Lead Paint in Chicago

Chicago was suffering a deadly midsummer blight. By last week 14 slum children from one to five years old, more than half of them Negroes, were dead of lead poisoning. And of more than 40 others who had been seriously ill, most would be left with permanent brain damage. Ironically, Chicago has long had as rigorous a program for the prevention, detection and treatment of lead poisoning as any city in the U.S., and is now making it still more strict.

Appetite for Everything. All cities with old slum dwellings have a year-round lead poisoning problem. Interior paints used to contain a great deal of the metal; most exterior paints still contain some, but far less than formerly. Crawlers and toddlers in the chew-everything age nibble porch rails and windowsills, chew flakes of old paint or chips of painted plaster and take the lead into their systems, where it is deposited, much like calcium, in the bones. A little lead produces no symptoms and usually no damage. But it takes only a little more to bring on symptoms that are bafflingly similar to those of other illnesses: bellyache, nausea, vomiting and either diarrhea or constipation. At different stages come irritability, lethargy, rigidity, convulsions and coma leading to death.

One long-puzzling feature of lead poisoning is the way the cases always seem to pile up in the hot months, June to September, but hover near the vanishing point at other times. Various researchers have suggested parts of an answer that is now generally accepted, though some details are uncertain.

Even children with the unnatural appetite known as "pica," who eat just about anything they can get their hands on (TIME, Oct. 12), do not chew enough lead to make them ill immediately. In most children it simply accumulates in their bones. But summer sunshine on their skins sets off biochemical changes in their systems--for one thing, it boosts their supply of vitamin D. Summer is also a time of growth spurts, when the development of new bone calls for a fast turnover of calcium--and lead rides alongside the calcium into the bloodstream, to attack the nervous system and the brain itself.

Leach It Out. Early detection is difficult because parents rarely take a child to a doctor for the first, seemingly minor complaints. But prompt diagnosis is essential if modern treatments are to be effective. Professor Samuel P. Bessman of the University of Maryland found that disodium calcium ver-senate will selectively leach out the lead from a child's system without robbing him of precious calcium. Now doctors are trying combinations of versenate with urea for double action.

Still, the number of child victims with brain damage is so great that last week the Illinois Council for Mentally Retarded Children was agitating to have a state of emergency declared in Chicago. Health Commissioner Samuel Andelman chose what seemed to him more practical measures. He arranged to have 30 building inspectors take special evening courses in paint and plaster peeling problems. With every poisoning case reported, the inspectors can go to the home and check the paint and plaster. If they are laced with lead, the board of health can close the house.

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