Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

today.duke.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 508 posts

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

#481

Post by autoexec »

alar44 wrote: post #424
sizzle wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it absorbed through skin pores when we put on sunscreen??

No, and there is no reason to believe it's toxic if you read the Wikipedia article.

> In 2021, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ruled that as a consequence of new understandings of nanoparticles, titanium dioxide could "no longer be considered safe as a food additive",

Taken at face value that quote seems like reason enough to at least suspect that there's a possible problem. It also says that by the time they did that France had already banned it.

The fact that a bunch of people evaluated evidence that gave them significant concern doesn't prove that they're right, but it is some reason to believe it's toxic... It's not a lot very strong thing to base that belief on, but it's something. Reading that alone I would try to avoid the stuff until I got the chance to look into what all that evidence was.

That's assuming the article can be taken at face value. This is wikipedia after all. I did notice that there was a prominent statement right at the top of the "Health and Safety" section which says it "is regarded as "completely nontoxic". Maybe that is true, but the citation points to a source from 2006 while the EU decided to ban it 15 years later after "new understandings of nanoparticles".

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

#482

Post by autoexec »

alar44 wrote: post #479
autoexec wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course it's considered acceptable, lead doesn't just dissolve when you touch it and it's not like the paint is 100% lead. The FDA didn't care about lead when it was being spooned directly to infant's mouths in the form of their baby food. The standards aren't what they are because of the amount of risk to people's health, or they would never have allowed it. I wouldn't assume something was safe just because it m…

We didn't have the data yet, then we learned more over time. The standards are what they are because of what we learned. You don't trust the FDA to think that everything is safe unless they say so or they're wrong, you trust them to tell you they know that something is definitely bad. There's a huge difference there.

According to the congressional report that came out last year the FDA knew about the dangers of lead. One baby food company, Hain (HappyBABY), even sent the FDA a presentation telling them that the commercial process of preparing finished baby foods increases their levels of toxic heavy metals, and the FDA still did nothing to limit how much.

The report found that the FDA's inaction and approach "appears designed to be protective of baby food manufacturers." if that's true, then you couldn't really trust them to tell you they know that something is definitely bad

Link: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....

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

#483

Post by watwut »

bluedino wrote: post #344
watwut wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was not huge rise in crime in general. There were more murders during lockdowns in US, which is in fact to be expected since people were forced to be with close relatives - and most murders are by close people.

Murders have been on the rise since 2014 or so

No. They went up in 2014 and 2015. They went down in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

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

#484

Post by hollerith »

pessimizer wrote: post #306
rayiner wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so explain all the other countries with harsh drug laws that don’t have Nixon or minorities to oppress? Japan, Singapore, Sweden, etc.

You could take a swing at it and see how it goes. The person you're replying to has said what they believe the cause is. You're free to propose other ones for other countries. My explanation would be that the US drug war was aggressively international.

>My explanation would be that the US drug war was aggressively international.

Ha! Ever tried to get a Swede to do something he or she doesn't already want to do?

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

#485

Post by ch4s3 »

ElephantsMyAnus wrote: post #476
ch4s3 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole discussion is about the post war period. But if you look back further, homicide rates where higher. Again I’m not aware of any scholar, police organization, or or anyone really who disputes this. What even are you arguing here?

I'm arguing here that your views are fuelled by wishful thinking, if not nonsense. You can't turn the world into utopia by sticking to a moral panic triggered by the civil rights movement.

There's no utopian thinking here, just a recounting of statistics. Crime is a lot lower now in the US an Europe than it was for most of the post war period. In so far as we have data, there's a lot less murder now than at any time for which we have records.

Again these are basic facts. I'm not drawing any conclusions here really.

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

#486

Post by ElephantsMyAnus »

ch4s3 wrote: post #485
ElephantsMyAnus wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm arguing here that your views are fuelled by wishful thinking, if not nonsense. You can't turn the world into utopia by sticking to a moral panic triggered by the civil rights movement.

There's no utopian thinking here, just a recounting of statistics. Crime is a lot lower now in the US an Europe than it was for most of the post war period. In so far as we have data, there's a lot less murder now than at any time for which we have records. Again these are basic facts. I'm not drawing any conclusions here really.

But why do you need to cherry pick the data, if it's so clear cut?

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/crime_statistic.htm...

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

#487

Post by thehappypm »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #467
thehappypm wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating chunks of intact wall is unlikely, but surfaces like window sills are very risky because they constantly flake. That’s the nuance of lead mitigation. You can be completely compliant and safe for children with some lead paint on intact walls. Any tenant can force their landlord to remove lead in those high risk areas (at landlords expense!) if there’s a young child but few renters know about this option.

Not true. Abatement is required. That is not the same as removal. Lead blocker paint or otherwise taking the surface out of contact is usual solution.

I don’t see what was untrue. Abatement still leaves lead paint on the walls. It’s a misconception that lead compliance means “no lead in house”.

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

#488

Post by JaimeThompson »

kortilla wrote: post #458
JaimeThompson wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>t seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a better future. These are not the same.

You were the one who mentioned “paid better”. Don’t shift the goal posts.

>Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more hope for the future

There isn't a period after better.

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

#489

Post by dot1x »

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?

That's because there's this quite "sticky" situation of not every human being being the same. Nobody likes to talk about it and you get shunned or imprisoned for even thinking about it, but the world has actually groups of people with varying levels of intelligence.

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

#490

Post by Spooky23 »

ghaff wrote: post #426
Spooky23 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is similar to the asbestos mania. Lead paint is a problem for young children mostly when it peels and gets ingested, or pulverizes and ends up in the air. Because the strategy is elimination, lead remediation is a huge expense and has driven landlord behavior to embrace incredulous ignorance. There’s actually an incentive to not maintain property in some cases - remediation may exceed the value of the prope…

I live in an 1820s farmhouse and had some new windows put in a while back. Basically the installers were “You have lead and we’re going to charge a bit more for the necessary procedures” and everyone was fine with that. It’s a matter if not having a bunch of flaking paint. If that isn’t a reasonable answer, even if there isn’t flaking paint, the answer is basically don’t live in an old place if you can avoid it.

That's one of the upsides of country living.

In my city, if I pull a permit for any type of work, it triggers a bunch of nonsense including licensed remediation, etc. Depending on the inspector and the contractor, that could be a big deal.

Post reply on HN