The Quandary of Environmental Research: A History of Lead, Children and Scientific Investigation 1970-2000

环境研究的困境：1970-2000 年铅、儿童和科学研究的历史

• 批准号: 0750673
• 负责人: David Rosner
• 金额: $ 29.04万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-07-01 至 2011-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0750673&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Quandary; Environmental; Research; History; Lead

In recent decades the popular media, the scientific community and political leaders have acknowledged that lead poisoning has been a significant problem for U.S. children in the past half century. Headlines in the 1950s and 1960s alerted the nation to the thousands of children who were dying or suffering permanent brain damage from exposures to lead paint in slum housing; in the 1970s and 1980s, newspapers reported on the hundreds of thousands of children who were suffering from a variety of neurological and behavioral problems due to low-level lead exposure; in the 1990s, researchers discovered that even minute amounts of lead in a child's body could lead to sub-clinical, but life altering, changes in IQ, behavior, and school performance. Today, lead in toys, dust, soil and paint in the child's environment have been identified as causes of damage to nearly half a million American children.This study, funded by Science and Society, investigates part of the history of environmental health through the lens of childhood lead poisoning in America from the 1970s through the early 21st century. Using oral histories, archival records, legal documents and traditional historical methodologies, the study analyzes the recent history of popular and scientific awareness of low level lead exposure to children, uncovering aspects of the changing historical relationship between science and social policy. Specifically, the project looks at how changing scientific ideas and policies regarding the effects of low level lead exposure stimulated a wide range of studies aimed at identifying ways of reducing children's exposure; how various interest groups' resistance to abatement of lead from walls in the housing stock where children were exposed to lead paint led to different perspectives in the research community as to whether "complete" or "partial" abatement was the best way to protect children from lead poisoning; how the limitations on the amount and kind of funding available to researchers affected the intellectual questions that scientists asked, and, ultimately, the research designs that scientists developed in the 1990s and early 2000s; and what is emerging as one of the most troubling ethical and historical disputes regarding environmental research on children.A case examined in more detail involves scientists at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, the internationally renowned center for the study of children with developmental disabilities associated with Johns Hopkins University. In the early 1990s, they initiated a research project that aroused intense controversy because it allowed children to be exposed to low levels of lead in their homes in inner city neighborhoods in Baltimore. The goal of the research was to identify a method of lead abatement that would be cheap enough to encourage landlords to participate in abatement programs yet effective enough to result in little or no damage to the children. But when some children were identified with elevated, rather than diminished, blood-lead levels in some of the study apartments, two sets of parents filed suit against Kennedy Krieger to stop the research. Although the suit was thrown out at the trial court level, the Court of Appeals of Maryland decided that the research raised troubling issues regarding human experimentation on vulnerable populations. The Kennedy Krieger study has attracted the attention of scientists and those interested in human subject experimentation. This project adds a new and critical historical dimension to our understanding of this troubling and complex episode in environmental history and the history of science.

近几十年来，大众媒体、科学界和政治领导人都承认，铅中毒是过去半个世纪美国儿童面临的一个重大问题。1950年代和1960年代的头条新闻提醒全国注意贫民窟住房中成千上万的儿童因接触含铅油漆而死亡或遭受永久性脑损伤; 1970年代和1980年代，报纸报道了数十万儿童因接触低水平铅而遭受各种神经和行为问题的情况;在20世纪90年代，研究人员发现，即使是儿童体内微量的铅也会导致亚临床，但改变生活，智商，行为和学校表现的变化。 今天，玩具、灰尘、土壤和油漆中的铅已被确定为近50万美国儿童的损害原因。这项由《科学与社会》资助的研究，通过20世纪70年代至21世纪世纪初美国儿童铅中毒的透镜，调查了环境健康的部分历史。 利用口述历史，档案记录，法律的文件和传统的历史方法，研究分析了最近的历史流行和科学意识的低水平铅暴露的儿童，揭示科学和社会政策之间的历史关系不断变化的方面。具体而言，该项目着眼于如何改变有关低水平铅接触影响的科学观念和政策，从而激发了旨在确定减少儿童接触途径的广泛研究;各种利益集团如何抵制减少儿童接触含铅涂料的住房墙壁中的铅，导致研究界对“完全”或“部分”的不同观点减排是保护儿童免遭铅中毒的最佳途径;对研究人员可获得的资金数量和种类的限制如何影响科学家提出的智力问题，并最终影响科学家在1990年代和2000年代初制定的研究设计;以及关于儿童环境研究的最令人不安的伦理和历史争议之一。一个更详细的案例涉及肯尼迪科学家克里格研究所，国际著名的中心，研究儿童与发展障碍与约翰霍普金斯大学。 20世纪90年代初，他们发起了一项引起激烈争议的研究项目，因为该项目允许儿童在巴尔的摩市中心街区的家中接触低水平的铅。 这项研究的目的是确定一种减少铅的方法，这种方法既便宜到足以鼓励房东参与减少铅的计划，又有效到足以对儿童造成很小或没有损害。 但是，当一些儿童被确定为升高，而不是减少，血铅水平在一些研究公寓，两组家长起诉肯尼迪克里格停止研究。 尽管这起诉讼在初审法院被驳回，但马里兰州上诉法院裁定，这项研究提出了有关对弱势群体进行人体实验的令人不安的问题。 Kennedy Krieger的研究吸引了科学家和对人体实验感兴趣的人的注意。 这个项目增加了一个新的和关键的历史层面，我们对环境史和科学史上这一令人不安和复杂的事件的理解。