His main work done, Patterson now turned his attention to the nagging question of all that lead in the atmosphere. He was astounded to find that what little was known about the effects of lead on humans was almost invariably wrong or misleading—and not surprisingly, he discovered, since for forty years every study of lead's effects had been funded exclusively by manufacturers of lead additives.
彼得森幾乎馬上把注意力轉向大氣里那個鉛的問題。他吃驚地發現，有關鉛對人體的影響，人們僅有的一點兒認識幾乎無一例外是錯誤的，或者是令人產生誤解的──這也不足為怪，因為40年來對鉛的影響的每項研究，全是由鉛添加劑的制造商們提供資金的。
In one such study, a doctor who had no specialized training in chemical pathology undertook a five-year program in which volunteers were asked to breathe in or swallow lead in elevated quantities. Then their urine and feces were tested. Unfortunately, as the doctor appears not to have known, lead is not excreted as a waste product. Rather, it accumulates in the bones and blood—that's what makes it so dangerous—and neither bone nor blood was tested. In consequence, lead was given a clean bill of health.
在一項這樣的研究中，一名沒有受過化學病理學專門訓練的醫生承擔了一個五年計劃。根據計劃，他讓志愿者們吸入或吞下越來越大量的鉛，然后對他們的大小便進行化驗。不幸的是，那位醫生似乎也不懂，鉛不會被作為廢物排泄出體外，只會積累在骨頭和血液里──這正是鉛很危險的原因，他既沒有檢查骨頭，也沒有化驗血液。結果，鉛被宣布對健康毫無影響。
Patterson quickly established that we had a lot of lead in the atmosphere—still do, in fact, since lead never goes away—and that about 90 percent of it appeared to come from automobile exhaust pipes, but he couldn't prove it. What he needed was a way to compare lead levels in the atmosphere now with the levels that existed before 1923, when tetraethyl lead was introduced. It occurred to him that ice cores could provide the answer.
彼得森很快確認，大氣里有過大量的鉛──實際上現在仍有大量的鉛，因為鉛從來沒有消失──其中大約90%來自汽車的廢氣管，但他無法加以證明。他需要一種方法，把現在大氣里鉛的濃度，與1923年四乙鉛開始商業生產之前的濃度進行比較。他突然想到，冰核可能會提供這個答案。
It was known that snowfall in places like Greenland accumulates into discrete annual layers (because seasonal temperature differences produce slight changes in coloration from winter to summer).
人們知道，在格陵蘭島這樣的地方，每年的積雪層次很分明（因為季節溫差使得冬季到夏季的顏色稍有不同）。
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