Testing for lead in old toys

I think I'd prefer not to know!

I might be wrong, but I tend to associate leaded paint with wooden toys, not plastic ones?

I never chewed them but melted them down when I got fed up with them and poured the liquid into a crude homemade die. Naturally my parents were livid!

We used to scratch metal toys (like soldiers) with a pin, and the shiny silver showed it was lead, which was particularly prized.

I think that most paint (on well chewed cot bars) was mostly lead based.

I'm not aware that it did our generation any harm.

Or chasing drops of mercury around the science lab benches.

It's not just in the paint, but in the plastic too.

It's remarkable how equally useful and poisonous lead is. How many other elements are so versatile?

We've used lead

• to improve fuel performance
• to sweeten wine
• for plumbing
• for roofs and water protection on buildings
• in cosmetics
• to improve the appearance and performance of paint
• to improve the durability of plastics

It's practically a miracle ingredient!

Daniele

Indeed. No doubt future generations will be aghast at the amount of birth control hormones they all ingested through the public water supply.

Or discover that large quantities of oatmeal in the diet made men want to wear skirts and task funny.

I have a Triumph PI, and that uses the lead in the petrol as a lubricant for the injection unit. Luckily there is a mail order company that sells tetraethyl lead which I add to the petrol tank with each top-up.

Just like Asbestos!

A friend of mine is currently on thalidomide. A miracle drug by all accounts. I’ve warned him not to get pregnant…

Tim

Nothing wrong with asbestos. My dear old dad fancied himself as a bit of an inventor and we had his contraptions all around the house back in the 50s. He converted a vacuum cleaner into a bed warmer and used a

on the other hand, I knew somebody who died as a result of working with asbestos. Not a nice way to go.

He worked with it? Well clearly that's where the problem lay. I only slept with it.

Effective for treating Leprosy and its complications, and multiple myeloma which I presume is what your friend has.

Bad news (for him).

My brother has been diagnosed with it and he didn't work with it (and nor did Dad - the consultant asked him what dad did for a living).

Brother was a teacher so probably inhaled fibres in the assorted 'temporary' school buildings that were thrown up in the 50's and

Asbestos was(is) everywhere, so everyone alive since the immediate post war period will have breathed in fibres but apart from known occupations most people have not been affected.

Brother had asthma very badly as a kid, so I wonder if constant use of an inhaler made it easier for a stray fibre to get lodged deep down in his lungs.

It can take 50+ years for the terminal symptoms to become obvious by which time it is too late. So even a 70 YO is not out of the woods.

Perhaps they were thinking of how much they would sell for decades later on 'Flog it' :-)

I knew a person with multiple myeloma (unfortunately now deceased), and he had the function of thalidomide explained to him.

It limits the supply of additional blood vessels in new growth (hence the cause of births with limb deficiencies). Cancer is new growth and by limiting the development of additional blood supplies to the new growth it very much hinders or may even prevent additional cancer growth. It isn't a cure but it does considerably reduce the progress of the condition.

The NHS, following its guidelines, had to get a man in his 60s to sign a promise not to get pregnant while taking it.

Must be lots of it in soil alongside roads following its use in brake pads for around 70 years. Come Summer when (hopefully) the ground has dried some must be released in any dust blown about.

GH

Indeed

And indeed. Only in his 50s. :-(

Tim