Industry-safe chemicals persist in consumer goods despite well-documented widespread human harm

Evidence

Lead was widely used over the years in metal products, industrial finishes, pesticides, and many consumer products such as household paints and gasoline. It was also spewed into the air with industrial emissions, especially from smelters. It accumulates in the body through food, dust, and drinking water. Lead damages the brain and nervous system, impairs kidney function, reduces male fertility through sperm damage, impairs development of the fetus during pregnancy, and causes mental retardation and behavioral problems in children. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1750

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels vault claims such as ‘industry chose profitable lead additives over safe unpatentable alternatives’ and ‘tens of thousands of US industrial chemicals remain untested for human harm’ — same moral-disengagement mechanism at population scale. — connects to: Persistent, bioaccumulating pollutants made non-biodegradability a public concern — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 305
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1750