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Residents of Herculaneum, Missouri have been influential in shaping the management of contamination challenges resulting from the community's proximity to the last primary lead processing plant in the United States. This paper provides a nuanced examination of two perspectives of resident activist groups involved in lead-related controversy in Herculaneum. Ethnographic data collection and storyline analysis were used to trace the evolution in local views from resembling an industrialist-environmentalist dichotomy to more compromising positions associated with ecological modernization. Implications for characterizing public environmental perspectives in the US as beginning to entertain certain aspects of the ecological modernist paradigm are discussed., (© The Author(s) 2013.)

The prevalence of different types of dysfunction in school was assessed with the Boston Teacher Questionnaire, completed for 1923 children born 8 years earlier in a university-affiliated maternity hospital. Cluster analyses of 15 items on the questionnaire resulted in six two-item clusters and one three-item cluster that were identical for girls and boys. We identified children as having a syndrome if they possessed all features of the cluster-defined syndrome. The most prevalent syndrome, consisting of both daydreaming and distractibility items, occurred in 18.5% of boys and 11.5% of girls. Boys were also more likely than girls to be identified as having the reading syndrome (11.6% and 7.7%, respectively), the hyperactivity/impulsivity syndrome (6.1% and 1.5%), and the syndrome characterized by frustration intolerance and peer problems (9.5% and 4.0%). The prevalences of the remaining three syndromes were similar in both sexes (arithmetic, 11.3% and 10.3%; difficulty following instructions, 5.1% and 4.7%; and the tasks syndrome [characterized by impersistence/dependence/inflexibility], 5.5% and 5.4%). More than 40% of boys and girls with one syndrome also had another. The lower prevalences in this sample than in an earlier-born sample assessed with the same instrument were confined to boys. Reasons for this temporal decrease in one sex only remain obscure. Girls with the reading syndrome were 10 times more likely, and boys with the reading syndrome were five times more likely, than their peers to receive special services and to have repeated a grade.

Two groups of violent incarcerated male criminals and 30 nonviolent criminals were compared for element content of hair by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Groups did not differ in age, socioeconomic status, or months institutionalized. The groups did differ significantly in lead and cadmium levels. The importance of cadmium in affecting reactivity to stimuli is discussed.

Three groups of male hooded rats were chronically exposed to lead in the acetate form prenatally, as well as postnatally via the dam's milk and in the drinking water, at concentrations of 0 ppm, 19 ppm, and 38 ppm for 35 days. No significant differences were found in weight gain, although significant increases in food consumption were noted in animals receiving 19 ppm lead acetate and increased ingestion of lead acetate in animals receiving 19 ppm and 38 ppm. When subjects were tested in an open-field task, no significant differences were found in emotionality, the number of squares traversed, frequency and duration of rearing, or in frequency of grooming. However, subjects receiving 38 ppm lead displayed a significant reduction in duration of grooming when compared to animals receiving either 19 ppm or 0 ppm. The results suggest that prenatal lead exposure, followed by postnatal exposure, may affect some elements of activity, while having little effect on others.

Mice that had been given either tap water or 2 ppm lead in their drinking water and either severely food deprived (3 days before testing) or allowed food ad libitum demonstrated significant interactions of lead treatment by day by food condition and lead by block. Although not statistically significant, the food deprived-lead treated mice displayed more errors and longer latencies than the ad libitum-water controls. The food deprived-water controls and ad libitum-lead-treated mice displayed intermediate values. The importance of using multivariate statistical techniques that can evaluate dynamic repeated behavioral measurements is emphasized.

This study investigated possible relationships of lead and cadmium levels to childhood visual-perceptual development. Hair-metal concentrations of lead and cadmium were analyzed in 25 children who were having learning problems. They were also administered the Bender Visual-motor Gestalt Test. Lead and cadmium levels correlated significantly and negatively with age-deviations of Bender errors. A continuing reexamination of lead and cadmium levels is needed because levels previously thought harmless may be associated with decrements in childhood visual-perceptual development.

After about two weeks of exposure to either 20 ppm or approximately 2000 ppm of lead in the drinking water or tap water only and under an ad libitum or restricted food regime, albino male and female mice (N = 48) were tested for three consecutive days (3 blocks of 3 trials per day) in a swimming maze. Body weights were not altered by lead treatments significantly. The mice treated with the lead displayed longer escape latencies and more errors than the controls on tap water. Statistically significant interactions of lead treatment by test day by test block were also apparent.

47 lead-poisoned children, treated and without encephalopathy, are compared with sibling controls on perceptual-verbal pattern comparisons of subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children to determine whether there has been brain damage. Both groups of children do not differ significantly from each other on comparisons of these patterns, and they appear to be similar to each other in WISC functioning. The conclusion is that lead-poisoning, treated, and without encephalopathy, does not result in detectable brain damage by means of these pattern analyses.