In these circumstances the cost of maintenance of wood painted with zinc-white paint, and exposed to the open air, is further increased as compared with wood painted with white-lead paint.
IX. Lithopone paints cannot replace white-lead paints in the open air; they have proved to be quite unfit in this respect.
X. For paintwork above water, first coats of oxide of iron have, during five years, proved to be quite as good and serviceable as first coats of red oxide of lead.
For coats of paint under water, oxide of iron cannot be used.
Coats of oxide of iron paint are cheaper than coats of red oxide of lead paint.
When oxide of iron is used for the first coat, much more technical skill is required for the painting of the covering coats than is the case when red oxide of lead is used for the first coat.
Shipbuilding.
[36]—Cases arising in shipbuilding are due not so much to mixing the paints or red-lead paste as to the dust produced in sandpapering the coats of white paint applied in cabins, etc., in chipping and scraping off old red-lead paint, often in confined spaces such as double bottoms, tanks, bilges, etc. Splashing from injecting red lead between plates, fumes from burning off old paint, and fumes from paint while using it in confined spaces, are mentioned in reports. Several attacks have occurred to persons engaged in inserting red-hot rivets into holes containing yarn soaked in red lead and oil. Lead fumes, it is suggested, are given off. The number of cases included under this heading each year has been—
| 1900 | 32 |
| 1901 | 28 |
| 1902 | 15 |
| 1903 | 24 |
| 1904 | 48 |
| 1905 | 32 |
| 1906 | 26 |
| 1907 | 22 |
| 1908 | 15 |
| 1909 | 27 |
| 1910 | 21 |
The figures illustrate the difficulty of obtaining a reduction in the attacks when the cause is to be found in conditions not amenable to control by exhaust ventilation. The possibility of effecting some reduction by such precautions as can be adopted is suggested by the diminution (from 110 to 60) in the number of cases in the Government dockyards in the six years 1905-1910 and 1899-1904 respectively, as compared with the increase (from 67 to 87) in all other shipbuilding yards.