2. Back in 1950, a town is worried about lead poisoning due to exposure of lead
ID: 1160509 • Letter: 2
Question
2. Back in 1950, a town is worried about lead poisoning due to exposure of lead from
paint, which is widely used in all buildings. The town council knows that lead
exposure is harmful, but they are uncertain about the size of health effects from
lead exposure. They are confident, however, that they know the marginal costs of
abatement because they know how much it would cost to switch to lead-free paint
for different buildings. Also, they know that the marginal costs of switching to
lead-free paint is quite flat.
True or False:
If the town considered a price instrument (a tax on lead paint)
versus a quantity instrument (tradable lead paint permits) these two alternatives
should have the same
deadweight loss. (2 points)
Explanation / Answer
Leaded fuel was formally eliminated from the Canadian market in December 1990. The elimination of a major lead source and the next decline in kid's blood lead stages marked an predominant transition point and sparked the emergence of latest discourse on lead in Canada. Today, childhood lead poisoning is seen as a obstacle of the earlier or a difficulty of the united states. Sparse Canadian surveillance knowledge supported this view. Additionally, tensions among federal agencies developed into a vigor struggle, with wellness Canada eventually becoming the dominant authority, thereby relegating important research initiatives to obscurity and likewise shaping a vastly weaker regulatory response to steer than took place in the USA.
The assemble of childhood lead poisoning differs majorly between Canada and the us. Canadian public well being discourse portrays this drawback as a quandary of the earlier or as a US trouble. US public well being discourse portrays lead poisoning as a fundamental and preventable disorder, one requiring concerted and sustained effort to eradicate all sources of lead publicity for babies.
We present what McHoul and Grace1 termed a âcounter-readingâ of the history of childhood lead poisoning in Canada, with a special focus on discourse regarding lead-founded paint within the postâleaded gasoline generation. Our analysis recognized dominant public wellbeing discourses on lead poisoning, highlighting the sociopolitical processes that formed wellness care capabilities and influenced the way in which in which know-how on lead used to be produced and used by Canadian well being care providers and policymakers. We also compared this analysis with US public health discourses on lead to identify the historic contingencies that permitted the dominant discourses in Canada to be created and maintained.
Differences between the 2 international locations exist exceptionally in view that blood lead surveillance knowledge for US kids have been with ease to be had and simply accessible, whereas these information for Canadian children were reasonably sparse and inaccessible. This contingency justified the usage of Ontario's blood lead surveys because the surrogate indicator for Canada's youngsters. As leaded gas used to be steadily phased out, and as children's average blood lead stages (BPbs) declined, the dominant Canadian view that childhood lead poisoning was a crisis of the past, a US obstacle, or a challenge typically confined to youngsters dwelling in smelter communities was supported by way of restricted survey knowledge, selective references to US incidence information, and a predominance of investigations observed in Canadian literature describing lead poisoning cases as occurring in point-source communities. Conversely, this equal contingency disadvantaged equally vocal discourse proposing that lead poisoning from publicity to residential sources did arise in Canadian youngsters at a rate just like that wherein it took place in US children.
Last, tensions arising between wellness Canada and the Canada loan and Housing enterprise (CMHC), Canada's 2 federal corporations assigned responsibility for wellness, housing, and lead, advanced into a energy battle in the mid-Nineteen Nineties, with wellbeing Canada ultimately fitting the dominant voice, thereby diminishing CMHC's function and authority, but also relegating to obscurity major CMHC study initiatives, technical stories, and initiatives to remediate lead in housing.
These contingencies mixed to supply a vastly weaker public health response to lead in Canada than in the U.S., with the result that at present no legislation exists on the federal stage to preserve Canadian kids residing in lead-contaminated older dwellings. Present discourse attributable to the Canadian health Measures Survey, which emphasizes declining average BPbs, has extra bred support for current policy regardless of primary boundaries.
FORMULATING THE obstacle OF LEAD-headquartered PAINT IN CANADA, 1930â1990
Lead is essential to be taught in view that of its populace health effects. Evidence has instructed that BPbs cut back than Canada's currentlevel of difficulty (BPb < 10 μg/dL) harm children's renal and blood-forming systems, neuroendocrine systems, and reproductive systems.2,3 Lead's properties as a developmental neurotoxin also deserve attention for their sociological implications. Lead-exposed children are more likely than less exposed peers to have lower IQ scores, manifested as poorer school performance, and behavioral effects diagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.2,4,5
Canadian discourse on lead-based paint first emerged in the 1930s in 2 of Canada's oldest health-related journals: the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) and the Canadian Journal of Public Health (CJPH). In a 1932 issue of CMAJ, Mitchell6 described 2 cases of lead poisoning occurring in Montreal children: a 9-year-old girl who âstumbled when she walked, and could not use her hands properly to feed herselfâ and a 3-year-old girl hospitalized âin generalized convulsions of sudden onset.â(p547) The ability to diagnose lead poisoning improved in the 1930s with the advent of new X-ray technology, which revealed lead lines in the growth plate of children's long bones.7 Using this method, Cushing8 identified 14 more lead-poisoned children admitted to Montreal's Memorial Hospital.8,9 In a 1935 issue of CJPH, Ross and Brown10 described another 23 cases of lead poisoning in children from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Collectively, Mitchell,6 Cushing,8 and Ross and Brown10 reported 39 cases of childhood lead poisoning within a 3-year span. Seven cases were fatal.10,11 Cases were attributed to lead-based paint used on furniture, toys, and interior woodwork.8,10 At least 2 US authors credited this early Canadian research with influencing the US public health response to lead.12,13 Paradoxically, their influence in Canada appears to have been minimal. Apart from our writings, only one Canadian source cites Cushing and Mitchell's early work,14 and to date, only US sources cite Ross and Brown.
