Silver Coloured Cable.

Did sparks of old wear gloves when handling lead cable? Or were the risks unknown back then?



The risks were known, and understood, and as small as they are today, but handled more robustly.

If you handle lead but wash your hands with soap and water before sticking fingers in your mouth or more likely for the era, eating your sandwiches and making a few roll-up cigarettes, then all will be well.

The good workman does not roll cigarettes in works time but makes them at home when his hands are clean, and brings them into work, a few in a box in the trouser pocket, and one behind the ear... If his hands are not perfecty clean then holding the sandwiches in the grease proof paper to eat them makes them taste better!


Lead is a big problem if you ingest it,  but it does not pass through the skin like a nicotine patch.

You have to inhale or swallow filings, or heat it to a point that the fumes are an issue and then breathe them in- but in the day, the hydrochloric acid vapour of the fluxes in common use (Baker's fluid anyone?) meant you moved away sharpish if you got a whiff of the fumes during sweating (soldering) operations.


Even the much pilloried lead soldiers are fairly safe to just play with, it is more the lead based paints, where the paint dissolves to a degree in saliva, that are/were  big hazard to children.  Some paints have a sweet taste, and that makes it even more problematic.

Lead pipes are OK in chalky water, but the problem is when the water is soft or worse slighty acidic - such as in areas with a lot of peat- then the pipes are constantly dissolving into various lead salts, and some are very ingestible.

Mike

Did sparks of old wear gloves when handling lead cable? Or were the risks unknown back then?



The risks were known, and understood, and as small as they are today, but handled more robustly.

If you handle lead but wash your hands with soap and water before sticking fingers in your mouth or more likely for the era, eating your sandwiches and making a few roll-up cigarettes, then all will be well.

The good workman does not roll cigarettes in works time but makes them at home when his hands are clean, and brings them into work, a few in a box in the trouser pocket, and one behind the ear... If his hands are not perfecty clean then holding the sandwiches in the grease proof paper to eat them makes them taste better!


Lead is a big problem if you ingest it,  but it does not pass through the skin like a nicotine patch.

You have to inhale or swallow filings, or heat it to a point that the fumes are an issue and then breathe them in- but in the day, the hydrochloric acid vapour of the fluxes in common use (Baker's fluid anyone?) meant you moved away sharpish if you got a whiff of the fumes during sweating (soldering) operations.


Even the much pilloried lead soldiers are fairly safe to just play with, it is more the lead based paints, where the paint dissolves to a degree in saliva, that are/were  big hazard to children.  Some paints have a sweet taste, and that makes it even more problematic.

Lead pipes are OK in chalky water, but the problem is when the water is soft or worse slighty acidic - such as in areas with a lot of peat- then the pipes are constantly dissolving into various lead salts, and some are very ingestible.

Mike