Le paradoxe du plomb: Tensions autour du saturnisme

The present article proposes to study how families touched by lead poisoning relate to institutions. We will show how the policy implementation regarding this disease, at the crossroads between sanitary and housing policies, brings specific and strong tensions. Indeed, sanitary emergency collides with the principles of justice institutional actors are applying in allocating social housing. Hence this paradox: families that tend to oppose institutions and that meet the least the criteria required by institutional actors, are often those in which children are badly intoxicated. They are thus also the ones institutions should help the most because of the sanitary emergency.