[Clayart] Clayart Digest, Vol 105, Issue 2

Sun Aug 4 18:59:33 UTC 2024

I just want to thank the joseph Herbert and  Ron Roy for the invaluable
discussions.  I am further enlightened every time they speak!

Rox

On Sat, Aug 3, 2024 at 5:02 AM <clayart-request at lists.clayartforum.com>
wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Heavy metals (Joseph Herbert)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2024 15:04:50 -0500
> From: Joseph Herbert <josephherbert827 at gmail.com>
> To: clayart at lists.clayartforum.com
> Subject: [Clayart] Heavy metals
> Message-ID:
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> CAJGaOv23doZQLiaG95MaDDvRy9-CY+CMPDzvuygBuLPT8vhtgw at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> 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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