Lead
(See also pp. [120-40] and [177-82])
For protection against lead poisoning, the most widely spread of the slow industrial poisonings, all those measures are of moment which we have described in our general discussion on protection against danger from poison in industries, both personal and general.
Personal hygiene, especially careful washing after work, prohibition of eating in workrooms, suitable working clothes, provision of cloak rooms, meal rooms, baths, &c., are important and effective measures for the protection of workers against industrial lead poisoning.
The worker should naturally be adequately instructed as to the risk. Appropriate printed notices are especially adapted for this purpose.
Further, selection of workers should be made under medical supervision. Workers who suffer from specific disease which, if associated with lead poisoning, may prove dangerous, should be excluded from all contact with lead. Among such illnesses must be reckoned tuberculosis in all its forms, alcoholism, epilepsy, tendency to mental disease (nervous disposition, hysteria, neurasthenia, &c.), rheumatism, and disease of the kidneys.
Overtime work undoubtedly increases risk; therefore working hours should be shortened as much as possible, and handwork replaced by machine work where possible. Young persons and women especially should be excluded from work in lead. Alternation of employment also is beneficial and essential in very dangerous lead work, because the poison accumulates in the body and only during intervals wherein absolutely no poison can be absorbed has it time to be eliminated.
Periodical medical examination by a surgeon is of great value with systematic entry of the results of examination in a health register. As bearing on this, early diagnosis is of the greatest importance, so that workers in whom the first signs of lead poisoning appear may at once be suspended or transferred to other work.
Lead workers should take suitable nourishing food and avoid particularly alcoholic excess.