161–170 of 231 posts
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I still do this. Is that a problem? Tungsten weights break easily and cost much more while having less SKU available
That's a strange question given the thread. You are either an AI that doesn't get the context or you have already chewed too much on them. In case it's not the first: having lead in your mouth contributes to lead poisoning.
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In my state blood lead testing is mandatory at two different ages. I think blood lead surveillance is widespread. Treatment is simple.
Great to hear. Do you know what the usual treatment is? I’m guessing DMSA and/or ETDA but curious if other approaches are commonly used.
Yes they also treat for the high lead levels in the body, but that will not do much good by itself if the kid goes home to the same environment.
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Youtube has many extremly scary videos showing battery recycling operations, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvPjOKkPyE
Yeah, this is truly horrifying. Impressive and horrifying.
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…
> One teacher decided to look deeper to see if there could be some other factor that could explain the difference.
A "several point difference" sounds like an unusually narrow gap - depressed white scores, maybe? On an unbiased test with no environmental problems, you'd expect to see a gap of around 15 IQ points.
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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.
I mean in an interview Steven Pinker himself said there’s some things that we may not want to know, because if the parameter is wholly outside of human control it’d just contribute to racism and serve no useful purpose. Also even if a study found parameters like that, it would never be published as the scientists career would absolutely be ruined.
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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.
Blaming testing bias is a great way to gain support from disadvantaged minorities without having to actually do any meaningful work. Conveniently, it allows allows the elite to exclude the educated bourgeoisie from their elite institutions, instead replacing them with underqualified candidates who pose no real threat to the power hierarchy.
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Does systemic oppression not include economic relegation or societal indifference to being raised in lead-contaminated homes?
Wealth or lack therof is one of the primary components of systemic oppression...
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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
The problem with using lead-rich environment as an example of systemic oppression, and the reason why activists are taking very little about lead these days, is that unlike “systemic oppression”, lead exposure is something very concrete, and it can be tested and studied. We did a lot of studies, in fact, on this particular issue, and the results are pretty clear: differences in lead exposure explain very little fract…
Perhaps lead levels contribute only a small amount. But then also, micro-aggressions have a tiny affect. Testing bias might also be very small. Maybe less income also leads to being less likely to get glasses when you need them. Perhaps food deserts in minority communities leads to poor nutrition and poorer outcomes, but only a negligible amount. Then there are poorer, urban neighborhoods that might be loud at night causing children to not get quite enough sleep.
And sure, you could blame a lot of this just on poverty in general, but then of course, you have to acknowledge our racist history that lead to so much less wealth in minority families.
It goes on and on and pretty soon you have death by a thousand cuts and a phenomenon that is far too complex to explain in anything less than an entire encyclopedia so you sum it up with "systemic racism".
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…
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…
What is the vector for lead exposure from paint? Do we think they are all eating it, or that their parents/landlords are constantly sanding it for some reason and not simply painting over it? edit: Why am I being downvoted?