Gale Norton Responsible for Murdering Children
Pollution Prevention
By DAVID ROSNER, GERALD MARKOWITZ
As contention over President-elect George W. Bush's nominations
for Labor and Justice grabs the headlines, it is important that Gale
Norton's nomination for secretary of the Interior not fly under the
radar. Norton's role as a lobbyist for NL Industries, previously known
as National Lead Co., is a terrifying harbinger of what may befall the
nation if the Senate confirms her.
National Lead is responsible for what is perhaps the nation's most
devastating children's health crisis. For decades, National Lead
promoted and distributed millions of gallons of lead-based paint under
its "Dutch Boy" brand name. Lead paint has led to the death and brain
damage of thousands of children.
That Norton lobbied for a company that pushed for toxic lead paint
to the point where it covers the walls of a major portion of our
housing stock, particularly in urban areas and older suburbs, at best
indicates an extraordinary ignorance of the corporate cultures within
which she works. At worst, it shows a dangerous bias for the worst
polluters of the American environment.
National Lead's irresponsible corporate culture is not something
that Norton could have missed, for it extends deep into the history of
the company. By the mid-1920s, numerous cases of lead paint
intoxication among infants and toddlers, resulting in severe brain
damage and even death, were documented in the medical literature.
Despite this, NL Industries worked hard to popularize the use of
lead paint through a direct marketing campaign aimed at young children.
Through the use of its Dutch Boy logo, the nation was, for decades,
lulled into a false sense of security about the safety of lead paint on
walls, woodwork and window sills with which children constantly came in
contact.
National Lead began a campaign that sought to, in the words of one
of its early marketing ads, "cater to the children." In thousands of
ads, brochures and visits to schools, 4-H Clubs and hospitals, the
company joined with its trade association, the Lead Industries Assn.,
to counteract negative publicity. Most pernicious were the children's
paint books distributed free to children. Children were encouraged to
read the poems that accompanied the illustrations of the Dutch Boy
riding on bars of lead, playing with lead soldiers, mixing white lead
with colors, and painting children's toys, furniture and bedroom walls.
In the 1930s and 1940s as well, the company spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars in advertising, promotion and lobbying efforts to
make sure that "pure white lead" was insulated from the growing chorus
of voices calling for its elimination from the interior of houses.
National Lead encouraged teachers and parents to "get after the school
trustees to have each room repainted" with "flat paint made of Dutch
Boy white-lead and flatting oil." In another more poignant promotion,
Dutch Boy shows a crawling infant touching a painted wall: "There is no
cause for worry when fingerprint smudges or dirt spots appear on a wall
painted with Dutch Boy white-lead," the ad reassures parents.
The Dutch Boy Painter, a periodical published by National Lead,
carried an article during the Depression on using lead paint to
stencil "humorous designs such as cartoons, caricatures and pictorials
in recreation rooms, game rooms, bars, etc. . . . for use in nurseries,
kindergartens, play rooms and other places where children gather."
Throughout its history, National Lead proudly bragged of the
success of its marketing campaign to children. This marketing of the
Dutch Boy image was an essential element of National Lead's
profitability and the rise of its sales from $80 million in 1939 to
more than $320 million in 1948.
National Lead and its trade association, the LIA, encouraged
shifting responsibility for this tragedy from lead paint to the parents
and children themselves. They shaped the research agendas of scientists
and intimidated researchers who identified lead paint as the source of
children's learning disorders.
When medical and public opinion were so great that it could not
deny the link between lead paint and childhood lead poisoning, the LIA
promoted the idea that poisoned children suffered from a preexisting
condition called pica--a "morbid craving" for lead paint chips.
Similarly it argued that parents living in slum dwellings were
responsible for not properly supervising their children and not
maintaining clean homes.
For many decades to come, we will continue to see thousands of
children entering our emergency rooms with the symptoms of lead
poisoning. If Norton is ignorant of this company's seedy history, then
it is frightening indeed that she might be in charge of overseeing the
use of our nation's mineral resources and public lands and protecting
the public from other irresponsible industries intent on exploiting the
world we live in for their own profit.
- - -
David Rosner Is a Professor of History and Public Health at Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health. Gerald Markowitz Is a
Professor of History at John Jay College and City University of New
York's Graduate Center
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
Sent via Deja.com
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John Ernst
Time to grow up and get behind GWB.
THEY HAVE NOT LEAD. WE WILL.
SNUMBER6
you complain ....
In the Village ....
I am not a number ... I am a free man !!!!
Cary Kittrell
<Sometimes you have to do "bad" things to get "good" things done.
<Time to grow up and get behind GWB.
<
<
<THEY HAVE NOT LEAD. WE WILL.
<
<
On the contrary, it sounds like they have all the
lead you could ask for.
Lloyd R. Parker
: Sometimes you have to do "bad" things to get "good" things done.
: Time to grow up and get behind GWB.
:
:
: THEY HAVE NOT LEAD. WE WILL.
Actually, the problem is, Norton's client NL ***has*** lead and so do the
children involved.
:
:
:
:
:
: On Thu, 18 Jan 2001 22:08:37 GMT, Pollution Prevention
:
Bob Myers
"Pollution Prevention" <earthti...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:947pgt$vnb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Norton's Lobbying Shows Her Colors
God knows I'm no great supporter of Gale Norton, but if
the best you can come up with is ties to a company which
did some nasty things in the 1920s-1940s, then you can
rightly expect her to sail through confirmation. This article
was so much wasted space in terms of being relevant to
anything she may or may not have done on behalf of this
company during her tenure with them.
By this same reasoning, those of us who bought
Volkswagens or Porsches during the past few
years, given Germany's involvement in WWI and WWII,
are guilty of giving financial support to "the enemy".
Bob M.
Lloyd R. Parker
:
: "Pollution Prevention" <earthti...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
: news:947pgt$vnb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
: > Norton's Lobbying Shows Her Colors
:
: God knows I'm no great supporter of Gale Norton, but if
: the best you can come up with is ties to a company which
: did some nasty things in the 1920s-1940s, then you can
: rightly expect her to sail through confirmation. This article
Actually, the reason NL needs lobbyists now is they're trying to get out
of paying for the mess they've caused.