[Clayart] Heavy metals

[ronroy at ca.inter.net]

Thanks Joe, food for thought as usual!

Joe is referring to the practice of including lead in gasoline as an  
anti knock agent many years ago. Then they started adding manganese  
for the same reason till they figured out that manganese was a poison  
too and stopped doing that.

I wonder what they use now?

RR

Quoting Joseph Herbert via Clayart <clayart at lists.clayartforum.com>:

> It is a shame that heavy metals are more subtile in their negative effects
> than people are in their appreciation of the possibility of damages from
> poisoning. Appreciation of time and cumulative effects seem to elude the
> normal human mind.
>
> There was a time when victims of black and brown lung were conspicuous
> members of society and accepted, routinely, as necessary and unavoidable
> results of workplace hazards.  As we know from Alice, the neurological
> effects of mercury on hatters was an expected, accepted, and anticipated
> consequence of joining the hat trade. People knew that a working life
> underground or in a cotton gin, or breathing fumes in a hattery, had
> consequences because they say examples frequently.
>
> A further example, in some ways more egregious, but limited in the number
> of people impacted, was radium poisoning at the turn of the 20th century. A
> delicious combination of heavy metal and radioactivity, radium emulates
> calcium in the human body, with devastating effects. Women watch dial
> painters were exposed in the workplace; a rich playboy drank radium water;
> all suffered early, and gruesome, deaths.
>
> Eventually, the recognition of workplace, home, and environmental hazards
> led to governmental efforts to limit or eliminate the hazards and their
> effects. The elimination of lead from paint, pottery, and eventually
> gasoline, reduced people?s (especially children?s) exposure to that metal
> was one of those efforts.
>
> (Earlier in my life I went on an environmental lead soil sampling
> expedition at a skeet shooting range in Ohio. Thirty years earlier we could
> just have sampled any roadside.)
>
> Ordinary individuals have neither the breadth of experience nor the
> subtlety of observation represented by scientific studies of environmental
> hazard impacts on a population. For some (to me inexplicable) reason people
> value their admittedly uninformed opinion based on ?nothing bad had
> happened yet? very limited experience over extensive controlled studies
> over multiple large populations.  Perhaps this attitude is maybe somehow
> the result of the successful campaigns to remove hazards thus also removing
> the evident victims from view.
>
> This same attitude has now applied to vaccines, since we don?t see the
> smallpox scared or dead, the polio crippled children, or the childhood
> deaths from measles and such. The success of public health efforts have
> removed the examples of disease consequences from view so people feel
> entitled to ignore our species history of disease.
>
> In the end, a person decides to ignore scientific studies, public health
> regulations, and doctor?s advice at their peril. They are free to do that,
> but they are not entitled to damage others with their prejudices. Most
> often the remedy is left to the civil courts.
>
> So, a studio potter neglects wet cleaning and lives with a layer of
> clay/glaze dust on the floor. Ordinary foot traffic suspends the dust
> making inhalation inevitable. If there?s no fan or breeze, the respirable
> dust may settle over night to start again the next day. And we don?t
> complain; their lungs, their business.
>
> Would our response be the same if the negligent potter is teaching in a
> group setting that uses talc-containing, low fire white body?  Further,
> there is constant foot traffic and mechanical air circulation so the dust
> never settles. There is some evidence that very small exposures to asbestos
> can result in lung cancers in some people. How do we feel about casual
> cleaning here?
>
> There has been argument about the mercury standards for power plant
> emissions. Since it is largely impossible to find mercury-free coal to
> burn, the lower mercury emission standard results in coal-fired power plant
> closures. The argument (by some) is that exposing the population to mercury
> is less harmful to society than closing the plants. How should the issue be
> decided? Is the population to vote to accept mercury exposure if they also
> receive cheaper power? Is it the government?s mandate to protect the health
> of the population in general that requires eliminating mercury? From the
> 70s, the answer has been that we wanted the experience and expertise of
> government agency employees to protect us from whatever. Is that changing?
>
> To a certain extent we only know about the dangers of heavy metals because
> of government agency efforts. If the mistrust of government afoot in the
> world now is intending to carry us back to the world described by Upton
> Sinclair in ?The Jungle?, I don?t want to go.
>
> Just rambling
>
> Joe
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Ron Roy
ronroy at ca.inter.net
Web page ronroy.net