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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

#151

Post by xxpor »

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.

In South King County and Pierce County, WA (south of Seattle), the basic advice is to not grow any food directly in the ground without having your soil tested first for arsenic. There was a copper smelter in Tacoma for decades, and now everything basically within a 20 mile radius is contaminated.

https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/...

https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/dirtalert/?lat=47.349229&lon=-12... (not exactly a circle due to the topography and wind patterns of the area)

The point is, there was a lot of nasty industrial activity in this country pre Clean Air Act. Everyone should be concerned and get their property tested IMO, especially if you have kids. I'm not trying to be alarmist; it doesn't affect my day to day life, it's just something to know. I still grow veggies in my garden, I just use raised beds and dirt from bags from Home Depot.

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

#152

Post by beerandt »

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…

While never "safe", lead pipes were relatively safer before the epa started pushing chlorine alternatives.

High concentration chlorine (and flouride, where used) were reactive to contaminants such that they were often chemically/ electrically attracted to the lead pipes (clay soil and other environmental factors played a role), and the pipes leeched contaminants from the water. Lower concentrations of chlorine and any concentration of most chlorine-alternatives not only allow water to leech from the lead pipes, but it also can reverse the previous process, such that decades of leeched chemicals and contaminants deposited in/on the lead (and other) pipes are released back into the water, at a much higher rate and concentration.

Washington DC went through this issue [0] in what was a huge public embarrassment, at least within the civil engineering community. It left the EPA with a black eye in what was supposed to be a landmark and example-setting project.

Now that it's known to happen, better precautions can be taken, but it's absolutely still an issue, especially in places like Detroit, where the surviving lead pipes were largely the service lines on the user side of the water meter. (Remediation and upgrades to water distribution systems often stops at the meter, including design considerations.)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_contamination_in_Washingt...

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

#153

Post by sokoloff »

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)

I switched to using a GATTS jar (which also helps detect Jet-A contamination, which is not much of a concern for a 172). The design of that jar is such that much less fuel (often zero) touches/splashes onto your hands and it's easy to pour the fuel back into the tank if the sample is "clean".

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

#154

Post by nate_meurer »

A lady named Tamara Rubin has spent years testing household products and other commonly handled objects for lead. She uses an XRF tester, which is the gold standard for high accuracy lead testing. She has thousands of items listed, from dishes to door hardware to childrens toys, and a lot of these will put a family at high risk of lead poisoning. There's some woo-y stuff on her website, but her XRF data is a gold mine:

https://tamararubin.com/

I personally have used both XRF and swabs on various objects around by home, and I found some really scary shit. The scariest were the older Lenox dishes we used for years; the decorative glaze on the eating surface tested high in lead via XRF, and the swab lit up bright red which means that lead was also coming off in our food.

I threw away all our dishes and bought new Corelle.

Other problems I found include old electrical cords and things made out of brass, including all plumbing fittings made before about 2012. These will also turn a swab red, especially if there's any corrosion, which means the lead is mobile.

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

#155

Post by sokoloff »

Symbiote wrote: post #102
verst wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without a legal replacement fuel (which is now in the works, but still not generally available nor legally approved for most aircraft), incentive isn't enough.

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

#156

Post by silicon2401 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #25
silicon2401 wrote: post #22

Topics 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 can't speak for the "woke" in general, but regarding medical conditions and their prevalence depending on racial origin: there's worlds of difference between defining what credit risk somebody is based on their skin color and informing people that skin color may be a correlative indicator that the resources should be invested to test their genetics for known maladies. The first is a crime in the United States, and…

This is actually a great example of what I mean. It's not hard to see the conflict. Let's say the group most affected by lead in the US is green people, and that most green people have some level of significant lead poisoning. That would mean that it's very likely that green people in the US have negative impacts to their cognitive development because of this lead poisoning. So to address the issue green people are having would also mean acknowledging that as a group, green people are more likely to have developmental issues, which would then create fuel for discrimination against green people. That's what I mean, I'm curious to see how that kind of situation gets handled.

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

#157

Post by xxpor »

Someone1234 wrote: post #49
ubercore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If done right the stripping will absolutely be the right move. Cleaning will only get you so far. Your state should have licensed lead remediation contractors

Nobody wants to pay to do it right though. So they often just throw on a 3M mask, put up some air filters, and call it good enough. To do it the EPA-approved way can easily cost $10K with an unlimited ceiling. I'm of the maybe controversial opinion that there should be a program to help residential users with the costs, because the reality is that when the costs are too high (even if for good reason) many just do it…

There's absolutely funding to do this in some areas. Cleveland's had a major remediation going on for years now because approximately everyone who lives in the city is too poor to pay for it. At the same time, most houses are much older than 1979, so nearly every house has some.

https://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/2020/08/cleveland-city-co...

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

#159

Post by Igelau »

tokai wrote: post #9
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.

Look at the actual paper for the actual numbers. Also lead is a problem in any concentration.

> any concentration

I'm curious. If there's lead in the water, the air, the soil, the food we eat, is zero even possible? Is there a baseline "side effect of living on Earth" level, even if it's very slight?

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

#160

Post by nate_meurer »

wallawe wrote: post #3
fullstop wrote: post #2

My house was built in the 70s and I've tested surfaces over the years and have not found any lead paint yet. Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys.

> 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.

Watch out for dishes, especially older ones. The older Lenox dishes my family used for 40 years turned out to have heavily leaded glaze on the surface. By the time I was using them for my own kids, the glaze could turn a lead-check swab bright red, which means we were eating that lead.

After I discovered this I replaced all of our dishes with plain white Corelle. Corelle currently uses lead-free glaze; the plain white is just me being an absolutist.

Note that vintage Corelle and almost all other vintage cookware contains some amount of lead in the decorative glaze.

Here's a good resource for lead content in the household items your kids are likely to encounter:

https://tamararubin.com/

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