I read the article. This seems to be about a former lineman who had a high blood lead level in the 1980s, and also a study where line workers doing soldering were found to have high lead levels in their blood.

Reading this, my first and biggest question is : how did the lead get into their blood?

Having spent ~20 years soldering in the electronics industry on a daily basis I had always assumed that lead isn't getting into your body unless you ingest it. There are ways to ingest lead that we know about : flaking lead paint becomes dust and can be breathed in; lead compounds from burned gasoline can be breathed in; lead in water that has traveled through lead pipes (and possibly copper pipes soldered with lead) can be drunk.

But how do you ingest solid or liquid lead? Disappointing the article never addressed this. It seems the authors heard "worked with lead" and "lead in blood" and just said "yeah that seems obvious".

Wouldn't we see very high levels of lead poisoning in plumbers? (before the move away from lead solder they were heating the stuff with a blowtorch, often in cramped unventilated conditions). Were studies done to eliminate the possibility that the people above ingested lead in some other way?