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

today.duke.edu

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

#351

Post by krrrh »

One of the most heartbreaking things I ever learned about was the high levels of lead in Mexican candy. This is apparently mostly due to the inks used in the packaging.

https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.2754/

The following paper also pegs pottery as an issue. Just devastating.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221499961...

> Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for lead-induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4 years.

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

#352

Post by treeman79 »

trophycase wrote: post #349
raegis wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It one of the most impactful studies on how lead affects intellectual development, the researcher (who is white) restricted the study to white people only because he assumed (correctly) his results would be ignored if he included African Americans who are disproportionately affected by lead poisoning.

How can you assume correctly if you aren't even testing that assumption?

It’s politically toxic to try and commission a study on the intelligence of one race/gender versus another.

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

#353

Post by throwyawayyyy »

webkike wrote: 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

Seems a reasonable assumption that lowering IQ is a decent proxy for other damage lead does to the brain, right? It would be weird if it just damaged the bits associated with doing well on IQ tests, and left the rest alone.

E.g. it happens that IQ is something we measure, and EQ much less so. That lead leads to measurable reductions in IQ is strong evidence that it damages EQ too. (As its association with crime would suggest.)

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

#354

Post by miketery »

nostromo wrote: post #161
miketery wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for sugar. We know the dangers it poses, we are also seeing how much it increases risk of death due to covid. I don't think we should be surpsied, as much as pushing to regulate this garbage. As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" a…

You can’t ban everything… Marijuanna and sugar and a million other potential vices like alcohol and video games should be available. But we should teach kids discipline, critical thinking, and impulse control - rather than playing whack-a-mole with every vice that comes along.

Process is much easier to change then changing people. Its why the government deducts taxes from you, instead of you paying at the end of the year (both because you'd spend it all, and you'd be pissed doing a bulk sum payment).

Likewise we have levers, should we be selling soda / pop with outrageous amounts of sugar in them without some sort of healthcare tax? I don't mind sugar being available, but right now its subsidized by our health care fees. My insurance is more expensive because of diabetes, heart disease, etc.

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

#356

Post by breakyerself »

tyjen wrote: post #309
breakyerself wrote: post #248

Black children had an adjusted 0.73 to 1.41 µg/dL more blood Pb (p https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084658/

Learned about this phenomenon when considering buying a home built prior to 1978. The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC hom…

Yes because the reason they they are prodominantly represented in those neighborhoods just because they were redlined there as a matter of public policy for decades

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

#357

Post by ivan888 »

dionidium wrote: post #294
veltas wrote: post #6

Didn't we have a previous study debunking this research on statistical grounds?

What has never made sense to me is that the IQ effects aren't equally visible across income/class groups, but we know there are millions of wealthy people living in old housing in Boston and NYC and Providence and so on. Lead levels in those houses must be just as high, right? But those kids aren't experiencing the same IQ effects. Surely this suggests that something else is a bigger factor?

I imagine frequency and budget of renovations in older housing influences the degree of lead exposure from paint. Poorer neighborhoods may have housing units with largely original (or old enough to contain lead) paint, whereas richer neighborhoods would have a larger proportion of high quality renovations which would eliminate some of the lead paint

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

#359

Post by Ansil849 »

tyjen wrote: post #309
breakyerself wrote: post #248

Black children had an adjusted 0.73 to 1.41 µg/dL more blood Pb (p https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084658/

Learned about this phenomenon when considering buying a home built prior to 1978. The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC hom…

> because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.

I have genuine, actual trouble maintaining faith in humanity when I hear about people like this existing. It just makes me incredibly depressed and bummed out about life.

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

#360

Post by jodrellblank »

frazbin wrote: post #129

[flagged]

Whataboutism is not every time someone says “what about X”. It’s when you are asked a question and you dodge it by saying “What about X”. e.g.

“Lead is bad for health”, “sugar is bad for health”, “marijuana is bad for health”. Not whataboutism.

“Mr Senator what’s with your taxpayer funded holiday?”, “What about YOUR broken election promises?”. Whataboutism.

> “Whataboutism or whataboutery is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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