Industrial advocates framed lead’s harms as acceptable tradeoffs for national benefit

Evidence

The industry relied mainly on economic justifications for the widespread use of lead. In addressing the Public Health Service regarding the public health hazards of lead, Dr. Gilman Thompson, a medical director representing Standard Oil, General Motors, and DuPont, extolled the vital role that lead played during the industrial era: “Is this a public health hazard? Unfortunately, our problem is not that simple. We cannot quite act on a remote probability. We are engaged in the General Motors Corporation in the manufacture of automobiles, and in the Standard Oil Co. in the manufacture and refining of oil. On these things our present industrial civilization is supposed to depend” (U.S. Public Health Service, 1925). … Thompson framed the issue of individual risk versus national benefit in utilitarian terms: “We should look at the problem in the large, rather than be swayed by prejudice. It is often much easier to see the concrete immediate dangers than to evaluate the perhaps more important industrial advantages. We do not like to match the life of a man against the life of a Nation” (U. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1752 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Corporate spokesmen justified lead poisoning by invoking utilitarian national benefit over individual risk — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1752; Industries justify harmful products by casting themselves as vital to the national economy — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1637; Environmental harm is legitimized by framing it as serving national and economic goods (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Corporate spokesmen justified lead poisoning by invoking utilitarian national benefit over individual risk #corroborates (1.00) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1752