Lead poisoning and lead absorption : $b The symptoms, pathology and prevention, with special reference to their industrial origin, and an account of the principal processes involving riskLegge, Thomas Morison, Sir
Science
Lead poisoning and lead absorption : $b The symptoms, pathology and prevention, with special reference to their industrial origin, and an account of the principal processes involving risk
Legge, Thomas Morison, Sir
Lead poisoning
Precisely similar operations, or only modified in detail, have
accounted for heavy incidence of lead poisoning in the painting of
perambulators, of safes, of bicycles, of bedsteads, of gas-meters,
the “metallic” enamelling of baths (in which also chipping off of
the old paint not infrequently occasions an attack), in engineering
and machine-making works, in cabinet and furniture making, in French
polishing, in the making of artists’ canvases, etc. Several cases are
reported among railway employees engaged in the painting of bridges,
girders, and signal-posts. A method for the removal of the dust given
off in these processes has not yet been arranged. Chipping off of old
paint can be effectually replaced by solvent solutions, in the use of
which, as they are very inflammable, precautions against naked lights
are necessary.
In the making of better-class measuring tapes, the tape, after passage
through the white-lead mixture and drying, is made to travel through
a machine to remove roughnesses, and subsequently through the fingers
of the worker, protected by leather. Dust arises in both the last
operations, and requires to be removed by exhaust ventilation. Similar
means of prevention are necessary wherever paint is applied, as in
photo-engraving, and colouring artificial flowers by means of an
aerograph instrument.
Owing to the limited extent to which exhaust ventilation is possible,
reliance must be placed on substitution of wet processes for dry
wherever possible. Cleanliness of floors requires special attention.
Although in all painting operations dust is the most potent cause of
poisoning, we would assign to contamination of the hands and the eating
of food with unwashed hands a more prominent place as a cause than in
any of the other processes involving use of lead or lead colours. In
a post-mortem on a sign-painter employed only a few days, made three
weeks after his cessation of employment on account of an attack of
encephalopathy, paint was found thickly adherent under the nails.
Substitution of colours containing no lead suggests itself as a
simple remedy, but the progress in this direction made so far in the
industries mentioned is limited. Several important firms manufacturing
motor-cars use no lead colours at all; more than one important railway
company (the outside of the carriages of which has no white colour)
and a few makers of perambulators do the same. It is difficult to
obtain knowledge how far leadless are replacing lead colours. In the
manufacture of cornice poles (in which small industry several severe
attacks were reported) the suggestion of a factory inspector to employ
lithopone was adopted, with entire success. A patent graphite has been
substituted for orange lead, with which wooden patterns to form the
moulds of articles to be subsequently cast in metal are frequently
painted.
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