RECENT STORIES

Dreaming of a Black Friday ( Larry Collette )
Buy local, stay local with STAYCation ( Jean Ray )
No cost home repair for eligible homeowners ( Angie Zuccarelli )
Community invited to "The Nativity" ( Jan Mayer )
Organization connects WWII veterans with memorial ( Lee White )

share a story | more postings »

YourHub.com \\ Centennial \\ Stories \\ Sound Off \\ Write a Column

Lead us not to toxification

e-mail to a friend | print this | link to this

Contributed by: Larry Collette on 9/5/2007

Most of us agree that kids should be able to freely gnaw on their toys without the perils of lead poisoning. Lead is so bad for you that number 2 pencils abandoned it in favor of graphite long ago. The Chinese appear to have cornered the market for lead paint. And unfortunately they seem bent on using it. Parents, dump out that toy box and look out for toxic Elmo.

China produces around 80 percent of the world's toys. Presumably we can count on the North Pole for the remaining 20 percent. Or so we should hope.

We may have suspected that something was amiss when they started poisoning Fido months earlier. That wasn't lead, but melamine added to Chinese-manufactured dog food, making a lot of dogs sick and worse. The same substance is used to make cheap hard plastic dinnerware and hardly belongs in a dog's diet. Dogs will eat just about anything, but they seem to know to stop eating when they reach the bottom of the dish.

Other than those heavy vests they slap on us at the dentist's office when we get x-rays, I don't know of many practical uses for lead. If lead clothing is preferred over radiation exposure, maybe we should reconsider the whole x-ray thing in the first place. Lead is a soft, heavy, and toxic metal. I too have grown soft and heavy, but I've tried my best not to become toxic.

I really have no idea how or why lead ever gets into paint. Wouldn't it put unsightly gray streaks into the mix? That should be easy enough to spot.

There is a chance that lead is simply misunderstood, but I doubt it. Medical evidence points to its tendency to damage nerves, and cause brain and blood disorders. Things we can all do without. You will never see an industry promotional film touting "Lead for Better Living." It is best to steer clear of lead in all its forms, that old paint on houses and elsewhere. Our children are at particular risk.

Lead tries to hideout on the periodic table disguised as Pb. But there is no mistaking it for peanut butter. It seems that the Latin for lead is plumbum, a silly name for this dangerous stuff. The Romans made their pipes out of it, that plumbum plumbing may have lead to the fall of their empire. Et tu plumbum pipe?

Lead happens to boast the highest atomic number of all stable elements. I'm guessing that is a good thing. Anytime atomic and stable are woven into the same sentence we should probably be grateful. Somebody once gave me an "imported" stoneware pitcher, on it was a sticker that read "may contain lead glaze." And I thought they were my friend. Okay, now I do know that it will not irradiate me. But if I drank enough orange juice from it, I'd be a goner anyway.

I've pretty much taken it on faith that the things like phosphorous, magnesium, and zinc put into my daily vitamin won't damage me. Then again, why should I be so sure? The truth is, maybe we should question anything we ingest that falls off an element chart. Sure there are bound to be exceptions, but there are still 117 suspects posted there and they still grow in numbers.

There was actually a time when the gasoline that fueled our cars came laced with lead too. Eventually we caught on that spewing lead into the atmosphere was a bad thing. That fuel additive soon went the way of those asbestos-lined brakes for our cars. Oh, those are still with us??? What's it gonna take?

I tried looking up a trade association for lead mining, manufacturing, or something. To see what they had to say for themselves. Nothing jumped out. Not even from the Leadville directory. But I did find The Lead Sheet Association located "off shore" in Great Britain. It seems to me that lead bedding would make getting to sleep at night awfully difficult. But it also has architectural applications in the cladding for old dormer windows and flashing for abutments on flat and pitched roofs. So it has to be imported for some episodes of "This Old House." Of course, Britain used to be a part of that Roman Empire. One thing leads to another.

Once we took it for granted that Barbie and Ken would be lead-free. We no longer have that luxury.

[Report this as objectionable content.]

SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above story

Current Rating

Based on 1 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the story

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

Thank you! Your comment has been updated.

CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Larry Collette

Centennial , CO

Larry Collette has posted 37 stories and 1 comment since joining on 3/27/2006. Larry Collette 's average story rating is 4.9.

view profile » view other postings from Larry Collette »

SAVE AND SHARE THIS STORY

digg	Google
del.icio.us	Yahoo!
reddit	newsvine

What is this?

STORY RSS FEEDS

All stories

All stories in Centennial

All stories by Larry Collette

WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?

Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is register, then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyone what events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

Loading Ad