Let's Talk About the Lead

   A quick thought to ponder and that is, how did you first think of that title above?  Did you think this might be about a race or poll position of some sort as in "who is in the lead," or did you think that this was about a heavy metal, one that drags you down and led to such phrases as a coach yelling "get the lead out."  That's the puzzling thing about languages and our interpretation of them, our brains struggling to deconstruct or perhaps anticipate what the proper definition is for a word and how it all fits together in a sentence, much as algorithms try to finish our sentences (one tee shirt saying I enjoy says "Auto-correct is my worst enema").  And for people translating books and such, the problem only intensifies (such a criticism recently occurred in The London Review of Books when reviewer Marina Warner wrote: The prestige of translators has risen since the time when they remained nameless as well as underpaid (that has not really changed).  Translation prizes, such as the International Man Booker, now share the money equally between author and translator, and translation studies are growing vigorously in universities...Like a shrub moved to a sunnier position, writers may thrive when transplanted.  Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Human Acts have won startling numbers of readers in the translations by Deborah Smith, in which the underspecification, repetition and starkness of Korean have been, by Smith’s own account and with Han’s full approval, enhanced by ‘occasional interpolations’ after she listened ‘more carefully to what it [the text] was telling me’.  But in this case this is a discussion of the latter, the metal lead which unfortunately really does penetrate deeply into us and can do exactly what we fear...become a matter of life and death.

   Some years ago, lead was perceived as quite the threat since it was used in many places, from paint to gasoline to water pipes, and of course since antiquity days in stained glass.  But its harmful effects soon caused the phrases "leaded or unleaded" to disappear from gas stations, and removing leaded paint from homes became a task left only for hazardous waste teams.  Before long, lead had all but disappeared in most areas except for that of hunting and fishing, the cheaper lead bullets and lead weights making their way into the animals caught or shot (or ingested by other scavengers) and then slowly re-emerging back into our bodies.  Here's how an article in National Wildlife put it: As early as 1894, conservationist George Bird Grinnell raised the alarm about ducks, geese and swans dying from lead poisoning after ingesting lead show.  A powerful neurotoxin, lead damages tissues, organs and immune and reproductive systems, often causing paralysis and death.  Waterfowl that ingest as few as one or two shot pellets can die in weeks, and studies document more than 130 wildlife species that are negatively affected by lead...Humans, too, can be exposed to lead by eating venison or game birds that contain lead shot or bullet fragments.  A 2009 study in North Dakota tested ground venison from meat-processing plants and found that nearly 6 percent was contaminated with lead.  And a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found elevated blood-lead levels in people who ate wild game.  The findings prompted warnings that children and pregnant women should avoid game harvested with lead, which can cause brain damage, developmental defects, neuropathy, attention deficit disorder, even death.  The impacts are most pronounced in children, who brains are still developing -- one reason why lead additives in paint and gasoline were banned long ago.  One estimate by the Missouri Department of Conservation in 2009 said that as many --or more-- mourning doves die from ingesting lead than from legal hunting, a number as high as 15 million.  Said TIME, nearly 3 billion or a third or the entire bird population has disappeared from both the U.S. and Canada since 1970.

    But lead is still nearly as popular as it was in the days of old due to the ease of working with it...a low melting point, a high density (think of that lead "coat" put on you when you get an X-ray, or why your car's batteries are so heavy), resistant to corrosion, and an element readily available throughout the world.  But a negative factor of lead is that it is also easily absorbed in our bodies; said the CDC fact sheet: Following inhalation of organic lead, approximately 95% of deposited inorganic lead is absorbed...In adults, about 94% of the total amount of lead in the body is contained in the bones and teeth versus about 73% in children...Lead remains in bones for decades and in blood for months...Lead can leach into drinking water from lead-soldered joints or leaded pipes in water distribution systems or individual houses. Lead may also enter foods if they are put into improperly glazed pottery or ceramic dishes.  A common marker used to be if your stoneware mug or dish grew hot in the microwave, it might be a sign of improper glazing and thus releasing excessive lead into your body, but the only real way to tell is with a lead swab test.  Still, scare tales are out there about early "vintage" dishes with a more detailed background coming from a query into Snopes quoting the mother and maker of the film MisLEAD, Tamara Rubin: The problem is, that if lead is coming off onto a Lead Check Swab, that means it IS rubbing off -–in small, even microscopic (but still dangerous) amounts-– and it becomes available to be transferred to your mouth, eyes, or even your child’s food or body.  Even though you can’t see it….Every time you touch it.  Every time you stack it inside another dish.  Every time you run it through the dishwasher.  Every time you wipe it with a rag.  All of these actions will release a microscopic amount of lead from the paint that can contaminate your environment.  

