Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's noise. Worry about teaching kids to look both ways etc before obsessing about this one, is my advice.
I taught my kids to look both ways. Now what do I do?
etc
Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
51–60 of 276 posts
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#52My kid took a routine test and was found to have 5.0 μg/dL, which is elevated but not alarming. The source is most likely paint chips or dust. I'm in an old building which has lead paint that was painted over. It's totally legal to just paint over the lead paint, but since the building is settling the paint on the door frames often chips off. My landlord has been good about offering to strip in repaint the frames, bu…
They should be able to measure the amount of lead in the air after stripping to ensure it is not detectable. At least you should inquire into this.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#53Topics like this bring modern attitudes about identity to a tricky spot. A common view is that you aren't defined by XYZ, you can choose your identity and who you are or what you do. In reality, things like lead poisoning have a very powerful and undeniable impact on who you are and what you can do, e.g. > Slow development of normal childhood behaviors, such as talking and use of words, and permanent intellectual dis…
I will say that, at least in the “woke” circles I notice, there is plenty of discussion about how medical knowledge is too centered around the white male. Finding studies that dig into the way race-specific biology should change medical treatment and risk factors is hard, and finding doctors who acknowledge those studies in how they think about patients is even harder.
Scientifically speaking, there is no "race-specific biology". Race is a social construct. But there are ethnicities which get grouped into racial categories.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most of the affected kids ... didn’t have enormous amounts of lead in their bloodstreams, and only two percent had a "high" level. But as the researchers note in their paper, there's no such thing as a safe amount of lead to have in your system. It's possible that more sensitive instruments will allow us to eventually conclude "this small amount X of lead is safe to have ...". But it makes sense to take this seriou…
The point is that "detectable" says more about the instrument than anything else. If there's no science that says "one atom of lead anywhere in your body is bad", then saying "detectable" is meaningless. I mean, if you said "we found a detectable number of bullets in half of children", now that would be bad.
> If there's no science that says "one atom of lead anywhere in your body is bad", then saying "detectable" is meaningless.
It would be meaningless on that case too.
Also meaningless is saying that 2% of the kids have a high level of lead, without saying what "high" means.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#55Roofers weld lead and breathe in some of the fumes here in UK. I thought perhaps they ought to carry portable fans to improve ventilation on calm days.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#56Topics like this bring modern attitudes about identity to a tricky spot. A common view is that you aren't defined by XYZ, you can choose your identity and who you are or what you do. In reality, things like lead poisoning have a very powerful and undeniable impact on who you are and what you can do, e.g. > Slow development of normal childhood behaviors, such as talking and use of words, and permanent intellectual dis…
People with "woke attitudes" aren't against group-specific issues. They're against using group-specific characteristics as a way to negatively discriminate against groups or individuals in that group.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#57My kid took a routine test and was found to have 5.0 μg/dL, which is elevated but not alarming. The source is most likely paint chips or dust. I'm in an old building which has lead paint that was painted over. It's totally legal to just paint over the lead paint, but since the building is settling the paint on the door frames often chips off. My landlord has been good about offering to strip in repaint the frames, bu…
5 μg/dL is very alarming. It is associated with an order of magnitude higher criminal behavior in later life, much higher odds of repeating a grade in school, and significantly worse 3rd and 5th grade reading and math performance. Children with this blood lead level have worse later-life outcomes than children who test with 10 μg/dL and get treatment for it.
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#58scientists saw observable levels of the toxic metal in about half As a former analytical chemist, we can detect most metals down to the parts per trillion or lower. So the more sensitive our instruments get the “more kids have lead”. With sufficiently sensitive testing you’d probably find lead in 100% of people.
Is your implication that we can find every single element in the periodic table (if not compounds and other chemicals, too) in the human body with sufficiently sensitive testing?
The number of possible chemicals is vast, due to the exponentially large number of ways you can combine the elements. So although every stable element is present in the average human, every possible chemical (or compound) is not.
Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634549
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I might be mistaken here, but from what I've read on lead, we already know relatively well what amount of lead is safe, according to body weight etc. We also know that our bodies can deal with these small amounts, by actually getting rid of some of it. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter can chime in?
My understanding is that all detectable amounts currently have known negative effects when studied. The Action levels are set based on what is possible to address in an individual child. Lead exists in the environment. It would be impractical to impossible to eliminate it entirely from the blood streams of most people. However certain areas have extremely dangerous concentrations such as dirt near major roads/old bui…
That statement has the exact same problem. With sufficiently sensitive tests you might in theory be able to detect the negative effects of a single lead atom.
What we really want to know is: how big of a deal is this really?
Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most of the affected kids ... didn’t have enormous amounts of lead in their bloodstreams, and only two percent had a "high" level. But as the researchers note in their paper, there's no such thing as a safe amount of lead to have in your system. It's possible that more sensitive instruments will allow us to eventually conclude "this small amount X of lead is safe to have ...". But it makes sense to take this seriou…
It's noise. Worry about teaching kids to look both ways etc before obsessing about this one, is my advice.
So, I'd agree that there are lead levels too low to be worth worrying about. But I recall a clever study a while back where a researcher noticed that children found to be in the top decile of lead exposure got lead abatement for their homes or apartments by the city. The researchers compared them to the previous second decile (now first decile) and found a pretty significant effect size on life outcomes. This was done on poor people in city centers so the lead levels were high compared to, say, suburbanites but there are lead levels many kids in the US are exposed to that are actually a big deal.