16 Facts About Herbert Needleman

Herbert Leroy Needleman researched the neurodevelopmental damage caused by lead poisoning.

Herbert Needleman was a pediatrician, child psychiatrist, researcher and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, and the founder of the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning.

Dr Needleman played a key role in securing some of the most significant environmental health protections achieved during the 20th century, which resulted in a fivefold reduction in the prevalence of lead poisoning among children in the United States by the early 1990s.

Herbert Needleman has been credited with having played a key role in triggering environmental safety measures that have reduced average blood lead levels by an estimated 78 percent between 1976 and 1991.

Herbert Needleman earned his BS from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1948, and his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952.

Herbert Needleman trained in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and served as Chief Resident.

Herbert Needleman completed a fellowship in pediatric cardiology and rheumatic fever through the National Institutes of Health.

In 1979, Herbert Needleman began the first large-scale study of intelligence and behavior in children with no outward signs of lead poisoning.

Herbert Needleman's research showed that lead exposure is associated with an increased risk for failure to graduate from high school and for reading disabilities.

Herbert Needleman's research involved testing the concentration of lead in bones of 194 juveniles, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, who had been convicted in the Allegheny County Juvenile Court, and 146 students in regular high schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who did not have behavioral problems.

Herbert Needleman's research helped cause the Department of Housing and Urban Development to remove lead from thousands of housing units across the US.

Herbert Needleman designed the first forward study of lead exposure during gestation, and showed that such exposure is associated with cognitive deficits later in life.

Herbert Needleman challenged this criticism and after giving him more money to reanalyze the data, the EPA reversed its position, and adopted his conclusions in 1986.

Herbert Needleman says that the case against him was made by a law firm from Philadelphia who refused to name the company who was paying them, although he wrote that Ernhart received $375,000 over seven years from the International Lead Zinc Research Organization.

Herbert Needleman says that against the wishes of his university, he successfully fought to have his case held in public and was eventually exonerated.

EPA scientist Joel Schwartz told Newsweek in 1991 that a reanalysis of Herbert Needleman's data incorporating the factor of age, which had been excluded, "found essentially the identical results".