Document DMgbjbEBn8R5y3p23OB798do4

October 17, 1974 John S. Chapman, M.D., Chief Editor .Archives of Environmental Health P.0. Box 19745 Medical Center Station Dallas, Texas 75219 Dear Doctor Chapman: I return the review with some slight modifications. Shortening of the text proved to be difficult, next to impossible, since one must, as briefly as possible, make apparent the nature of the situation. The fact is, in effect, that a controversy over this matter has been raging for many years, and I was responsible for it, to some extent, for demonstrating some years ago that- lead is a normal constituent of human organisms on a leau-bearing earth. Even native Mexican Indians, living in a primitive part of the earth, invest lead witn everytning they eat and drink, and eliminate lead in their excreta regularly. It has never been possible to describe, in simple, definitive terras, the difference between lead as a normal constituent of the human body, ana ieaa as a poison, except in certain quantitative terms, /end so, in response to your request, I am out to the necessity of outlining the hazard, in its practical terms of medical perforinance, rather than in defining the precise status of lead as a poison. Tills is, unfortunately, the problem of modern medicine in relation to poisons, and it has to he met in terms of methods of medical procedure rather tnan in any simple definition. I'm sorry that I am put to the necessity of convincing you tnat such is the case, but this is the result of the facts of life. The authors of this book have not learned tnis lesson, through their own experience. I was compelled to ao so years ago, through my medical responsibility for men engaged in industry, (at first) in a very dangerous and unusual industry in which tetraethyl lead had to be handled safely, and then in the larger field of industry in the larger and wider handling of inorganic lead compounds. And so I wind ux. in prescribing a medical means of dealing with the problem of lead poisoning izi early childhood, rather than in stating a definition of lead as a poison. The problem is one, not of a substance, but of a specific quantity of a substance which is world-wide in its occurrence, and is found in all living organisms on this planet, so far as present evidence indicates. Sincerely yours, RAKiwb KE 0010451 Hobei*t A. Rehoe, M. D. Professor Emeritus of Occupational Medicine