How the “Ghetto Band-Aid” Helped Us All

Then she said that “When children run and fall, they put their hands out to break the fall.  They scrape their hands.  And then to soothe the pain, they lick their hand wounds with the Ghetto Band-Aid – their tongue.”

In 1966, I began a one-year Management Intern Program in the U.S. Public Health Service, National Center for Air Pollution Control. 

Getting the Lead Out of Gasoline and Children’s Blood

My first assignment was to help with putting on the Third National Conference on Air Pollution Control, Dec. 1966.  It enabled me to see the top management at work.  I was impressed with the candor, honesty, and decency of the management and I learned a lot. See Proceedings attached.¹

In 1967, I had the privilege to serve three months helping Senator Ed Muskie conduct Hearings on Air Pollution Control.  It involved a cross country trip to Detroit and L.A., gathering information on air pollution problems and air pollution control remedies. See Senate Hearing Report attached.² 

I then served as Research Associate on a Task Force for the Secretary of HEW that produced the report “A Strategy for a Livable Environment” that recommended a 90% reduction in air pollution.  See Report attached.³

At that time my work primarily was on control of automotive emissions of smog components: hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.

Lead in gasoline at that time was just beginning to be of concern as an air pollutant and as an impediment to the use of catalytic converters for auto emission control. Lead in gasoline was not yet considered a major public health hazard.

The Nixon Administration was concerned with the rising public demand for the control of air pollutants and by Sen. Muskie’s growing popularity.  To pre-empt the issue Nixon proposed auto emission standards to be met by 1980 (which would be met after his second term – if reelected in 1972).  But in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, Sen. Muskie and the Congress set the 90% reduction standards to be met by 1975.⁴

In 1970, students from MIT organized a cross country Clean Air Car Race to see if any team could meet the 1975 standards.  I was given the job of monitoring the emission tests in Boston, Michigan, and in Los Angeles on the Cal Tech Campus. 

I describe my chilling, but then gratifying, experience reporting the results to the National Academy of Sciences Committee of Judges that a team of students from Wayne State University had just demonstrated, in 1970, the feasibility of meeting the 1975 standards.⁵ 

To be sure that the results got out, I called Leon Billings, Sen. Muskie’s Committee staffer, with the news. You can watch the winning team’s recollections 50 years later, on YouTube.⁶  

In 1971, I served as Chairman of the EPA Task Force on the Environmental Problems of the Inner City.  Our report dated September 1971, was titled “Our Urban Environment, And Our Most Endangered People”.  The recommendation regarding lead in gasoline was:

“The Task Force, therefore, recommends that the Administrator promulgate by January 1, 1972, a regulation requiring all gasoline to be lead-free by 1977” ⁶

Months later I was fired by EPA for blowing the whistle on EPA’s weakening of the auto emission standards.⁷ 

What I did not know at the time was that Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca had been meeting with President Nixon in the White House on April 27, 1971, to weaken the auto emission standards. ⁸

In January of 1972, Rep. Paul Rogers Chaired Oversight Hearings on the implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1970.  I provided documentation on how the test procedures had been changed by the Nixon Administration to favor the auto companies.⁹

During February through May 1972, The Senate Subcommittee on the Environment, Chaired by Sen. Philip Hart, held a series of Hearings on “The Inner City Environment and The Role of the EPA”.  I provided testimony on the failures of EPA to regulate lead and automotive air pollutants.¹⁰

By 1973, I was collecting sidewalk dirt samples in NY City and Washington, DC and having them analyzed by a laboratory for lead concentrations. My aim was to document concentrations of lead in dirt and their risk to children.¹¹ 

Subsequently that year EPA promulgated regulations to begin a slow phase down of leaded gasoline on November 28, 1973.¹²

I then wrote an article titled “Get the Lead Out” published by Progressive magazine, August 1974.  This was part of my efforts to grow public support that resulted in countless supportive articles including by Jack Anderson and editorials by Colman McCarthy in the Washington Post.¹³

At one EPA Hearing, I was placed in a holding room and I was annoyed that I could not hear the testimony of other presenters.  In the room with me was a black inner-city advocate.  She asked me what I was going to say.  

I showed her my exhibit of a vial with a 24^th of a teaspoon of dirt that I had collected from the sidewalks of D.C. near the White House.  The lead concentration was such that assuming zero lead from any other sources such as paint, or water, there was enough lead in that dirt to cause classical lead poisoning if orally ingested daily.

I explained that a child could ingest that much leaded dirt in a 24-hour period by a dropped lollipop, or cookie, and thumb sucking.

Shocked, she said: Man!  Dropped lollipop? Don’t you know the Ghetto Band-Aid?  I had to say: “Sorry, but I did not know about the Ghetto Band-Aid.”  

Then she said that “When children run and fall, they put their hands out to break the fall.  They scrape their hands.  And then to soothe the pain, they lick their hand wounds with the Ghetto Band-Aid – their tongue.”

It was a Eureka! insight for me!  And this helped get the lead out of gasoline.

Thanks to the efforts of a great many good people, the ultimate result for humanity was that the end of leaded gasoline was a major worldwide Public Health advance.  

The UN Environment Program reports “Estimates have found that every year, leaded fuel bans save more than 1.2 million lives while helping the global economy avoid $2.4 trillion in healthcare expenses and other costs.”¹⁴

As I write this, the Washington Post carried a front-page article with more good news that EPA issued a landmark rule that requires all lead pipes to be removed in the next ten years.  President Biden said that “the United States should have addressed the danger lead pipes pose to the country’s drinking water years ago.”¹⁵

For historical accounts by others see: “Toxic Truth” by Lydia Duckworth, and “Lead Wars” by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, and for EPA efforts, after I was fired by Ruckelshaus, see Bridbord at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19672397/)

References Live Links:

1. Proceedings of the third national conference on air pollution
2. Senate Hearing, 90th Congress , Part 1 – Air pollution– 1967 (automotive air pollution)
3. A Strategy for a Livable Environment
4. Climate Change Leadership From California Officials
5. The 1970 Clean Air Race: A victory for Wayne State and a vision for the future
6. Our Urban Environment and Our Most Endangered People
7. EPA Whistleblow
8. PART OF A CONVERSATION AMONG PRESIDENTNIXONL,IDE ANTHONY IACOCCA, HENRY FORD 11, AND JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE
9. Clean Air Act Oversight
10. 10. The Inner City Environment and the Role of the Environmental Protection Agency
11. 11. Report Airs Environmental Issues
12. 12. EPA Requires Phase-Out of Lead in All Grades of Gasoline
13. 13. Get the Lead Out
14. 14. Inside the 20-year campaign to rid the world of leaded fuel
15. 15. In landmark move, EPA requires removal of all U.S. lead pipes in a decade