mother of the children, Waneta Hoyt.