The recent episode in Flint, Michigan, has brought the issue of lead in water into the public eye. But the dangers of lead exposure have been recognized for millennia, and we have the knowledge required to redress this social crime — if only we had the political will. The dangers of lead exposure have been recognized for millennia. In the first century a.d., Dioscorides observed in his De Materia Medica that “lead makes the mind give way.” The first industrial hygiene act passed in the colonies, in 1723, prohibited the use of lead in the apparatus used to distill rum, because “the strong liquors and spirits that are distilld through leaden heads or pipes are judged on good grounds to be unwholsom and hurtful.” More recently, large amounts of lead were used to boost the octane rating of gasoline and improve the performance of paint. One would be . . .