    And lead, despite its weight, can be easily absorbed both in the air and by touching the microscopic particles that land on the ground, something which proved a major concern with the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral; said a piece in Live Science: Notre Dame's now-destroyed roof was made of virgin oak cut into timbers in 1160, overlaid with large, thin panels of lead.  Media reports on the fire estimate the weight of that lead at 210 tons (182 metric tons).  The spire, also made of wood and lead, dated back to a 20-year restoration project started in 1844 and led by architects Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus.  Media reports put the weight of the 300-foot (91.4 meter) spire they designed at 750 tons (680 metric tons).  According to the Associated Press, much of that lead is now contaminating the Notre Dame site.  Lead levels in the plaza and in areas closest to the cathedral were between 10 and 20 grams per kilogram, according to the AP -- up to 65 times the recommended limit of 0.3 g per kg.  Which brings us back to the U.S. and to the water of Flint, Michigan...lead can and often does come from corroding lead water pipes or of the lead solder* once used to join such pipes; but in Flint's case the lead also came from the switching of treated water to getting water from the nearby Flint river five years ago.  Said a piece in National Geographic: From spark plugs to engines to assembly, the GM locations dumped 10 million gallons of waste into the river every day, according to the Interior report.  This included minimally treated oil and dangerous substances like cyanide and hexavalent chromium.  Road salt used to melt ice, as well as other treatment chemicals were added to the new water flows but this only added to the dissolving of lead particles in the pipes as well (the article notes that even GM stopped using the "new" water since it was corroding their machinery); the city switched back to the old system a year later but it was too late.  About a month ago the Trump administration issued a revision to the federal Lead and Copper Rule but it was a hollow revision according to some sites such as the National Wildlife Federation, perhaps reflecting what other parts of the country are feeling, that despite its drawbacks, lead is here to stay...Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources recently rejected a ban on lead bullets and fishing tackle.

    Ironically, lead is far from the biggest problem in our drinking water.  According to the Superfund priority site (which only list the top 1600 "worst" sites out of an estimated 40,000), arsenic leads the list along with mercury, vinyl chloride (a component of PVC pipes and packaging) and a host of chemicals most of us have never heard of.  The "fund" was once billed to the companies that caused the contamination but for nearly the past 20 years, Congress has passed that cleanup bill onto the taxpayers (since then, and primarily due to lack of funding, just 8 of the 1400 scheduled facilities have been "cleaned" as of 2014 said Wikipedia).  On the bright side, three of the largest coal operations in the U.S. are scheduled to close by the end of the year, said Scientific American; combined the pollution emitted from the plants were equal to the emissions of 7.5 million cars.  Added the American Lung Association: Hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants include: • Acid gases, such as hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride; • Benzene, toluene and other compounds; • Dioxins and furans; • Formaldehyde; • Lead, arsenic, and other metals; • Mercury; • Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH); and • Radioactive materials, like radium and uranium.  Wait, weren't those the same elemental chemicals listed on those "priority" cleanup sites?  On the not-so-bright side, Think Progress reported last year that: ...The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will no longer require oil and gas companies, land developers, and other companies to pay into government funds set up to offset damage they do to natural resources and wildlife habitats when operating on public lands.  Seems that we all will eventually pay at some point...and "get the lead out" might become our rallying cry.

*Lead solder is still in use although lead-free solder is now available...the controversy can grow quite heated on discarding lead solder, as evidenced by the discussion on that topic on Quora.