Also in the 18th century, "Devonshire colic" was the name given to the symptoms experienced by people of Devon who drank cider made in presses that were lined with lead. Lead was added to cheap wine illegally in the 18th and early 19th centuries as a sweetener. The composer Beethoven, a heavy wine drinker, had elevated lead levels (as later detected in his hair) possibly due to this; the cause of his death is controversial, but lead poisoning is a contender as a factor.With the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, lead poisoning became common in the work setting. The introduction of lead paint for residential use in the 19th century increased childhood exposure to lead; for millennia before this, most lead exposure had been occupational. William James Furnival (1853-1928), research ceramist of City & Guilds London Institute, appeared before Parliament in 1901 and presented a decades evidence to convince the nations leaders to remove lead completely from the British ceramic industry. His 852-page treatise, Leadless Decorative Tiles, Faience, and Mosaic of 1904 published that campaign and provided recipes to promote lead-free ceramics. At the request of the Illinois state government, Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) documented lead toxicity in Illinois industry and in 1911 presented results to the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. Dr. Hamilton was a founder of the field of occupational safety and health and published the first edition of her manual, Industrial Toxicology in 1934, yet in print in revised forms.
Although leaded soil is less of a problem in countries that no longer have leaded gasoline, it remains prevalent, raising concerns about the safety of urban agriculture; eating food grown in contaminated soil can present a lead hazard. Interfacial solar evaporation has been recently studied as a technique for remediating lead-contaminated sites, which involves the evaporation of heavy metal ions from moist soil. Water
Lead from the atmosphere or soil can end up in groundwater and surface water. It is also potentially in drinking water, e.g. from plumbing and fixtures that are either made of lead or have lead solder. Since acidic water breaks down lead in plumbing more readily, chemicals can be added to municipal water to increase the pH and thus reduce the corrosivity of the public water supply. Chloramines, which were adopted as a substitute for chlorine disinfectants due to fewer health concerns, increase corrositivity. In the US, 14–20% of total lead exposure is attributed to drinking water. In 2004, a team of seven reporters from The Washington Post discovered high levels of lead in the drinking water in Washington, DC, and won an award for investigative reporting for a series of articles about this contamination. In the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, a switch to a more corrosive municipal water source caused elevated lead levels in domestic tap water.Like Flint MI and Washington DC, a similar situation affects the State of Wisconsin, where estimates call for replacement of up to 176,000 underground pipes made of lead known as lead service lines.