Eagar manganese deposition expert witness testimony

The full arc — sulfur as a 1870s–1880s European problem, Spiegeleisen as the manganese-bearing solution, manganese's essentiality for health, the 1980s–1990s welding-industry litigation, Tom's testimony in Danville, Illinois, the box-of-raisins comparison, the "objection your honor" courtroom moment. Most developed teaching unit in the lecture.

Now, a few years ago, some attorneys in the United States were trying to go after the welding industry — because if you were to breathe 100 percent manganese — we've known this since the 1790s — people who worked in manganese ore mines would get something that looked sort of like Parkinson's disease, a nervous disorder. We've since learned, actually some people at Mass General did some of this work, that it attacks a different part of the brain. If you get too much manganese, you can get a neurological deficit, which is permanent, and it's sort of like Parkinson's disease.