[Clayart] HEAVY METAL

[Michael]

You mention ( 
a skeet shooting range in Ohio.) were they using lead buckshot?? Lead buckshot was he cause of many birds here in California of dying from lead buckshot found in the prey they ate.
-----Original Message-----
From: <clayart at lists.clayartforum.com>
Sent: Aug 3, 2024 5:01 AM
To: <clayart at lists.clayartforum.com>
Subject: Clayart Digest, Vol 105, Issue 2

Send Clayart mailing list submissions to
clayart at lists.clayartforum.com

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://lists.clayartforum.com/mailman/listinfo/clayart
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
clayart-request at lists.clayartforum.com

You can reach the person managing the list at
clayart-owner at lists.clayartforum.com

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Clayart digest..."


Today's Topics:

1. Heavy metals (Joseph Herbert)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2024 15:04:50 -0500
From: Joseph Herbert
To: clayart at lists.clayartforum.com
Subject: [Clayart] Heavy metals
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:

End of Clayart Digest, Vol 105, Issue 2
***************************************