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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

#101

Post by natdempk »

linuxguy2 wrote: post #84
krrrh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the lead blood level indicator has been removed from this site, but a friend showed me this map of homicide rates vs one with lead levels from 18 years prior[0] and there was a pretty strong correlation. Obviously there are confounders, but Kevin Drum’s decade old article positing that lead was a major contributor to the crime wave and subsequent reduction is pretty compelling. [1] EDIT: aside, but mayb…

Beware density/heat maps that mostly just match population maps. Of course, xkcd has been there before: https://xkcd.com/1138/

Did you look at the referenced links?

None of them suffer from this problem. Almost all of the charts aren't even density maps, and of the two that are, they are charting family income vs. soil lead level, which wouldn't suffer from the problem mentioned in the comic.

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

#102

Post by Symbiote »

verst wrote: post #68
JCBird1012 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe pilots should be required to lick a block of lead before each flight, so they have some incentive to stop using leaded fuel.

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

#103

Post by myself248 »

verst wrote: post #67
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)

Ask your doctor, get it checked!

I just got my test results back, since I'm having some odd symptoms and my doctor's kinda throwing ideas at the wall. He asked, jokingly, if there was a chance anyone was trying to poison me with arsenic.

I said no, but I do a lot of soldering (like a LOT), and I make a point not to chew on my solder or wear the iron behind my ear like a pencil, but who knows whether the dust is getting absorbed or whatever. What the heck, let's check for it.

My level came back at "less than 1" µg/dl, which I guess is as far down as that particular measurement can go. So that's cool, seems my precautions are adequate.

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

#104

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

floor2 wrote: post #86
dwohnitmok wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, of all the environmental hazards caused by large corporations, here's a rare example of one where this was primarily caused by a union, which while not opposed to the overall removal of lead, demanded the use of pipes which required specialized knowledge to install, which precluded non-brazed copper and plastic pipes used elsewhere in the nation, and effectively made lead pipes the only viable o…

This is why the "right vs left" style of thinking drives me crazy. Unions are constantly doing evil things, usually for the same greedy and power-hungry reasons as any corporate board, and to the same detriment of society at large, but because we think of unions as being on "our side" and latch onto this romanticized notion of the unions of the 1800s they get a pass. The police and prison guard unions constantly do h…

Unions are distributional coalitions. They try to allocate more resources to their members than they would receive otherwise. The source for this surplus is the rest of society. In other words, they are cartels. It should not be surprising that some of them are managed by organised crime.

Be it through negotiating salaries or restricting the number of doctors or enforcing very difficult admission procedures for lawyers.

They tend to also effect other, non-zero-sum game advantages, or otherwise they would probably be outlawed, but this is the gist of it. You can still acknowledge that many were founded with good intentions, but people who do not see at least some downsides have a severe reasoning defect.

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

#105

Post by t0mbstone »

djoldman wrote: post #44

How about Chicago: > The biggest reason is that essentially Chicago and other cities around Illinois required the use of lead service lines all the way until 1986, long after it was recognized that lead was poisonous and other cities had stopped using it. A decade after other cities had stopped using it Chicago and other cities in Illinois were not only using it but requiring the use of lead long after everybody else…

Kind of makes you wonder how much of Chicago's violence and crime issues are exacerbated by lead poisoning of their citizens...

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

#107

Post by marcosdumay »

jmalicki wrote: post #82
dllthomas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...)

Actually, the CDC defines the 5ug/DL as high based on being the 97.5%ile [1] in children... so you're not kidding... But if only 2% of children have lead levels that were originally defined based on the worst 2.5%, that's a 20% reduction, so great news!? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/blood-lead-levels.h...

Still, I'm not sure the article uses the CDC definition. Going on with the complaint, the article is meaningless.

Did they find a problem? An improvement? Nothing? Nobody can tell by reading it alone.

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

#108

Post by kzrdude »

zz865 wrote: post #63

Anyone know what is normal in other countries? I grew up grinding and sanding our old lead-painted house. I think its probably common.

This site seems to give "normal values" for swedish kids https://www.internetmedicin.se/behandlingsoversikter/arbets-...

> Genomsnittshalten hos svenska barn är cirka 0,05 µmol/L. Halten har sjunkit sedan Sverige förbjöd blyad bensin.

For kids average is 0.05 moles/L which should be 10 μg/L. (Note it's given per liter, not dL).

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

#109

Post by ljf »

neaden wrote: post #16
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…

Don't forget the soil in your yard, even if the house was built yesterday the soil could still have lead contamination from leaded gasoline.

UK suburban soil can also be bad as people used to throw fireplace ashes in their gardens, which can concentrate contaminants. I ate from my home allotment for years until a neighbour told me he had recently tested his soil and found it heavy with lead and other rubbish.

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

#110

Post by floren »

foobarian wrote: post #33
stuaxo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though lead was removed from petrol, there is a lot in soil and dust in cities, and that is still agitated out into the air. This article shows how there is lead in Londons air despite it being removed in the 90s from fuel: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224474/lead-from-leaded-petr...

Remember that avgas still uses leaded fuel (though that will hopefully improve soon).

Leaded avgas is only used in small, propeller-driven aircraft like Cessnas. Jet fuel does not contain lead.
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