Dr. Herbert L. Needleman, a University of Pittsburgh professor, trained pediatrician, psychiatrist and researcher noted for his seminal work with childhood lead poisoning, plays a starring role in the new book by former Newsweek reporter Lydia Denworth, "Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead."

The scientist in the book, due out March 18 (Beacon Press, $26.95), is geochemist Clair Patterson, who in 1949 at the University of Chicago was struck by the amount of lead that he found contaminating his samples while using uranium-lead dating to accurately calculate the age of the earth.

Both men took on one of the biggest public health crises of the 20th century: lead poisoning.

Dr. Needleman has been a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Pitt's School of Medicine and the Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic of UPMC since 1981, but he made his name in the 1970s as the first researcher/doctor to discover cognitive effects in children who had been exposed to lead. Though the children had no visible signs of lead poisoning, they had significantly lower scores on IQ tests. Studies by Dr. Needleman and others led to the removal of lead from gasoline, paint and many other products.

In a 1996 Pitt study of 301 children, those with the highest concentrations of lead -- still below government-recommended safe levels -- had test scores showing more aggression, attention disorders and delinquency. Six years later, those findings were extended to show that the average bone lead levels in 190 adjudicated delinquents were higher than normal controls. Those results suggested that between 18 and 38 percent of all delinquency in Allegheny County could be due to lead.

His work continues. He collaborated on a report from Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health and the medical school that was published in the January issue of Neuropsychology. It suggests that both the developing brain and aging brain can suffer from lead exposure. For older people, the report said, a buildup of lead from earlier exposure may be enough to result in greater cognitive problems after age 55.