Document 82jQqJ5VeKpadLv4V3jZarLyK

K 0001282 4 G- 4 WOMEN AND ETHYL RISKS. traces of lead (in the kidneys and liver). \MEDICAL REPORT AND He mentions that of 141 pregnant women who worked in lead factories in Prance it. LEAD POISON. was found that 82 aborted, 4 gave rise to premature births, 5 to stillborn infants. MORE SUSCEPTIBLE -, THAN MEN. -.v; Of the 50 infants born at term, 3 5 died within 2 years. Thus only 15 children of 141 pregnant women lived beyond the third year. .. - ... He cites a further report from the French Department of Labour made in ] By DR. MYER COPLANS, D.S.O.T he following is the third section o f the m edical report on ethyl petrol which has been prepared for " T he Daily Mail ", by Dr. Myer Coplans, D .S.O., O .8.E ., the eminent research worker. It is based on his own personal experiments and data supplied by the Research Association o f British M otor and Allied Manufacturers, Who carried out a scientific analysis o f exhgust gases from m otor engines. - T h e first and second sections were pub lished on Monday and Tuesday. 1905 in which it appears that among 1,000 pregnancies in lead workers, 609 terminated iri abortion. . Males having chronic lead poisoning, although not impotent, often became Sterile. He quotes an investigation, published in 1910, from which it appears that among the. wives of 75 lead workers having, 442 pregnancies there were 66 abortions and 241 miscarriages. - Oliver found that of the children of paint grinders " 40 per cent, die of con vulsions during the -first year, of life;" Lead has been found in the-, placenta ! That ethyl petrol is to be regarded as (afterbirth) as well as in the internal organs of the offspring of toxic mothers. particularly dangerous to women by Idiocy and infantilism have frequently reason of the ready absorption through been observed among the children of the skin of. the lead tetraethyl present lead-poisoned pottery workers. iis to - be inferred from experiments LEAD IN DRINKING WATER.. Jo LQ . already carried out with animals spe Legge and Goadby, in their authori cially to determine this point. Preg; nant animals (goats) so treated aborted |and, on analysis, lead was found in the tative work on lead poisoning, in the I portion devoted to susceptibility and immunity state, with regard to sex, that women are more susceptible to poison-1 4 ,-z r ! bodies of the foetuses. 'It should be re ing by lead than men, and in lead l ; membered that lead tetraethyl is the poisoning from drinking water the pro- f only known lead compound which is so portion of women (especially pregnant ji readily absorbable by the skin,, and it should also be borne in mind that once Methyl petrol has dried upon the human skin, washing* the contaminated surface even with kerosene is the reverse of ; being dependable for the purpose of re ; moving the deposited lead tetraethyl. ' I The action of lead tetraethyl upon the animal body differs in no way from that i of other lead compounds which are proved notorious abortives, such as lead in combination with oleic acid, or >other higher fatty acids, whether sold as diachylon or under any other \designation. .' women) and children attacked is stated to be higher than in men, and one such epidemic is quoted by Oliver where the number of miscarriages and premature births led to the discovery of the fact I that the water supply was contaminated | with lead. The close relationship of lead poisoning to miscarriage has been re peatedly made out, especially by Oliver, in the white lead industry as carried on 20 years ago. . j These authors support all that has- been stated in this respect by Dr. Gil man Thompson.. They give details alsc( of a series of animal experiments show-/ i DANGER RECOGNISED. ing that lead has a similar effect oil) ! The extremely harmful nature of these pregnant animals. They emphasise thati ' lead preparations has already been the toxic action of lead in non-pregnanti ; recognised by their inclusion under women is to produce a striking and cop-j i Part I. of the Schedule of Poisons under the Poisons and Pharmacy Act,,1908, and ious disturbance of the rhythmic fune-j tions special to women which entail a their purchase and use by the general considerable and profound ill-health. public is as difficult as is the case with, for instance, strychnine or prussic acid With regard to male lead workers they state that in the absence of any or other recognised violently active precautions whatever as to daily absorp i poison. There is every reason for in tion of dangerous dust, the effect on the j eluding .in'- Part I. of the Poisons offspring may welly be evident, as has Schedule lead tetraethyl which is at been shown in the manufacture of pot 1present obtainable by any member of tery as a home industry in Hungary. - the public from a retail druggist with They consider that females are more out question or warning.- , susceptible to poisoning than males, 1 The harmful action of lead compounds showing symptoms earlier and acquiring I on human beings in so far as it affects them with less dosage than men work : the function of maternity is not the sole ing under similar circumstances. : charge against- it; there are others of equally grave import to''men. 1 Dr. W Gilman Thompson' (now medical consultant to the Standard Oil Company and also acting on behalf of the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation) in his book on the Occupational Diseases, pub lished in 1914, at the time when he was Professor oL Medicine, Cornell Univer sity Medical College, in New York City, wrote as follows: . ' Abortions and Miscarriages; Oliver found th at fnarried women who formerly were permitted to work in white lead production almost invariably miscarried, or bore stillborn infants, or infants that died a t an early age of. convulsions. I t CHILDREN SUFFER MOST. Woolsey has given the percentage of affected lead workers" in Stoke-uponTrent in 1898 as 4.9 per cent, of men and 12.4 per cent, of women employed. Other industries show a higher proportion, but since that time much of this employment of women has been prohibited by law. , With regard to age, the general clinical conclusions of appointed surgeons and certifying surgeons in the various lead factories would be, they believe, that the susceptibility of young persons is at least twice that of adults and that there is some ground for supposing that tho tissues1of an adult, when growth has was this circumstance which attracted ceased, more, readily adapt themselves his attention to the hazards of lead work to deal with absorption and elimination >