Dismantling the Corporate Playbook Against Public Health: A Case Study in Lead

By Marissa Li

Public knowledge around lead poisoning has been around for hundreds of years and the effects on children known for over a hundred years. Yet, even with this knowledge, private industry and government were painfully slow at removing lead from society. There were many reasons for this slow response: private industry prioritized profits over public health effects, the presence of an active slander campaign against lead scientists, lobbying the government to comply with lead friendly policies. Similar playbooks have been carried out in other industries related to public health such as the tobacco and fossil fuel industries into present day. This means that after years of dealing with the effects of private industry raking in profits while public health suffered, we haven’t figured out how to disrupt this corporate playbook of misinformation and lobbying. Thus, a system of accountability needs to be created that makes conflicts of interest in scientific research transparent, fines those that promote misinformation at the expense of public health, and strengthens punitive measures for government officials that don’t follow federal public health guidelines.

One of the most important forms of accountability must come from the pursuit of scientific truth. Since there was much historical documentation of lead poisoning stretching from the “second century BCE when Greek botanist Nikander described the paralysis and colic from lead and then centuries later Greek physician Dioscorides observed the ‘mind giving away’ after exposure to lead” respectively, the lead industry had to produce their own research that downplayed the effects of lead (Bellinger and Bellinger 2006). Specifically, the lead industry provided funding for research on lead from the 1920 through 1970s at major institutions of public health research (Silbergeld 1997). This contained a huge conflict in interest and led to much obscuring of scientific truth which then delayed government intervention on lead. Instead, there should be public health funds dedicated to impartial research that wouldn’t have been subject to pressures from companies doling out the funding. The standards for scientific reporting also needed to be refined as the controls in lead poisoning research were already contaminated from decades of prevalent lead use in paint and gas. For the case of lead, understanding how nonzero amounts affected the entire neurological system was key in concluding that no concentration of lead in blood was safe (Bellinger and Bellinger 2006). Research could’ve been improved by seeking out controls from other countries with extremely low blood lead concentrations and pairing that with biological studies to understand the mechanism by which lead damages the human body. It’s clear that accountability within public health research regarding sources of funding and methods is the first step in catalyzing future policy action. Still, after growing evidence on the effects of lead, policy action still took several decades to materialize to remove lead from paint and gas. Heavy industry lobbying defeated efforts in the 1930s to reduce presence of lead in food and over the next few decades, defeated similar legislation (Silbergeld 1997). Efforts to ban lobbying have gained momentum but in our capitalistic society, private industry forces will always be there to influence policy. One solution is to make lobbying completely transparent and legal so society can keep track of which interests are being prioritized. Also, grassroots organizing that informs the public about lead is necessary to eventually turn the tide. Public health can overcome private industry only when the public is involved.

Once policy action is achieved, it’s equally important that policy is carried out across all levels of government and if not, carrying consequences for those that display gross negligence for those policies. Recently, a major crisis with lead in drinking water appeared in Flint and carried on needlessly for years without a clear resolution. Officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, instead of quickly admitting a mistake in transferring the Flint water source and pouring all their resources to fix the situation, scrambled to cover up the situation and insisted that the drinking water was safe. They didn’t follow federal guidelines, lied about following them to the EPA, failed to follow protocol while taking water samples, and even threw out two samples with high lead contamination that would’ve forced them to inform the public about lead in 2015 (Barry-Jester 2016). These actions are egregious and are what made the crisis that much more difficult to resolve. After all, if the officials we trusted to ensure our safety betrayed the public and decided to save themselves, who else could solve the issue? In the end, the citizens themselves who were affected by the toxic drinking water took on roles as citizen water testers, scientists, and experts on lead. None of this needed to happen if only the federal guidelines were federal laws and lying to the EPA constituted a felony. It’s difficult to see how officials will follow these ‘guidelines’ in the future if they see that the worst consequence is being forced to resign from their post. Those consequences pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of people exposed to lead poisoning. Fortunately, there has been criminal legal action being pursued against Michigan officials all the way up to former governor Rick Snyder which does indicate to governors that they need to stay on top of the water quality in their state (Magill and Scott 2021). There is much more that needs to be done, though, as many of the initial officials involved in the coverup have escaped criminal proceedings.

The U.S. has slowly but surely come a long way in terms of reducing blood lead concentrations in its population; nevertheless, the corporate playbook that exists to blur scientific truth and delay policy action still is in use today and we must be able to learn from the 20th century failures in lead policy by focusing on research transparency and enacting severe consequences for those in charge that neglect public health to serve the interests of the citizens of the U.S.