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Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

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Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#61

Post by dllthomas »

marcosdumay wrote: post #54
chmod600 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Also meaningless is saying that 2% of the kids have a high level of lead, without saying what "high" means.

Oh, that's simple - it's defined as above the 98th percentile.

(I kid, I hope...)

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#62

Post by im3w1l »

Wohlf wrote: post #37
NineStarPoint wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience it's even worse than being too centered around the white male, it's too centered on a fictional 'average' person and if you fall outside that you have to research and advocate for yourself. If I have to do that as a mildly neuro-divergent white male then people less privileged than I am must be in real trouble.

Money is an issue though. If you want to study how every disease affects neuro-divergent middle-child women of native american descent then the cost of doing research will sky rocket. Nothing would ever get done.

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#64

Post by [deleted] »

dllthomas wrote: post #61
marcosdumay wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Also meaningless is saying that 2% of the kids have a high level of lead, without saying what "high" means. Oh, that's simple - it's defined as above the 98th percentile. (I kid, I hope...)

[deleted]

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#65

Post by seoaeu »

silicon2401 wrote: post #23
refurb wrote: post #4

scientists 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 human body contains something like 10^27 atoms. It doesn't seem that unreasonable that all elements which are at least moderately common on Earth would be present...

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#66

Post by jeffbee »

flurie wrote: post #38
roland35 wrote: post #15

My wife and I are particularly concerned about lead, especially since there is no way to really cure lead poisoning. Any house built before the 1980s could have lead in it, with varying degrees of concern for children. Around the home here is what we found are sources of lead to worry about (or not): - Paint: lead was banned in paint in 1979, but lead was used less and less even before the cutoff date. Paint is espec…

I have another surprising addition to that list: Christmas lights.

All high-temperature wire insulation contains lead. But are these significant sources of available environmental lead?

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#67

Post by verst »

cobookman wrote: post #46

It's shameful the EPA still hasn't banned leaded aviation fuel.

And most pilot will have touched this fuel quite a bit - for example when checking a single engine propeller plane during preflight we sump the fuel tanks. There is always some fuel that sprays onto my hands then.

I wonder how much lead this exposes me to. (I'm working on a private pilot license in a Cessna 172)

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#68

Post by verst »

JCBird1012 wrote: post #32
wallawe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys. Yeah this was going to be my question, is where is the lead coming from? Water, toys, what else? Having a 4 week old, seeing this concerns me so I'd love to do what I can to avoid it.

Smaller general aviation aircraft still use 100LL gasoline (the LL stands for low lead) - and even though there’s lead-free replacement candidates (still going through regulatory approval, at least in the US), it’s been known that areas around airports with frequent GA traffic have higher levels of lead in the air, and children living near said airports may have elevated levels of lead in their blood ( https://paloal…

What about the pilots? I always get this fuel on my hands during preflight when sumping the fuel tanks.
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