[Wonder Warthog]

Yeah, if the only source is a childhood crib that it might be difficult (note, NOT "impossible) to make the connection. If the crib just happens to be available, one certainly CAN make the connection. It would be darned expensive, but NOT impossible. Once lead gets into bone, it doesn't (easily) get out, and there are instruments that can scan the thickness of the bone one layer at a time, to see how old the person was when the exposure occurred.

Basically, it would involve cutting a disc out of the bone, and then sampling it layer by layer in an EXTREMELY sensitive mass spectrometer, by ablating one layer at a time...probably with a pulsed, focussed laser.

Has anyone actually "done" the above??? Probably not (see "expensive"), but the analysis capability is available (Note...I'm an analytical chemist....so certainly knowledgable about what today's technology is capable of).

But there are plenty of lead sources that are contemporaneous (i.e. as in the posted article)to exposure. So the lead used in the plant processes most certainly CAN be connected to an exposed person or persons.

[bunkerhill7]

I still think that lead doesn`t stay in the body coz my mother would take me shopping with her when I wuz a kid and when I stopped to look a a toy or candy, she would say, “Hurry Up! Get the Lead Out!” Mother wuz always right.