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

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

#171

Post by trockbort »

User23 wrote: post #67
softwarebeware wrote: post #10

It makes me angry to think of how wreckless the generations before millenials were. Lead's risks and damages were well-known long before 1996. And they still didn't ban it until then.

So is fluoride’s neurotoxicity[1], especially for developing brains, and we still insist on using it, to just give one example. We’re no less reckless than prior generations and our children will be just as baffled looking back at us as we are now. Yes I’m aware that idiots are also fixated on fluoridation. That doesn’t make the science wrong though. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/ Neurotoxi…

Fun fact: America fluoridates its water supply because notorious propagandist Edward Bernays convinced them to, for money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_... .

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

#172

Post by coding123 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #90
alex_sf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can do both.

Can we? Everything I understand about the public tells me otherwise.

It does seem weird to me that about 5-10% of a grocery store is bottles of alcohol.

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

#173

Post by dylan604 »

survirtual wrote: post #142
WhompingWindows wrote: post #103

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 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, incl…

> It does no harm to a user, to third parties, nor to society,

Except it opens doors in people's minds which allows them to think differently for themselves. This results in them behaving less like sheeple. Why would that ever be scary for society?

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

#174

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

JPKab wrote: post #75
nynx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar is at least a substance that one can choose not to eat. Lead poisoning and pollution aren’t choices.

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…

> public health establishment has been foolishly stupid (combined with industry marketing) at making people think that fruit juice is natural or healthy.

Can you cite specific examples of the public health establishment pushing juice as healthy? I got a minor in nutrition over a decade ago and back then, public health officials were very quick to call out the juice industry for its predatory tactics on kids and false equivalencies. This doesn't match my experience in university at all.

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

#175

Post by mrits »

antattack wrote: post #160
deutschew wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs. In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone after cessation. I don't think it It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking marijuana, the risk is big but I…

Smoking (anything) is bad for your lungs, throat too.

Not a huge problem when we die from diabetes or heart disease first.

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

#176

Post by lern_too_spel »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #157
lern_too_spel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics has a term for this: negative externalities. A buys a snowblower from B, gaining 4 health for not shoveling and reducing everybody's health by 3 from pollution. B buys a leaf blower from C, gaining 4 health from not raking and reducing everybody's health by 3 from pollution. C buys a lawnmower from A, gaining 4 health from not scything and reducing everybody's health by 3. Each seller gets 4 health from the…

That is an incredibly naive way of looking at it. The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine" On anything but the shortest timeline things like like wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the societal level. If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't smaller than the benefits of the progress then the progress wouldn't happen because mo…

Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative externalities and other market failures don't exist, that the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples abound for those who do not follow a religion that forbids them from noticing.

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

#177

Post by goodpoint »

sonicggg wrote: post #115
JaimeThompson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more hope for the future then less would use such things to escape from reality.

Of coursr, all the wealthy and successful people absolutely do not partake in recreational drugs.

You missed "had more hope for the future"

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

#178

Post by trockbort »

selimthegrim wrote: post #165
User23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is fluoride’s neurotoxicity[1], especially for developing brains, and we still insist on using it, to just give one example. We’re no less reckless than prior generations and our children will be just as baffled looking back at us as we are now. Yes I’m aware that idiots are also fixated on fluoridation. That doesn’t make the science wrong though. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/ Neurotoxi…

Do you have other citations? How is this different from fluoridated toothpaste or topical application at the dentist?

The fortification properties afforded by fluoride are entirely topical, meaning that fluoride-containing toothpaste can be considered beneficial. You use it and then spit it out. Drinking fluoridated water can hardly be considered helpful. Most of the fluoride content of water goes directly into the stomach where its effects are strictly not studied, and if you know anything about the fluoride ion, the effects are most likely detrimental, and possibly horrendous.

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

#179

Post by dr_dshiv »

BobbyJo wrote: post #120
legitster wrote: post #61

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…

>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas, water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all had to ingest it. That's not so much the case with narcotics. I wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ…

MJ definitely increases aspects of my intelligence.

Said no one ever about lead.

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

#180

Post by version_five »

Scalestein wrote: post #110
woodruffw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of this in the abstract, but I think it's worth noting that "regular use" in academic studies of marijuana usually entails dosing lab animals with quantities that a human being couldn't physically consume, or surveying the (much smaller) population of people with psychological addictions to marijuana. OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of "normal" marijuana has become and ho…

I agree 100% with the potency concerns. Many of the studies showing negative impact were using standards like "10 joints a day" which was easy to dismiss as that was an unreasonable amount of weed for most people. Now with wax, tinctures and 20%+ THC strains becoming the normal it seems really easy for many people to be hitting those previously unrealistic dosages.

I'm curious, because I have not heard of wax or tinctures, do you think those are things that more people will use, vs people who would have used some hard drugs anyway?

What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users, now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug of abuse?

Just because these things exist, I don't think it automatically follows that they will get used by most people, or even more people than would have found some other destructive thing to do in their absence

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