"Half of US adults exposed to harmful lead levels as kids"

[Nevilledog]

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The Associated Press
@AP
Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study finds.

Experts say the health impacts of such widespread exposure could persist for decades into the future.

apnews.com
Half of US adults exposed to harmful lead levels as kids
Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates. Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline...
2:31 PM · Mar 7, 2022

https://apnews.com/article/science-health-environment-and-nature-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention-bec63d5a6e98f952ad6d111c90e5a1b2

Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates.

Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline consumption data to examine how widespread early childhood lead exposure was in the country between 1940 and 2015.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, they estimated that half the U.S. adult population in 2015 had been exposed to lead levels surpassing five micrograms per deciliter — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention threshold for harmful lead exposure at the time.

The scientists from Florida State University and Duke University also found that 90% of children born in the U.S. between 1950 and 1981 had blood-lead levels higher than the CDC threshold. And the researchers found significant impact on cognitive development: on average, early childhood exposure to lead resulted in a 2.6-point drop in IQ.

The researchers only examined lead exposure caused by leaded gasoline, the dominant form of exposure from the 1940s to the late 1980s, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles was phased out starting in the 1970s, then finally banned in 1996.

*snip*

[lapfog_1]

1. That may go a long way to explain Q-anon and the GQP.

[Nevilledog]

4. My very first thought was.....this explains everything!

[cbabe]

9. Ditto.

[lagomorph777]

2. Guess which half?

Incidentally, does anybody remember how the leaded gasoline industry pushed the claim that lead poisoning was all caused by stupid kids eating paint?

[Celerity]

13. Most lead poisoning in children results from eating chips of deteriorating lead-based paint.

this is now, not then



https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisoning/symptoms-causes/syc-20354717

[llmart]

15. Lead bullets - Time spent at firing ranges...

My ex-husband spent years playing with lead and making bullets, sitting at a table melting it down in a pot and sucking up all those fumes just so he could make his arsenal. I used to tell him it wasn't smart to be doing that and I'd never allow him to do it near the kids, but what a doofus. He never listened. He was always one of those that thought he was smarter than he really was.

[relayerbob]

3. Explains a lot

[Wingus Dingus]

5. Yeah...

yeah.

[Nevilledog]

7. Yeah

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. It would be great if we could talk about this without politicizing it or acting like people who have

lead poisoning are worthy of mockery.

[Irish_Dem]

8. This is one reason the GOP is happy to keep us in a toxic soup.

Children suffer brain damage with learning problems. Also keep the cost of college so high that many cannot afford to attend.

A democracy depends upon an educated electorate. So smart, educated people are a real threat to the GOP.

[Wounded Bear]

10. I grew up (thru age 11 or so) on well water...

Of course, the well was about 20 yards from an active cow pasture, but I figure that's what gives me my good immune system and basic resistance to e-coli and such.

[Nevilledog]

11. And your bullshitting expertise.

[Wounded Bear]

14. Nah, they never let the bulls loose with the cows...

I got that from my years in Uncle Sam's Misguided Children. Semper Fi! You know the difference between a fairy tale and an old sea story? One starts with "Once upon a time, and the other starts out "This ain't no shit."

[moonscape]

12. When I was a kid, we continued a tradition

my parents had in Europe: melting/liquifying lead in a fireplace shovel, then dumping it in a bucket of water to quickly solidify. We’d then take turns picking out a piece and hold it so with the light behind it, it would cast a shadow on the wall. Using that Rorschach image, the rest of the family would find images to predict the piece-holders fortune.

The tradition was a New Year’s one, but we loved the game and would often successfully badger our parents to get more lead and do it at other times.

Makes me shudder to think about it. Perhaps I was natively an Einstein! But I’m quite sure even a daily bucket of lead would have been unable to turn me into a Republican!