 We have known that lead can be toxic for thousands of years, and specifically that children could be poisoned by lead paint over a century ago. And since those first cases, the lead industry has mobilized against the advances of science. By 1926, lead poisoning was already a relatively frequent occurrence in children. But the United States continued to allow the use of lead-based paint until 1978. In contrast, over in Europe, many countries said hmm, poisoning children, no thanks, and banned the use of lead paint as early as 1909. The delay in the U.S. was due largely to the proud marketing and lobbying efforts of the industry profiting from the poison. They knew they couldn't hold off forever, but boasted that their victories have been in the deferral of implementation of regulation. And now, peeling paint turns into poisonous dust, and guess where it ends up? As a Mount Sinai dean and Harvard neurology professor put it, lead is a devastating poison damages children's brains, erodes intelligence, diminishes creativity and judgment and language and failure. Yet despite the accumulating evidence, the lead industry didn't just fail to warn people, but engaged in an energetic promotion of leaded paint. After all, a can of pure white lead paint had huge amounts of lead, which meant huge profits for the industry. But see, there's no cause to worry if your toddler smudges up against lead paint, because those fingerprints can be easily removed without harming the paint. Wouldn't want to harm the paint. After all, painted walls are sanitary. You see, as advertised by the Dutch Boys National Lead Company, lead helps to guard your health. The director of the Lead Industry Association blamed the victims, the slum-dwelling ignorant parents. It seems that no amount of evidence, no health statistics, no public outrage could get industry to care that their paint was killing and poisoning children. But how much public outrage was there really? I mean, it goes without saying lead is a devastating, debilitating poison. Literally millions of children have been diagnosed with various degrees of elevated lead levels. Compare that to polio, for example, though, and the 1950s fewer than 60,000 new cases annually created a near panic among American parents, and a national mobilization led to campaigns that virtually wiped out the problem within a decade. In contrast, despite many millions of children's lives altered for the worst, at no point in the past 100 years has there been a similar national mobilization over lead. And today, after literally a century, the CDC estimates over 500,000 children still suffer from elevated blood lead levels. The good news is that blood lead levels are in decline. It's celebrated as one of our great public health achievements. But given what we knew, for how long we knew, to declare this a public health victory? Even if we were victorious, it would be a victory diminished by our failure to learn from the epidemic and take steps to dramatically reduce exposures to other confirmed and suspected environmental toxicants. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this video series on lead. We need to learn from our history, so the next time some industry wants to sell something to our kids, we'll stick to the science. And of course, lead levels aren't declining for everyone. I'll cover the Flint-Michigan crisis and end by talking about dietary interventions to pull lead from our body. Next.