I sometimes wonder if we're getting a little too over concerned about the chemicals to which we are exposed ("City stumbles on lead paint cleanup" March 6). Lead, asbestos, cigarettes, mercury, etc. are now regarded as more dangerous than a rattlesnake in your bed.

Somehow I have reached the age of 80, regarded by some as normal, have paid my bills and have raised normal children, but in my youth I used to rub mercury with my bare fingers onto coins to make them shine, smoked a pack of cigarettes per day while in the service, have lived in a house with asbestos insulation and still live with asbestos wrapped heating pipes, and used to spend my working days as an electronic repairman using lead wire solder as a toothpick or as a cowboy dangles a straw from his mouth, and committed numerous other misuses of methane, chlorine, etc.

So how do we explain these 90-year-old individuals who have lived likewise, two pack a day smokers and such? We agree that such activity has been proven to be dangerous, but should we go overboard?

George B. Wroe, Glyndon