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
Persons employed in the manufacture of white and red lead, electric
accumulators, paints and colours, and the others named, are exposed
essentially to dust from salts of lead, which are readily absorbed.
Poisoning, therefore, if precautions are inadequate, will quickly show
itself, causing certain workers to seek other employment after one
attack. Poisoning thus produced is more likely to induce colic, or,
if the dose has been large or the individual markedly susceptible,
encephalopathic symptoms, than paralysis. On the other hand, the
slowness of the onset of symptoms in the case of brass workers,
plumbers, printers, file-cutters, and tinners, is more the result
of inhalation of fumes or of dust of metallic lead than of salts of
lead; or if the inhalation be of salts of lead, then of these in less
amount and over a long period, with, as a result, gradual undermining
of the constitution, showing itself in paralysis, arterio-sclerosis,
and renal disease. The two factors indicated obviously account for
the differences in severity and number of attack between males and
females. If second and third attacks are comparatively fewer in
females than in males, it follows that, in general, the attack will
be less severe also, and this is brought out in the figures. Cerebral
symptoms--encephalopathy, to which headache may be added--are more than
twice as frequent in females as males. This may be due to idiosyncrasy,
but it may very possibly be simply the result of short duration of
employment of young workers in processes where dust of salts of lead is
incidental.
Attacks generally are most frequent in the first or second year of
employment. Thus, of 2,195 attacks reported in the four years 1904
to 1907, as to which sufficient data are given, 898 occurred in the
first two years of employment, and of these 672 occurred in the first
year--that is, three-sevenths of all the cases were reported during
the first two years, and four-sevenths in the whole of the remaining
years of employment. It is, unfortunately, impossible to say what
is the proportion of attacks among those employed for any given age
period. In some factories--as, for example, lead smelting works--the
average duration of employment is about thirteen years. The length
of employment preceding an attack was made out from reports on cases
which occurred in the white lead industry in 1898--a time when a number
of new workers were taken on to replace the female labour abolished
in June of that year, and conditions as regards removal of dust were
entirely different from what they are now. The figures, therefore, can
only be considered to have bearing upon incidence under almost the
worst possible circumstances. Of 155 attacks, duration of employment
was stated to have been less than 1 week in 3, from 1 week to 1 month
in 8, from 1 to 3 months in 62, from 3 to 6 months in 44, from 6 to 12
months in 12, and 1 year and over in 26.
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