How the lead industry lied to the public for decades - Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner

In the 1970s, pediatrician Herbert Needleman and colleagues collected and analyzed the baby teeth of schoolchildren across Boston and Philadelphia in return for small rewards.

But their so-called “Tooth Fairy Project” confirmed a dark reality: many kids had been exposed to lead.

Lead is a metallic element that's distributed across Earth's crust.

When it enters the human body, it can disrupt many critical processes that span various systems, producing a diverse set of symptoms.

This is because the body tends to falsely recognize lead as similarly charged metallic elements like calcium, iron, and zinc, and use it in their place for essential reactions, wreaking whole-body havoc.

For example, lead can disrupt the synthesis of hemoglobin, an essential protein to the body’s oxygen-transporting red blood cells.

And it can compete with iron to be absorbed in the intestines.

Both things can lead to anemia and fatigue.