Public Health, Plumbing, and Profit: The Lead Industry’s Efforts to Extract Greater Revenue by Requiring Lead Pipes

• In Event: Environmental Justice Case Studies from the Past and Around the World

Abstract

This paper uses a case study of Madison, Wisconsin to explore evolving public health awareness of the danger of contracting lead poisoning from water conveyed by lead pipes and, concurrently, the lead industry’s efforts to promote lead plumbing. Shortly after Madison and other cities ceased lead service pipe installation in the 1920s, the lead industry undertook a national campaign to promote lead plumbing in an effort to restore its market share. Going beyond attempting to convince the public that lead was an appropriate substance to use for conveying drinking water, the industry informed plumbers that their jobs were in jeopardy if fewer plumbing installations used lead pipes. Reaching out to plumbers through their unions during the Great Depression, the lead industry undertook a campaign that claimed lead pipes were essential to plumbers’ job security and in the best interest of consumers. Less than a decade after Madison ceased the use of lead pipe for new water services, the lead industry persuaded plumbers in Wisconsin to lobby for a change in the plumbing code that would require lead pipes in plumbing installations. In an attempt to expand markets for lead products, the lead industry downplayed scientific understandings of lead poisoning and how water acts on lead pipe. Despite these efforts, Madison's water department did not install more lead service pipes, and in the beginning of the 21st century it became the first city in the United States to conduct a full lead pipe replacement program.

Author

• Sarah Frohardt-Lane, Ripon College