Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

futurism.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 276 posts

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

#241

Post by maxerickson »

outworlder wrote: post #194
nradov wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city of San Jose is forcing a local airport to close largely over lead concerns. However research has shown that children living near the airport don't actually have higher blood lead levels. https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-airport-lead-levels-ar... Although the absolute risk is probably small the aviation industry should have moved faster on this issue. Airplanes last longer than cars but they can't expect…

> At some point airplane owners need to be forced to upgrade their engines, or quit flying. It's not about the owners, at all . Airplanes already have a limit on how many hours their engines have, after that it needs to be overhauled or replaced. It's just that, for many planes, there aren't really any options available, as other engines are not certified for their planes. Even for the planes that _are_ certified and…

Rec fuel is prevalent, so I expect there is some demand-supply dynamics going on inside airport fences.

(Rec fuel is a name used in Michigan at least for ethanol free gasoline intended for use in snowmobiles and boats and such)

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

#242

Post by fighterpilot »

nate_meurer wrote: post #216
sayhar wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That snopes article is one of the worst ones I've ever read. Snopes does some good work, but they also do some really terrible work, and this is a good example. The writer, Kim LaCapria, is clearly way out of her depth on technical topics. Notice that the article doesn't provide one single piece of evidence of its own. Kim offers only a contorted narrative about FDA regulations and manufacturer denials, and complains…

If I want to test things in my household should I even bother with XRF testing or do you think LeadCheck is sufficient?

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

#243

Post by maxerickson »

My dad was a civil engineer on the clean water side of public health. In the late 1970s, when my parents moved into the house I grew up in, he replaced the supply line to the street and most of the plumbing. We never talked to him about it, but lead seems like a good guess (a side benefit, the water pressure from a slightly larger meter and clean pipes is a wonderful thing).

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

#244

Post by nvarsj »

jeffbee wrote: post #202
caeril wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all wire meant to be sold in the EU must be ROHS complaint Just an aside, this is a personal gripe. I grew up on lead solder, making Heathkit projects with my dad. I tried re-engaging with the electronics hobby as an adult, decades later, in a world filled with ROHS solder, and I have to say it is a huge pain in the ass to work with. Adhesion, balling issues, etc, regardless of core type, flux, etc, even on nice co…

Nothing about RoHS is preventing you from poisoning yourself and your family in the privacy of your home. Leaded solder is still widely available. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/kester-solder/24-... Here's half a kilo of lead in a solid metal bar, if you want to just poison a whole city or small country: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/kester-solder/44-...

You can't get lead poisoning from using lead solder. The melting point is not high enough to turn the lead into a gas. In fact, lead free solders are generally more harmful - due to higher melting points they tend to produce a lot more flux fumes. ROHS solder was introduced so when you junk your mass produced electrical appliance, you're not adding more lead to the environment. For hobbyists it makes no sense.

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

#245

Post by nate_meurer »

fighterpilot wrote: post #242
nate_meurer wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That snopes article is one of the worst ones I've ever read. Snopes does some good work, but they also do some really terrible work, and this is a good example. The writer, Kim LaCapria, is clearly way out of her depth on technical topics. Notice that the article doesn't provide one single piece of evidence of its own. Kim offers only a contorted narrative about FDA regulations and manufacturer denials, and complains…

If I want to test things in my household should I even bother with XRF testing or do you think LeadCheck is sufficient?

I rely almost entirely on the swabs for testing things around the house, because they're what I have, and they tell you whether lead is actually transferable from a surface, versus being merely present in the material.

But if I had an XRF tester I would use it all the time. The swabs are relatively slow, especially the way I use them, and they don't work at all for some things. For example, a swab won't tell you if there's lead paint under a layer of safe paint. This is important because that lead paint is just as much of a hazard when it chips or when you do any remodelling. You can scrape away paint a layer at a time to swab it, but you'll never get a whole house tested this way, whereas an XRF could do it in an hour or two.

