Silverstein said that before the trial began he ruled that no evidence about specific houses or children would be admitted. He said he feared if he let the state introduce two witnesses to describe the lead hazards in a house the paint companies depicted as being safe, it would open a Pandora's box of problems.

Everyone recognized the testimony would have been explosive.

The state accuses the paint companies of creating a public nuisance when they sold lead-based paint decades ago. The companies insist the paints are safe when properly maintained.

Paint company lawyer Donald Scott made that argument in his opening statements four weeks ago when he showed the jury a photograph of a beautiful Victorian house in Providence.

Scott said the house represented the thousands of houses in Rhode Island that were treated with lead paint long ago and remain safe because they are properly maintained.

In an "I gotcha" move more common in movies about trials than in real courtrooms, the state later sent inspectors to the house who found it had a number of serious lead hazards. They also discovered that a little girl who lived at the house at one time had elevated lead levels.

Silverstein said that one hour after the state got the lead tests back, it notified him. He scheduled a hearing for Wednesday afternoon.

For two hours, Leonard Decof argued for the state against John Tarantino for the defense. Several lawyers said afterward that the legal arguments were as good as it gets.

Silverstein carefully spent 35 minutes yesterday morning reviewing the points made by each lawyer. The judge was so even-handed that lawyers on both sides said afterward they had no idea how Silverstein was going to rule until he got to the end.

In arguing to present the inspectors, Decof cited a legal doctrine that permits admission of otherwise inadmissable evidence to rebut prejudicial evidence that was improperly admitted by the other side.

But Silverstein said he made it clear to the jury at the trial's onset -- and he'll say again at its conclusion -- that the opening statements are not evidence and the jury should only weigh evidence when it discusses a verdict.

"This is not to be taken in any away as a license for counsel to intentionally or with utter disregard for the facts to make statements to the jury," Silverstein said. "This court won't countenance that."

Silverstein told the court that Decof informed him yesterday that the state is nearly finished presenting its case. It should be done early next week.

Yesterday afternoon, the state called to the stand Dr. Herbert Needleman, a pioneer in research of the health effects of lead.

Needleman, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said he got interested in lead poisoning in the 1950s when he was treating a little girl who "was extremely ill with lead poisoning."

He said he realized that no matter what he did for her, she would just return to the home that poisoned her, or another home with the same problems.

No one tested children for lead back then, he said, so no one knew how many kids were lead-poisoned.

In 1960, Needleman said he completed his first study that showed that as lead levels went up, children's IQs went down.

In Philadelphia, he said, most of the victims were African-Americans. He said he also discovered one neighborhood where most of the victims were Irish and Italian. He found that they were across the street from a plant run by NL Industries, one of the current defendants.

"Lead levels all over that neighborhood were quite high," Needleman said.

Back then, many thought a child needed a very high level of lead in his body to be effected. But Needleman said research has steadily caused the government to lower the poisoning level from 40 to 35 to 25 and now to 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.

"It's now 10, but it's going to be coming down, because we're finding effects below 10," Needleman said.

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