From: Samuella Sigmann <sigmannsb**At_Symbol_Here**appstate.edu>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Reminder about the hazards of Lead Sculpture Technique
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 08:23:55 -0500
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 9ddc2baa-8675-f8c1-34c2-d4d5e4fbe95b**At_Symbol_Here**appstate.edu
In-Reply-To <302B8907-E139-40E5-A153-5DC339C28551**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org>


Thank you, Monona.å As I watched that, I kept wondering who would want that art in their house or business and how was it that the hazards were not addressed. I did see one worker with a respirator on. I am so glad you wrote to them.

Sammye

On 2/5/2018 6:55 AM, DCHAS Membership Chair wrote:
From: Monona Rossol <actsnyc**At_Symbol_Here**cs.com> 
Re: CBS morning show-Anselm Kiefer

I hope some of you saw CBS Morning and the segment on Anselm Kiefer who was melting lead and hurling at canvases, and more. I wrote the following to CBS news, but since that is similar to a dropping a message in a black hole, here is what I wrote:

In the early 1960s, I was taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make dripped-lead sculpture by melting lead.  That was way before we knew better.  And way before laws were passed prohibiting use of lead in any workplace, including schools, without a written OSHA program, monitoring, protective gear and worker training.   

My experience with acute lead poisoning as a sculpture student was one of the motivations for me to become a chemist/industrial hygienist with a specialty in art.  But common sense should have told Jane Pauley and any reporter who had ever worked on a story about lead paint, lead in children‰??s toys, lead in water, or any similar story, that Kiefer‰??s work would expose the artist and anyone working or observing in that studio to lead.

Since today I am also the Safety Officer for some of your IATSE workers and the Safety Consultant for SAG-AFTRA, I have met some of the qualified safety people that work at CBS that could have explained to you the hazards of melting lead and the laws that apply.  Yet it appears that neither Jane Pauley nor the woman reporter in Anselm Kiefer's studio, or any of your fact checkers, even asked for an assessment of this hazard.

Worse, CBS provided not a word of warning to art students, professional artists, or teachers, some of whom are going to try this same thing.   Just shame on you all.


Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., Industrial Hygienist
President:  Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
Safety Officer: Local USA829, IATSE
Safety Consultant: SAG-AFTRA
181 Thompson St., #23
New York, NY 10012     212-777-0062
actsnyc**At_Symbol_Here**cs.com   www.artscraftstheatersafety.org

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We, the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do everything with nothing. Teresa Arnold paraphrased from Konstantin Josef Jire€?ek (1854 ‰?? 1918)

å

Samuella B. Sigmann, MS, NRCC-CHO

Senior Lecturer/Safety Committee Chair/Director of Stockroom

A. R. Smith Department of Chemistry

Appalachian State University

525 Rivers Street

Boone, NC 28608

Phone: 828 262 2755

Fax: 828 262 6558

Email: sigmannsb**At_Symbol_Here**appstate.edu

å

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