Lead Pigment

Re David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz’s Jan. 18 commentary regarding Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s representation of NL Industries, a company that made lead pigment decades ago:

Rosner and Markowitz were hired witnesses for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought against NL and other former manufacturers of lead pigment by New York City. After more than a decade of legal wrangling, the city has voluntarily dismissed all its claims. Approximately 50 such suits in various jurisdictions around the country have now been concluded, and none of them have been found to be meritorious. All of the cases have been dismissed entirely or withdrawn.

These companies have a long record of responsible behavior. When health authorities first suspected in the late 1940s that badly maintained interior residential lead-based paint could pose a hazard to children, the industry funded and publicized independent studies at Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities that confirmed the suspicions. And soon after that, in 1955, the industry voluntarily adopted a national standard aimed at removing lead pigment from interior residential lead paint. That was 20 years before the federal government banned it. Whatever one’s views on the Norton nomination, it is clear that the record of the former manufacturers of lead pigment is one of responsibility and ought to be applauded, not vilified.

ALAN WHEAT

Spokesman for Defendants

in Lead Litigation

Washington