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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

#221

Post by cryptoquick »

Cd00d wrote: post #200
willis936 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right solution is installing a reverse osmosis filter system (which includes mechanical and charcoal filters) at the house or tap level. Water's not one of those things people should cheap out on. We, as a society, can afford to not have this be an issue. We're not quite to that realization yet. To be clear: I'm not saying the burden of cost should be solely put on renters/homeowners.

Can you go into this in a bit of detail? I thought reverse osmosis water wasn't great to drink, because it's essentially de-ionized water. So, the water has no choice but to rip ions out of your cells. But, I've never looked into biology enough to understand. I did work in a lab back in the day where one of the students was filling his water bottle from the DI tap, because he preferred the taste. He didn't drop dead…

Some RO systems include an alkalinization / re-mineralization stage. I use this one: https://www.expresswater.com/pages/ro-alkaline-uv

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

#222

Post by colpabar »

sayhar wrote: post #203
nate_meurer wrote: post #154

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 min…

So I went into a big rabbithole of writing up a long email to my family warning them about specific plates and so on. Then I paused -- was any of this real? I looked up on Snopes -- they didn't seem to be too convinced that she's legit[0]. Some more googling didn't seem to show any reputable site repeating her claims. It's hard to tell if any of this is true or not. (Especially since there's a difference between a _c…

If you're worried about misinformation online, snopes should absolutely not be the first place you look.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28169681

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

#223

Post by whimsicalism »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #133
whimsicalism wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather, you completely ignored the second half of my comment :) To reiterate, I would support voters being able to decide military policy, even if the alternative was a peaceful oligarchy.

And you double down. Your second paragraph adds nothing except detailing your reasoning which only serves to exemplify the behavior the comment you are replying to is complaining about. The point of the comment you are replying to is that people have a bad tendency to ignore groups doing evil things for their own gains if they otherwise align with these groups. Whether it's the moron on one side of the isle screechin…

Civil rhetoric really breaks down when it comes to politics, it seems.

Nobody in this thread was "screeching" about anything, and I don't appreciate being not-so-subtly called a moron. I have done nothing of the same to you.

I am perfectly capable of criticizing bad actions by unions, 2020 has had a number of them.

But I will not use those critiques as an excuse to argue that the right to elect someone to negotiate on your behalf should be curtailed, because I believe the right to worker self-determination comes prior to those consequences - just as I don't support banning "bad" speech even if that speech has consequences.

I'm not going to keep responding because, honestly, you seem to be shadow-boxing a conversational opponent who only exists in your own mind.

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

#224

Post by comboy »

nate_meurer wrote: post #154

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 min…

Can anybody explain to me or give me some materials to read? Say toy has 5000ppm Pb, how does that translate to it being dangerous? Child only touches it. Assuming soil have a ballpark of 100ppm Pb and we all love fresh vegetables.. how is this toy or even a dish doing any damage?

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

#225

Post by whimsicalism »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #129
da_chicken wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In terms of overall welfare, an additional dollar in the pocket of a typical union worker is going to be more welfare enhancing than that additional dollar in the pocket of the typical owner. This is from just basic diminishing marginal utility of the dollar. Remarkably few people seem to truly understand what "marginal propensity to consume" actually means. Economically, money saved is money lost. Money invested i…

I'll admit while I'm inclined to believe that it's better to distribute money to workers rather than investors, I don't understand the economic mechanics that makes this true. I do understand that the rich aren't gong to spend as much as the middle and lower classes, but I don't have a good answer for the predictable trickle-down rebuttal: the wealthy will invest rather than spend, and that investment funds jobs whic…

Consumption also funds jobs which put money in the pockets of the poor.

It has the added benefit of bidding up the price of things poor people need, which yes is inflationary but also incentivizes more resources being provisioned to help provide the things that poor people need.

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

#227

Post by mdavis6890 »

The problem with looking at things this way is that there is no discussion of amounts and dose-dependent effects. The article just says "For lead there's no 'too low'". and "we want zero." Fine enough, but as we are very good at measuring ever-smaller quantities of things we will find all manner of out-of-place chemicals that we have been tolerating just fine. I'm sure I have measurable amounts of arsenic, lead, aluminum, chlorine, radioactivity, etc in my body right now, in levels that do not have a meaningful impact on my health.

The real question we should ask is whether there is substantial evidence of a negative health impact from the levels of lead that are measured.

We should want to know exactly what levels were measured in these kids and be able to plot it out. We should have some idea of the health impacts of various doses. With that we could come to more meaningful conclusions.

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

#228

Post by nate_meurer »

comboy wrote: post #224
nate_meurer wrote: post #154

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 min…

Can anybody explain to me or give me some materials to read? Say toy has 5000ppm Pb, how does that translate to it being dangerous? Child only touches it. Assuming soil have a ballpark of 100ppm Pb and we all love fresh vegetables.. how is this toy or even a dish doing any damage?

Not sure what you're asking. You want an explanation of how lead pigments chalking off the surface of an old dish get in your mouth? Or how lead paint on a toy gets into a baby's mouth?

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

#230

Post by whimsicalism »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #132
whimsicalism wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not nearly as symmetric as you're making it out to be. In terms of overall welfare, an additional dollar in the pocket of a typical union worker is going to be more welfare enhancing than that additional dollar in the pocket of the typical owner. This is from just basic diminishing marginal utility of the dollar. Of course , unions can do awful, evil things - they are organizations of people and people are petty…

I think OP made a correct argument that that we quickly make this right vs left without dissecting the actual impacts of workers unions. Your comment kind of demonstrates that. > In terms of overall welfare What is overall welfare ? If you are talking about society then we already know that free market competition leads to the best outcomes. If you are talking about welfare of specific group of people (at the expense…

> If you are talking about society then we already know that free market competition leads to the best outcomes.

It's easy to find lump sum transfers that would be welfare enhancing over the pareto optimal outcome decided by the market.

> There is only one union which will negotiate on your behalf whether you like it or not and will actively prevent you from selecting someone else to negotiate on your behalf.

Well yes, you are beholden to the results of the election - even if the side you voted for didn't win. That is what worker self-determination is all about.

> it is much easier for the employer to get their way by just bribing the union leaders

Then why don't employers bring in unions more often?

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