• BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Reminds me of a guy I know who said that lead paint and lead pipes in housing are fine as long as the occupants sign a waiver because “people should get to decide for themselves whether they want to accept the risk” and that “it’d be an expensive waste of government money to remove”

    • Magician [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Never criticizing the expensive waste of government money it was to use lead products in the first place. They just don’t want to acknowledge that undoing harm is part of fixing a problem.

      The fact that these things were allowed at all is the problem, not that it’ll cost money to fix it.

      • spectre [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I don’t think the health effects of lead were well understood until after most of the plumbing was already in place

        • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          “Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome.” - Vitruvius, over 2000 years ago

          They’ve always known.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netOPM
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      10 months ago

      That’s even dumber…

      Just like you can choose between working and starving to death. Landlords know tenants can’t afford anywhere that isn’t actively killing you so why would they bother spending money to take out the lead?