July 18, 2013 | Huffington Post
Despite an internal company memo in 1900 that read, “any paint is poisonous in proportion to the percentage of lead contained in it,” Sherwin-Williams Co. went on to become a leading lead-based paint manufacturer and to promote with other members of the industry the use of paint with large percentages of lead – “the higher, the better.”
“White lead should be the basic ingredient of all white paint and light tints,” read a Sherwin-Williams magazine advertisement in the 1920s. “It is to these paints exactly what flour is to bread.” [...]