Anything fiction about lead poisoning?

Hello! I am interested in learning more about lead poisoning and toxicity as a subject and have found at least 10 nonfiction books about it, but, so far in my search I haven't found a single fiction book that has it as part of its plot or that has characters who have lead poisoning (minus mysteries using it as a convenient murder method). Even a fictional retelling of Alice Hamilton, like we do for other past historical people would be nice. Considering it is an issue that has affected millions of people across the globe, I would have expected more literature on the subject but I am finding it hard to get any actual results just through Internet searches. I appreciate the help!

A tagmash of historical fiction and lead poisoning didn't show much, but there are some -

https://www.librarything.com/tag/historical%20fiction%2C%20lead%20poisoning

You could try other tag mashes to see if anything else floats to the surface.

I'll try that, thanks

perhaps books about the romans use of lead in everything or alice and wonderland (the mad hatter and all that) and just wondering what is your interest in this topic?

When I was about 10 years old I was bored in my math class and I was playing around with a pencil and somehow I managed to stab the pencil tip into my knee and it broke off Well I was sure I was going to die but I didn't tell anybody about it too scared that they would think I was real dope But then I really found out what a big dope I was when someone was mentioning about pencils had graphic. I was a little bit naive and because I didn't tell anybody about it I still had that tiny little piece of pencil inside my knee for most of my growing up Cheers

I suspect lead poisoning doesn't come up in fiction much because it's so drawn out, unlike arsenic or hemlock. I'd hazard that there are plenty of examples, but it's a minor plot point at best, so not tagged.

Caravaggio may have suffered from lead poisoning, but I'm not aware of any fiction about him (lots of the books with him in the character CK are art history).

I had considered researching more about Romans and their use of lead, but I was trying to find more modern information like biographies or fictional stories of what it is like to live with it, remediate it, and how it affects communities at large socioculturally, in narrative. Sort of similar to how we have fictional stories of characters living through certain diseases like yellow fever or more chronic illnesses like cerebral palsy as the plot. Thank you though!

I've recently started learning about Flint, Michigan and other lead-poisoned towns in the US after going on a research tangent for a story I am messing around with writing. Despite being alive at the time of such ongoing catastrophes, I have heard or learned very little about Flint, Newark NJ, DC etc., up until now. My story is still in the rough draft/outline stages, but I have been writing a story based on atonement and how we can reconcile harms we have done to each other, our communities, and our land. Lead poisoning happened to be a convenient possible explanation for a lot of the plot points I have so far and something that I would actually like to see fixed in the real world. I thought it would be a good practice of dreaming to come up with realistic but fictional solutions of what that reconciliation and remediation could look like in a society that cared. So I guess my interest is two-fold: 1) I want to learn more about it to better understand the world around me, and 2) I want to learn more about it to do justice to realistic experiences in my narrative and not trivialize or oversensationalize it.

I was surprised and a little frustrated with how little there is out there on the subject of lead poisoning because we've known that heavy metals were bad since the time of the Romans and especially after the 1950s. Most of the information available to me is a limited number of highly technical research papers and a handful of nonfiction books that are somewhat subject adjacent, so I was hoping for something more attainable at a non-scientist level. Introductory if you will. Though fiction can often get things wrong, I thought it would be the most basic starting point to see what others have done to approach that experience in narrative. I did find a good documentary called "Lead and Copper" that was just released in 2024 (with information spanning from the 1950s to 2023), so perhaps a lot of the information that I may be looking for is still being researched and isn't written yet. Guess it is on me to do some heavy lifting in that department with my own more in-depth research.

(On a side note: I had a friend put pencil lead in their hand accidentally once and they always proudly showed it off cause it stayed there for a while. I think it is a pretty common experience for kids to learn the difference between graphite and lead that way. XD)

I can only find Toxic Truth by Lydia Denworth and it's more of an investigative journalism book. I can't find relevant novels. Sorry.

I did a quick dabble in worldcat and Vivid came up as the only fiction result with a subject heading of "Lead Poisoning".

Toxic Truth is on my list, thanks!

Vivid is perfect! It looks exactly along the lines of what I was looking for. Thank you!

i just typed "lead poisoning"in to the search library thing" clicked and found hundreds of articles and books. try that and see if there is anything you might be able to use

re flint, horrible damage to that town looked up on wiki, apparently despite the replacemtns made in the pipes people are still relaying on bottled water. ....

>11 cindydavid4: unfortunately that method doesn't let you search specifically for fiction, which is what the poster is looking for.

Oh, true that.

I was looking mostly for fiction for inspiration and information, that's true. I have already found a few non-fiction and other books to use. I agree that what has happened to Flint is really awful. The documentary I watched examined it and other towns from all sorts of viewpoints: from the parent who worked tirelessly to gather evidence that the water was many times over the legal EPA exceedances in Flint to a mayor who took the hit of admitting there was a problem and working to fix it in Newark, NJ. I recommend it. Thank you all for your help!