By 1926, 15 separate US publications described lead-based paint as a major source of poisoning, and by the late 1950s, US health authorities had identified more than 6000 lead poisoning cases.15 In sharp contrast, discourse on lead-based paint appeared only sporadically in CJPH and CMAJ over the next 60 years. Discussion of lead-based paint did not reappear in CJPH until a 1994 discussion weighing the pros and cons of universal screening.16 The topic resurfaced in CMAJ in 1947, but only peripherally. Penfield and Paine17 identified lead-based paint as the underlying cause of focal epilepsy in 2 children:
Ingestion of lead-containing paint was followed by coma of two daysâ duration with generalized convulsions. Habitual seizures began a few months later.(p523)
The same year Childe18 described lead poisoning as a possible cause of bone lesions in infancy and cautioned, âPlumbism is not so uncommon as is sometimes supposed and if kept in mind will be easily diagnosed.â(p294)
A CMAJ editorial in 195219 observed that 23 cases of pediatric lead poisoning were admitted to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (1951â1952) and offered that ârepainted furniture causes much lead poisoning as young children nibble the wood through the layers of paint, which contains 7 to 27% of lead. A CMAJ editorial appearing just 3 years later, however, inferred that the problem was already resolved:
At the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, there has been a progressive decline in the number of lead poisoning admissions over the past 15 years. Before 1940 there was an average of 25 to 30 cases admitted each year; this has now decreased to two to four admissions per year. This decline is partly due to the education of parents by public health nurses and others as to the dangers of pica in small children, and partly to the decrease in the use of lead-containing house paints in the home. Legislation in Canada now prohibits the use of lead-containing paints on children's toys and children's furniture.20(p611)
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LEAD-BASED PAINT AS A US PROBLEM
Tenenbein's article25 in a 1990 issue of CMAJ described 2 cases of lead poisoning occurring in Winnipeg children: a 32-month-old girl with a â17-month history of a voracious appetite for the paint peeling from the walls and window sills of her inner city homeâ(p40) and a 26-month-old boy with persistent vomiting, who was eventually diagnosed with lead encephalopathy. Paint sampled from both homes revealed lead concentrations ranging from 25 000 to 122 000 parts per million.25 Tenenbein's article established that lead-based paint continued to harm Canadian children well after the 1955 editorial20 predicted the lead paint problem was close to being eradicated.
Timeline of Events in the History of Residential Lead Regulations in Canada and the United States: 1930â2010
Year Event
1932â1935 Canada's first cases of childhood lead poisoning associated with exposure to lead-based paint are published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
1976 Canada restricts concentrations of lead in consumer paints to 0.5% (5000 ppm). Restrictions do not apply to exterior paints.
1978 The United States restricts lead concentrations in consumer paints to 0.06% (600 ppm). Health and Welfare Canada identifies 40 μg/dL as the blood lead level of concern (no age group specified).
1978â1979 Canada's first national blood lead monitoring survey, the Canada Health Survey, involved > 21 000 Canadians, aged three y to adult, and âincluded the non-institutionalized Canadian populace, except for residents of the territories, Indian reserves and far flung areas.â46(p16)
1985 The centers for disease control and Prevention identifies an action threshold for blood lead levels of 25 μg/dL if accompanied via an erythrocyte protoporphyrin degree of 35 μg/dL
1987 Canada reduces its blood lead stage of crisis from 40 to 30â35 μg/dL for male adults and 20â25 μg/dL for female adults and children
1988 Findings from the Ontario blood lead surveys (1984â1987) are released in the journal Science of the total environment.
1990 Leaded gas is banned in Canada for public consumption however continues to be to be had for business use (i.E., farm apparatus, aviation gas).
A deadweight loss is a fee to society created by using market inefficiency. Traditionally used in economics, deadweight loss can also be utilized to any deficiency prompted through an inefficient allocation of assets. Rate ceilings, reminiscent of price controls and appoint controls; price floors, corresponding to minimal wage and dwelling wage laws; and taxation can all possibly create deadweight losses.
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