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Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

today.duke.edu

141–150 of 508 posts

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#141
Lead exposure isn't over by a long-shot.

Anywhere there is an airport with prop aircraft there is leaded fuel/exhaust spew for miles around it.

Can't believe we just don't have the care to protect people, write it off as their problem and then let the poor/ignorant suffer in "pollution zones"

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#142

I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. I…

Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on h…

This much is clear. Scheduling MJ is extremely unwise. But I would also extend this to everything in the psychedelic / hallucinogenic category. They do no psychological harm and an increasing body of evidence indicates that they, in all likelihood, do a significant amount of mental good for responsible users.

An acute example of this is a psychedelic called “DMT”. This psychedelic is nearly everywhere in nature, including our own brains. When inhaled, it lasts less than 10 minutes, give or take. After that 10 minutes, a user is completely sober without any indication that they were not, and no physiological side effects. But during that 10 minutes? It is an acute spiritual and existential experience, possibly the most acute non-normal experience possible for a human being. A true exploration of altered states, and possible contact with a different form of life unbound from our reality.

And for some reason, this substance is scheduled. It does no harm to a user, to third parties, nor to society, is short lived, and offers true spiritual experience but it’s scheduled. The scheduling as a whole is archaic, oppressive, and if nothing else, misguided.

This is also in top of the fact that it discourages addicts from seeking real treatment due to fear of being criminalized.

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on h…

> This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the anti-war and racial justice movement. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple commissions around the world had concluded that pot was largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his ow…

The anti-cannabis groups started in the 1930's with Hearst and loads of yellow journalism

quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism... :

-----------------

Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)

-----------------

That tells me all I need to know about this whole situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in the same light in which they were made?

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#144
post #12

Perhaps past lead usage in fuels will indirectly lead to collapse of the civilisation: Lead is known to decrease empathy and increase crime. I don’t want to generalise an entire generation but boomer generation was heavily poisoned by lead and perhaps this made them more selfish and less emphatic. Maybe this is the primary cause of many current problems? I wonder if humans were supposed to be more emphatic in past be…

FWIW the article is claiming Peak Lead would be Gen X.

Yes- older gen x and the youngest boomers.

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on h…

> This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the anti-war and racial justice movement. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple commissions around the world had concluded that pot was largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his ow…

Furthermore, this attitude persisted well into the Reagan & Bush administrations, with the "war on drugs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance#Narcotics

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#147
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta-Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what studies you are…

The study in the linked article found that lead reduced the IQ of exposed Americans 3-6 IQ points. A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had a 6-8 point decline, even if they had given up cannabis : https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a wider range of usage types: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici..…

That's not actually what the study found.

  Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset cannabis users*.
They did not find a 6-8 point decline for folks who gave up cannabis if they started later in life. In fact they found no decline in IQ whatsoever for folks who started later in life - both when using it and after stopping.

   In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing.
> There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive.

... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in youth.

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#148
Its one of the really bad part about many regions in Africa at the moment dealing with e-waste. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/10/29/toxic-charge-h...

Besides people melting lead batteries everywhere for recycling, much of the cooking dishes are made from recycled aluminum auto parts. Often laced with lead.

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#149
post #34

IQ doesn’t measure intelligence so for all we know this just shows that IQ tests measure how little lead you’ve been exposed to

Adding this to the list of things IQ tests accurately predict: 1) school performance 2) job performance 3) income 4) crime rate 5) health and mortality 6) quantity of lead exposed to 7) NOT intelligence

>3) income

Hm, I know some obvious contradictions. Just saying.. not interested in discussing this.

Re: Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

#150
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An adult can choose to eat it or not (I'm ignoring the addictive nature of concentrated sugar), but our public health establishment has been foolishly stupid (combined with industry marketing) at making people think that fruit juice is natural or healthy. It's about as natural as cocaine is. Sure, it comes from a plant, but it gets refined and concentrated into levels that are unheard of in nature and toxic to the bo…

Gatorade ? Gatorade can't be bad. It has electrolytes!

Plants crave it!
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