Lead poisoning


[Follow Ups] [Post Followup] [Dodge Power Wagon Forum]


Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 10:19AM :

In Reply to: Re: Made in China posted by MoparNorm on Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 8:58AM :

From what all the old timers around here say, the galena (lead sulphide ore) that they have in most of the mines is harmless. Men did get lead poisoning from the lead oxide in the smelter and miners did sometimes lead poisoning from the carbonate ore that a few of the smaller mines had. This was known back in the 1800s. The poisoning was similar to "painter's colic" that affected house painters back when paint was made with white lead and red lead (lead oxides). The oxides of lots of metals get into your system (hence the danger from welding fumes) but the sulphides don't. The effect of the lead poisoning was digestive trouble. What really killed miners was (and is, I just lost an old friend this summer) breathing rock dust combined with smoking cigarettes and now the fumes from the diesel LHDs underground. They used to call it "miner's con" ("con" for "consumption"). It doesn't take a medical degree to accept that lots of rock dust is probably bad for your lungs.

The EPA, however, believes "lead is lead" regardless of the chemical form, and hence we have huge amounts of regulations and restrictions and superfund cleanups of harmless forms of lead like galena. It's as if they decided to ban table salt because chlorine is poisonous. They're spending vast amounts of your money "cleaning up" dirt that isn't hurting anybody and making it almost impossible for any existing mine to continue operating, much less re-open an old one.

All in all, mining is a safer profession than construction or logging. Even though the accidents tend to be pretty gruesome and dramatic (a friend of a friend recently got crushed to death in an air door in the Stillwater mine, a big new mine in Montana owned by the Russians) the overall rate of on-the-job injuries is not all that high.

92's mighty good for a man. I'd sure be happy to live that long. I think I'll start mixing a little galena in my pancakes. I bet the hard work helps a little too.



Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
E-Mail:
Subject:
Message:
Optional Link
URL:
Title:
Optional Image Link
URL:


This board is powered by the Mr. Fong Device from Cyberarmy.com