Maybe We Should Just Bring Back Lead Paint

You know, for a great many years there was Lead in paint. The paint in your house, the paint on your car and just about everywhere else. If it is so toxic then how did modern man survive? Seriously, why isn't making extinct? Lead paint was everywhere and yet those people who grew up in homes with lead paint went on to cure Polio, develop Heart Transplants and fly to the Moon.

Maybe it's because they weren't stupid enough to eat lead paint chips? I think so.

Look, being exposed to Lead isn't healthy and taking it out of paint and gasoline was a smart idea but the presence of lead paint IS NOT An IMMEDIATE THREAT TO YOUR HEALTH. There is an entire Environmental Cleanup industry that has grown up around this myth and has even perpetuated it. They would have you believe that by simply walking into a building painted with lead paint will cause you harm. That's just not true. Think about the guys who won WWII, even their ships and tanks were painted with lead paint. Ike, Truman and Kennedy all grew up around lead paint with Kennedy even over-seeing the painting of his PT-Boat and inhaling fumes. If you buy into the hype then JFK should have been a brain-damaged vegetable before the Japanese sank his boat, yet somehow he was able to save his injured crew members and work out a rescue, not to mention that whole getting elected to the Presidency thing.

Maybe we should feed our kids lead paint chips...

We have become a race of fraidy-cats, yet our Lead-Fueled Grand parents weren't affraid of anything. They ate produce sprayed with DDT, they rode motocycles without helmets, they used to get into bar fights and up until 1966 they didn't even make cars with seat-belts. They just woke up every morning and walked out the door into this very dangerous world without a second thought. They most have been seriously tweeked from all that lead in their environment because not only did none of this stuff scare them they never filed a single lawsuit about having their feeling hurt. Poor bastards. Worse, if their Congressman had suggested regulating this stuff our Grand Parents would have lynched them.

How did we make it this far?