This episode, our first foray into toxic metals, is heavy in all kinds of ways – metallically, emotionally, informationally, politically. Lead poisoning has been around for about as long humans have been working with lead, but despite its extensive history, it still poses an incredibly huge public health problem today, especially for children. Tune in to hear us chat about the multitude of effects lead exposure can have on your body, the dark and often strange history of lead poisoning (ancient Rome, anyone?), and the alarming extent to which lead exposure affects people around the world today.
| History | Biology |
| Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Lead Wars: The politics of science and the fate of America’s children. Vol. 24. Univ of California Press, 2014 | Needleman, Herbert. “Lead poisoning.” Annu. Rev. Med. 55 (2004): 209-222. |
| Nriagu, Jerome O. Lead and Lead Poisoning in Antiquity. New York and Chichester, John Wiley, 1983. | Kalman, Sumner M. “The pathophysiology of lead poisoning: A review and a case report.” Journal of Analytical Toxicology 1.6 (1977): 277-281. |
| Delile, Hugo, et al. “Lead in ancient Rome’s city waters.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.18 (2014): 6594-6599. | Woolf, Alan D., Rose Goldman, and David C. Bellinger. “Update on the clinical management of childhood lead poisoning.” Pediatric Clinics of North America 54.2 (2007): 271-294. |
| Hernberg, Sven. “Lead poisoning in a historical perspective.” American journal of industrial medicine 38.3 (2000): 244-254. | Frostenson, Sarah, and Sarah Kliff. The risk of lead poisoning isn’t just in Flint. So we mapped the risk in every neighborhood in America., Vox, www.vox.com/a/lead-exposure-risk-map. |
| Needleman, Herbert. “Lead poisoning.” Annu. Rev. Med. 55 (2004): 209-222. | Grzincic, Natasha, et al. These Maps Reveal the Worst Neighborhoods for Lead Poisoning in NYC, Boston, and Chicago, www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzmvd9/these-maps-reveal-the-worst-neighborhoods-for-lead-poisoning-in-nyc-boston-and-chicago. |
| Needleman, Herbert. “Low level lead exposure: history and discovery.” Annals of Epidemiology 19.4 (2009): 235-238. | Mapping inequality, University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab,, dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58. |
| Nriagu, Jerome O. “Saturnine gout among Roman aristocrats: did lead poisoning contribute to the fall of the Empire?.” (1983): 660-663. | Roberts, Eric M., et al. “Assessing child lead poisoning case ascertainment in the US, 1999–2010.” Pediatrics 139.5 (2017): e20164266. |
| Lead poisoning and health, WHO, 23 Aug. 2019, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health. |
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