The lead industry even sought to place the blame for lead poisoning epidemic on parents and children, claiming that the problem was not with the lead paint but with the "uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican" parents who "failed" to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths. Children poisoned by lead, the industry claimed, had a disease that led them to suck on "unnatural objects" and thereby get poisoned.

But the industry wouldn't remove all lead from their products. It fought every attempt at regulation. Industry representatives threatened lawsuits against television stations such as CBS that aired popular shows like Highway Patrol in which the product was depicted as dangerous ... All this despite records that show that the industry knew that their product was poisoning children.

Does this playbook sound familiar? To anyone who has been following the furious efforts of the soda industry to counter public health initiatives to limit consumption of their product, it should. As it should to anyone familiar with the history of the tobacco industry's efforts to deny the obvious. As with all such comparisons when it comes to the food industry, an initial caveat is essential: lead and tobacco were known to be lethal.

But in all these cases, industry presents the problem simply as a matter of choice and then blames consumers for not taking simple precautions to protect themselves: smokers who don't quit; parents who don't supervise their children and "let" them eat lead paint; people who simply have no idea of moderation or the importance of physical activity.

In the case of lead paint, after three decades of industry lobbying, propaganda, and denial of danger, local health departments began to assert themselves. In 1949, Maryland's House of Delegates passed a bill banning the use of lead paint on children's toys and furniture -- a law that was repealed under industry pressure the following year. A few years later, the City of Baltimore health department required a warning label be placed on paint cans. Then, in 1959, the New York City Board of Health prohibited the use of paint containing more than one percent lead on interior surfaces.

Other major cities followed suit. Slowly, the number of children facing brain damage began to decline. In 1971, the federal government banned lead-based paints on public housing. Finally, in 1978, nearly two decades after the actions of local departments of health, the federal government banned the use of lead in virtually any paint intended for sale to consumers.

In recent years, New York City's Board of Health has tried to stem the obesity epidemic. New York became the first city in the nation to require that calorie counts accompany food items in fast food restaurants. And, of course, the Board of Health recently tried to limit the size of soda servings.