Eating lead + poem -- Dave's Linotype Website

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Subject: Eating lead + poem

Author:
David Andrus

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Date Posted: 20:11:00 04/01/02 Mon
In reply to: Tony Gayle 's message, "Health Hazards" on 13:47:43 02/13/02 Wed

I became a Linotype operator at age 22, but as an apprentice, I was in daily contact with lead, both Linotype and foundry type (not to mention leads and slugs). At the time I was diagnosed with pulmonary sarcoidosis, which showed up in the lungs very dramatically. Although no connection was ever made to my contact with lead, it could be related. Of course, there were other things in the air, like offset spray, and ink odours - like all print shops.The sarcoidosis disappeared in the next two years.

In my book "In the Beginning was the Word" I wrote this poem:

THE PAIN

Sometimes at night
I taste lead

a musty dust
that clings upon the tongue,
stops sound in the throat.

Saturdays pain sinks
into the skull
like hard metal

enduring exactly two hours
then cooling
to the marrow

where it sits
with quiet dignity

part of the profession.

A final word: although I left the trade in 1974, when I was 34, in 1998 I was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. This was corrected by surgery, and probably had nothing to do with my "lead years" - but you never know!

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