In October, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an order requiring the removal of all lead pipes supplying drinking water within the United States. Whether the rule will survive the brand new administration of Donald Trump is an open query — a matter that might have serious, even life-threatening, impacts on the greater than 9 million households that get their water through “mains.”
Given what we all know concerning the dangers posed by lead-contaminated drinking water, it's value asking: Why did it take so long? How is it possible that a lot of the United States still relies on toxic pipes?
The answer lies with a now-defunct organization called the Lead Industries Association (LIA). Similar to industry groups affiliated with the tobacco industry, the LIA tirelessly promoted using lead, despite its proven public health risks. The legacy of his success continues to plague the United States today.
The American medical community began to give attention to the general public health dangers of lead pipes as early because the 1840s. As the century ended, a consensus emerged. A chemist testifying on the 1885 meeting of the American Water Works Association stated flatly, “That lead pipe poisons drink water is beyond question.”
In the Nineties, Massachusetts was one among the primary states to recommend eliminating lead pipes. New Hampshire followed not long after, as did a handful of other states within the early twentieth century. But these initial attempts to curb using lead ultimately failed resulting from the LIA.
Founded in 1928, the organization was dominated by a handful of firms that mined and sold lead to be used in every thing from paint to pipes. Although ostensibly nothing greater than a trade association, the group's primary purpose was actually to beat back against growing public health concerns concerning the use of lead.
A robust campaign
In 1929, the group's secretary, Felix Wormser, noted in an annual report: “Recently the lead industries have received much unwanted publicity regarding lead poisoning.” He really useful that the LIA “spend time and money on an impartial investigation that would… would show once and for all whether lead is harmful to health or not.”
And so, despite the well-known dangers, the LIA continued to emphasize the benefits of using lead in a variety of products and rarely mentioned potential risks. Instead, the public received positive reports of lead's miraculous properties in publications such as 1931's “Useful Information About Lead.”
During the 1930s, the LIA lobbied plumbing associations and local officials in charge of plumbing regulations, hoping to revive the fortunes of the lead pipe industry. It warned of the “dangers” of using cast iron pipe (mainly corrosion) and praised the durability and workability of lead. By 1934, the organization could boast that it had “rekindled the interest of master and journeyman plumbers in the use of lead.” By World War II, lead pipes had been reintroduced into government buildings and other large-scale projects.
At the same time, the LIA conducted a duplicitous public relations campaign to sow doubt about the dangers of lead. In their history of this sad episode, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner show how the LIA assumed “a central role in funding research into lead-related diseases” in the absence of federal oversight of the subject.
The success of LIA
This helps explain why the United States continued to install lead pipes and produce lead paint while countries across Europe cracked down on sources of lead poisoning. When dissenters raised concerns, the LIA quickly attacked. After raising concerns about lead poisoning, the Metropolitan Life Company quickly backtracked, telling federal officials, “You will readily understand that we would like to avoid any controversy with the leaders.”
In the 1940s, the LIA managed to fend off attempts to regulate both lead pipes and lead paint. The group dismissed the overwhelming medical literature as nothing more than “anti-lead propaganda” that had “led many doctors and hospitals to take incorrect positions on the difficulty of lead poisoning.”
These efforts would proceed well into the postwar period, leaving tens of millions of households within the country susceptible to drinking lead-containing water. In fact, the LIA did its job so well that it wasn't until 1986 that Congress enacted a proper ban on installing recent lead pipes.
While the LIA can have been scientifically improper, it was right about one thing: lead pipes can last for a lot of a long time, which is why we’re still grappling with the results almost a century after their danger first got here to light must stop the LIA's cover-up campaign.
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