[deleted]
Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
81–90 of 231 posts
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our Victorian property still has a (shared) lead supply pipe. I've been repeatedly told it's not an issue due to (presumed) calcification on the inside of the pipe. All the interior pipework is copper. Our water was tested years ago by the waterboard and came back way below the legal limit. Yet still... I'm suspicious. Can anyone point me at resources to help prove it's unsafe?
Look at what happened in flint Michigan. Lead pipes were calcified, but then the water bureau stopped adding an agent to reduce the natural ph of the river water. This caused the calcification to get stripped and for lead to start leaching into the water. All it takes is a change in ph of your water supply to put you at risk.
Similar fiasco when EPA did a showcase project converting DC water supply away from chlorine treatment. Hugely embarrassing and expensive "fix" for a non-problem, that created a much worse problem.
(ETA: It also caused lead to be released- non-lead pipes had actually leached lead from the water over many years, acting as a filter. The lead was chemically bound to both lead and non-lead pipes. Changing the chemistry caused the process to reverse and dump all that lead back into the water at much higher concentrations than would occur just using a 100% lead pipe system.)
And lead paint is similar. In-situ it's pretty harmless. It's the removal that's dangerous and is more likely to poison.
This is why people arguing for "do-something!" actions using "What harm could it do?" reasoning should always be fought until safety is confirmed experimentally the field.
"What harm could it do?" should always be a red flag for "don't know what you don't know" ignorance, and responded to as if it's a real, non-rhetorical question.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is VERY expensive problem to fix. Cleaning environment, replacing old pipes... Other issues like smoking can be milked on taxes. EU went quite far, even banning lead from solder.
For those interested in the EU regulation on this, a couple of starting points are: REACH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Auth... RoHS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst... IMHO REACH didn't go far enough, it should be up to the maker of a chemical to prove that it's safe before it's sold and used.
How exactly would someone prove something is safe? Especially on something that could have multi-decade cycle times?
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm actually wondering why: no leaded paints in EU? The dangers of lead paint have been known for over 100 years. France banned it in 1909. The League of Nations adopted a treaty on it in 1922. The US declined to join the treaty due to industry lobbying and didn't get around to banning it until 1978. By declining to ban it the US cost itself $Ts when accounting for the developmental delays, lost IQ points, health p…
You have a source because your statement seems quite wrong. Google tells me lead paint wasn’t banned in the UK until the 1990’s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_Unit... France was 1948, but lots of lead poisoned children anyways since the paint is still on buildings people live in. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918871-200-lead-pai...
"To protect the health of painters, France had passed in 1909 a law banning the use of paints containing lead for the painting of the interior and exterior of all buildings."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint
"The League of Nations banned white-lead interior paint in 1922 (you know an environmental regulation is old if it was issued by the League of Nations), but the U.S. declined to implement the ban."
https://environmentlawhistory.blogspot.com/2016/01/lead-regu...
I made no claims about the UK.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#85I knew about lead poisoning for a while, but mostly in US context. It's almost a non-topic in Europe since leaded gasoline was banned (I'm actually wondering why: no leaded paints in EU?) If these numbers are true, why this is not on first pages of all media all the time? Crazy. I wonder how reliable are these numbers.
Leaded fuel is still in use in aviation. Not gonna lie, it sits poorly with me that a hobby for rich people can rain toxic chemicals on people below with little to no restrictions.
> Not gonna lie,
Do you normally?
> a hobby for rich peopl
Most flying is neither a hobby nor done by rich people.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#86I can't give a cite for the following I read it in either a newspaper or magazine probably 30+ years ago. There was a school district in a small town that for the first time gave IQ tests to all of the children in some younger age group, I think around 7 or 8. The results showed a several point difference between the white kids and the Black kids. The district wrote this off as due to cultural bias in the tests. One…
While it's uplifting story and I can easily believe that higher lead exposure for Black kids over white kids led to lower IQ results in tests in that specific case, there are no school districts in US with no gap between white and Black students. So far there has not been identified single parameter that explains White/Black gap and not for the lack of trying.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#87There's a new drug emerging from Berkeley and a company spawned from there called HOPO [1]. The drug is a chelator that has a special affinity for heavy metals in the lanthanide group, which happen to be some of the more toxic metals. This includes gadolinium, which is found in MRI contrast agents, and has been known to cause many-year retention in the bones and skull [2] from just a single dose. "The chelating agent…
Gadolinium seems like one of those things that won't even be allowed in most circumstances in a few more years. It has been used for decades and conventional wisdom was, if your kidneys are fine it all leaves the body in 24 hours. Then just a few years ago we learn this is false and that deposits can be found years later in the brain.
The effect may be highly lagged or small, but have to believe it isn't healthy.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#88Every time I hear "lead poisoning" mentioned, I have flashbacks to myself as a child playing with my Dad's lead fishing weights like an idiot.
And of course one could bite them onto the string. I did it quite a few times.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leaded fuel is still in use in aviation. Not gonna lie, it sits poorly with me that a hobby for rich people can rain toxic chemicals on people below with little to no restrictions.
Jet fuel doesn't have lead in it. Avgas is 'low lead', and there's at one unleaded prop plane fuel available.
It's 'low lead' compared to the previous 100 octane avgas it replaced, not in some absolute or objective sense. It contains more lead than automotive gasoline back when autogas still contained lead.
While it's nice there's finally some progress made in unleaded high octane avgas (G100UL), from a public health perspective it's not a huge issue compared to many other sources of lead in the environment.
Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leaded fuel is still in use in aviation. Not gonna lie, it sits poorly with me that a hobby for rich people can rain toxic chemicals on people below with little to no restrictions.
> Not gonna lie, Do you normally? > a hobby for rich peopl Most flying is neither a hobby nor done by rich people.
Most flying is done in airliners (at least in passenger-miles), whose engines don't benefit from any lead.
On the other hand, smaller, piston-engine aircrafts are overwhelmingly a hobby for relatively wealthy people, where leaded avgas is commonplace.
This is just anecdotal, but in the aerodrome near where I live, I'd be surprised if less than 90% of the flights are leisure flights.