Paper short abstract:

This paper considers disparate understandings of the “silent epidemic” of lead poisoning in the late 19th century United States. It suggests differing historical evaluations of risk facilitated the use of lead in urbanizing America and should inform efforts to address its continuing legacies.

Paper long abstract:

In the mid-19th century, some American chemists and medical doctors warned of the dangers of contracting lead poisoning from consuming water that was conveyed in lead pipes. In parts of the United States, community members' own experiences made them reject lead pipes for drinking water and led to family members' and neighbors' skepticism that lead pipe could safely carry water fit for human consumption. Yet as more advanced chemical analysis became possible in the second-half of the 1800s, prominent chemists asserted that their experiments proved that lead pipes did not leach lead into water passing through them under most conditions. In this way, these technical assertions of safety overtook commonplace concern that lead was an inappropriate material for conveying drinking water to households, and as a result many cities that installed drinking water pipes in the 1880s and 1890s used lead. This paper brings together scientific understandings of risk with non-specialist understandings of what was unsafe to investigate how scientific advances could actually increase vulnerability to the "silent epidemic" of lead poisoning. Bringing together multiple methodologies, it seeks to understand historical evaluations of the dangers of lead poisoning on a scientific and layperson's level. It suggests that examining the historical contradictions between technical claims of lead pipe's safety and common knowledge of lead pipe's dangers is crucial to understanding and addressing the ongoing legacies of lead poisoning in the 21st-century.