Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning • Hacker News Board

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#111

Post by londons_explore » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #71

londons_explore wrote: post #57

In western nations, a big contributor to lead in blood is ceramic items.[1] The 'clear' coating on the outside of cups, mugs, teapots, etc. often contains lead, and slightly acidic drinks or water will cause it to leach out. That has a much bigger impact than leaded paint, because you typically don't lick your paint. Lead glaze is most often used in artisan, novelty or complex items, because the lead oxide acts as a…

It should be very illegal to bring such raw materials on the market.

Lead is so important in making ceramics, there is nobody proposing to ban it. Instead, the main proposal is to require ceramics to be tested after manufacture to ensure that the dose of lead leached into any given food or drink is sufficiently low.

The main way that is achieved is by firing the ceramics at higher temperatures and longer to ensure the lead is better chemically bound to the rest of the pottery and leaches slower.

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#112

Post by bluedino » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

jabl wrote: post #106

bluedino wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead also helps with valve seats lasting longer. Automakers switched to hardened valve seats in the 70's when lead was taken out of gas.

AFAIU, expensive (or read: less cost-sensitive) engines designed for operating at close to rated power for extended times, like airplane engines, have used hardened valve seats since the 1920'ies or so.

Likely - I can't remember if it's Ford or Chevrolet (or both) but their big-block engines used hardened seats from the start, only the small-blocks had to switch.

And some airplane engines still use leaded gas.

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#113

Post by throwaway0a5e » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

brokensegue wrote: post #72

onion2k wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jet fuel doesn't have lead in it. Avgas is 'low lead', and there's at one unleaded prop plane fuel available.

Santa Clara tried to ban leaded av gas and the rich pilots complained and got the FAA to step in

A bunch of land owners/developers and some subset of the government in Santa Clara wanted to kick out the airport so the land could be developed and to make the surrounding land more valuable. Killing all the GA traffic based out of there would do the trick. Banning the fuel would kick out GA. Don't pretend that it was some altruistic pursuit. They only went after the lead because it has a ton of existing ideological baggage they thought they could capitalize on. The FAA looked at the big picture and laughed at them.

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#114

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #45

jabl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost a non-topic in Europe since leaded gasoline was banned (I'm actually wondering why: no leaded paints in EU?) Leaded paints were certainly widely used as rustproofing primer on steel constructions, as a bedding compound, and as anti-fouling paint on boats. The traditional formula is a mixture of lead oxide and linseed oil, giving it a characteristic red color. Most of these uses are AFAIU nowadays banned…

That’s still much less serious than lead paint being used for the interiors of houses and apartments, which it was in the US until the 1970s. Was it in Europe?

[deleted]

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#115

Post by ArnoVW » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

I've recently bumped into the YouTube channel ChubbyEmu. Medical ER case analysis by a real doctor on real cases. Think Doctor House, but not over the top and with lots of really well explained medical knowledge.

He's got one on a lead poisoning case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHxEjINCAg

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#116

Post by carapace » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #24

I 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…

There used to be a whole stereotype around "lazy Southerners" that turned out to be a massive hookworm infestation!

> ...victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity. Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless. Victims developed grossly distended bellies and “angel wings”—emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by hunching. All gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale “fish-eye” stare.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...

> In 1899, American zoologist Charles Wardell Stiles identified progressive pernicious anemia seen in the southern United States as being caused by the hookworm A. duodenale. Testing in the 1900s revealed very heavy infestations in school-age children.

> On October 26, 1909 the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was organized as a result of a gift of US$1 million from John D. Rockefeller, Sr. The five-year program was a remarkable success and a great contribution to the United States' public health, instilling public education, medication, field work and modern government health departments in eleven southern states.[45] The hookworm exhibit was a prominent part of the 1910 Mississippi state fair.

> The commission found that an average of 40% of school-aged children were infected with hookworm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infection#Eradication...

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#117

Post by chaxor » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #109

cathedral2 wrote: post #35

There'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…

> seemingly more addressable market. Gadolinium will get you blank stares from a lot of people. Lead is well known. Look at the reception this article, which is basically just a summary of the state of affairs ghost written by an activist organization, got. To get people to care about you something that's well written, tugs at heartstrings and confirms biases (imagine a New Yorker article about DuPont dumping somethi…

I believe they're interested in Gadolinium, rather than Gallium.

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#118

Post by tombert » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #108

dTal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent cautionary tale against lazily attributing politically inconvenient data to testing bias (which remains fashionable). It may seem like an easy way out, but it also offers an excuse to simply ignore the problem, which perpetuates it.

Now instead of lazily explaining differences with "there must be some testing bias, black kids are just as smart as white kids", we're lazily explaining differences with "it must be systemic oppression, black kids are more oppressed than white kids".

Couldn't you argue the disproportionate number of black people being stuck in lead-filled houses is still an example of some sort of oppression? It's not like black people who were shopping for their houses said "Gee, I'd sure like my kids to have lead poisoning."

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#119

Post by austincheney » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

dfadsadsf wrote: post #86

tzs wrote: post #24

I 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.

Where can I read more about this?

I suspect the deviation would most largely result from the parameters of a given test itself. Redefining the test content, subject matter, test environments, conditions, and/or other factors may grow or shrink that gap. If that is so there is cause for research to determine why certain test factors are preferential and if removing such preferential factors does/does not result in higher quality student performance.

Re: Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

#120

Post by aaronblohowiak » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #108

dTal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent cautionary tale against lazily attributing politically inconvenient data to testing bias (which remains fashionable). It may seem like an easy way out, but it also offers an excuse to simply ignore the problem, which perpetuates it.

Now instead of lazily explaining differences with "there must be some testing bias, black kids are just as smart as white kids", we're lazily explaining differences with "it must be systemic oppression, black kids are more oppressed than white kids".

Living in lead-rich environments is an example of systemic oppression, iiuc. There is a lot of nuance lost in any generality but in this case I do not believe it is a misattribution as much as it is an incomplete descriptor