Every so often I gather up some particular things and take them to the tri-county health department here in south Denver for XRF testing. The last batch I took included some old red-painted hand tools, a chip of red paint from a yard decoration, a set of chinese-made pastel crayons that my kids got for christmas, and a bag of dust I collected from the HVAC in our house. These things aren't testable with swabs; the dust isn't swabable, and the red tools and pastels colored the swab regardless of lead content.

The people there are friendly and eager to help. I made an appointment, and the lady actually drove in for it from a different department. She tested all my stuff in about 15 minutes, and everything came back negative except for one of the red tools. Even the chinese-made pastels were completely clean, which surprised me.

Fun bonus: she told me a story about how the county health department updated their standard household lead testing protocol twelve years ago after some guy brought in a bunch of dishes that tested shockingly high. Guess who that guy was? :)

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

#247

Post by CountDrewku »

spiderice wrote: post #89
CountDrewku wrote: post #70

There's a study tying drop in crime rates correlate with end of leaded gasoline usage.

The reason for the correlation being what?

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/health-effects.htm

Take your pick. If exposed during childhood it results in essentially mental retardation and impulse issues. The thought is this led to more issues with crime.

This article discusses the study-

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evide...

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

#248

Post by nate_meurer »

comboy wrote: post #240
nate_meurer wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're overthinking this a bit. Kids chew on and swallow all kinds of weird shit. I've seen young kids chew the paint off whole sets of pencils. Babies put literally everything they can in their mouth. I've watched children lick window sills for fucks sake. If there's lead glaze on the eating surface of a plate or bowl, and if you know it's mobile, as it was on my dishes, then it's a safe assumption th…

I have kids, and I also definitely agree that it's better if lead is not in there at all. The whole lead in gasoline story is ridiculous and traumatizing. I'm just not sold on the idea of testing/researching products and getting rid of them based on what I've learned these last 10 minutes. It seems to me that it would be multiple orders of magnitude more important to test your vegetables if you are a lead-minimizer?…

Ok, that's reasonable, and I don't have any good answers. I just get rid of things and call it good, but the food is a big question, and it's not fair to the kids to completely forbid playgrounds.

Lead dust in houses is a well studied hazard. The folks at the county department tell me the things they address first are lead paint (interior and exterior house paint and soil around the house), lead in the tap water, and vinyl mini-blinds. Abating those sources almost always drops BLL in the kids. If that isn't enough, they go after toys and dishes. If I remember right, testing of food is not yet in their protocol.

For me the decision to get rid of the dishes was trivially simple. I'd be glad to find out that the food we ate off those dishes miraculously failed to pick up any of the lead that so easily rubbed off on my swabs. I don't think that's likely.

Same with the kids toys and art supplies. Sure, I can tell little kids not to lick their arylics, but why wouldn't I also make sure the yellows are cadmium-free, just in case they forget and eat a sandwich with paint on their fingers?

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

#249

Post by ramblenode »

comboy wrote: post #232
nate_meurer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You don't give your kids toys which fall apart and your dish is not losing 1% of its mass with your every meal. So I'm asking how much is it losing? How many grams of your dish may stay on your food? From a quick look carrot has like 0.1mg/kg with up to 10mg/kg of lead [1][2]. We just eat it and give it to babies so they're healthy. So how much mass does a toy or a dish lose and how much of it ends up in somebody's m…

The dish lead is concentrated in the glaze on the surface, not throughout the mass of the dish. That should change your calculations...

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

#250

Post by nate_meurer »

whimsicalism wrote: post #236
nate_meurer wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the agenda for your next shareholder meeting. You're welcome :)

Most shareholder elections don't have a yes/no vote on the CEO - and I work for a wholly owned subsidiary, so have no say in that either.

You're always free to invest directly in your parent company. Shareholders hold tremendous power over company management, and that power increases the more you invest in the company. This gives large or organized shareholders at least as much democratic power as union members have over their entrenched leaders. Your question made it seem as though you didn't understand that.
Post reply on HN