271–280 of 479 posts
Just a data point here, an acquaintance of mine gave himself lead poisoning by visiting the shooting range too often for target practice. I think he wears a breather when he goes now.
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Interesting, I had no idea (I thought only the fittings would have lead, but it's the hose material): https://toxicfreefuture.org/press-room/new-study-rates-best-...
Dear mother no why? Why does the Home Depot garden hoose have 6.8% led in it ... All these small environmental dangers add up. And they are so hard to keep track of. I would never suspect a water hoose to contain led. Let alone 6.8%.
The dangers really are hard to keep track of. It's too easy to blame the consumer (didn't you read the packaging for your new garden hose?). Now the threat is plastics, which requires a materials science degree to understand as a consumer.
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I fill my water distiller with hot tap water. Guaranteed to be safe. Yes, I'm talking about a machine that boils the water, collects the steam, and condenses it back to water. It removes absolutely everything.
Absolutely everything… that has a boiling point higher than water’s. It won’t do anything to remove alcohol, for instance. Or any other contamination that boils off before water does. Ofc you could discard the head and tail of your distillation operation…
Relatedly, the standard technique in alcohol distillation is to discard the head because it contains toxic methanol. https://youtu.be/a1IruS1bKN8?t=672
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What doesn't make sense?
the article says it's more poisonous and causes more IQ loss than previously thought.
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I use quarter turn ball valves everywhere and slam the crap out of them. If a pipe bursts from that, it needs to be fixed, and I’d rather it happen while I’m there slamming valves around than when I’m not home. But it has never happened.
Ah yes, the chaos monkey approach to plumbing. I buy it. The best time to have a leak is during or immediately after doing plumbing work. The worst time is when you are asleep, out of the house, or on vacation. Isn't it code nowadays to have water hammer arrestors that trap air and create a cushion?
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What are we going to do? Pass a law? To force the millions of voters paying hardly any property tax who bought their lead-loaded homes in 1983 for $40,000 in Los Angeles and San Francisco, now worth $1.1m, to you know, fix them? Then will we pay for the even greater rise in rents? I hate lead, pollution and my incredibly cheap landlord, but I feel like I have no choice in California.
> What are we going to do? Pass a law? Yes! It wouldn't burden existing homeowners because such laws almost always grandfather in existing structures. When they banned lead paint and asbestos, I don't think anyone immediately repainted their walls or replaced their asbestos drywall. It slowly phases out over a number of decades.
In Mass you have to de-lead for any tenant with children under 7 or so, and it's illegal to discriminate by choosing tenants without children. No grandfathering.
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You have to read the study to find out what it meant by IQ. People freely confuse IQ (a score on a test that's calling itself an IQ test) with IQ (a platonic ideal statistic people assume exists for the purpose of publishing research about it). This could be either.
No, IQ is just the test result; the theoretical phenomena understood to be underlying it are things like g and task-specific factors.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.7688 > We contacted investigators for all eight prospective lead cohorts that were initiated before 1995, and we were able to retrieve data sets and collaboration from seven. The participating sites were Boston (Bellinger et al. 1992); Cincinnati (Dietrich et al. 1993) and Cleveland, Ohio (Ernhart et al. 1989); Mexico City, Mexico (Schnaas et al. 2000); Port Pirie, Australia (Baghurst et al. 1992); Rochester, New York (Canfield et al. 2003); and Yugoslavia (Wasserman et al. 1997).
I checked two of the studies from 1989:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203...
> The test used was the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022848
> We measured blood lead concentrations in 172 children at 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months of age and administered the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale at the ages of 3 and 5 years.
So they didn't all take the same test[0]. This supports my claim, which is that people who believe IQ research also believe that all test results produce the same valid statistic called IQ as long as the test calls itself an IQ test.
I actually can't think of a time I've seen an online IQ arguer claim that any given test result isn't an accurate representation of an IQ. They certainly also think it about things like SAT scores and old national-IQ studies where they gave the tests in second/third languages or just made up the numbers.
[0] if it was the same test, isn't the norm process to convert from raw scores to normally distributed ones be different in different years? Not sure how that part is done.
I'd like to point out that, although it is illegal to put lead in water supply lines in the US, there is a loophole that allows it in hot water lines. As a result, for certain fittings, most big-box hardware stores only sell the leaded variants, and label them "hot water heater supply line" or something similar.
Why are there so many loopholes in every single US law? Everytime there’s a major health issue or anything extremely anti consumer it’s because of a loophole in the formulation of a US law. Are US lawmakers that bad? Or is it judges who interpret laws literally instead of using the intent?
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I'm reminded of an old SSC post[0]: > See, my terrible lecture on ADHD suggested several reasons for the increasing prevalence of the disease. Of these I remember two: the spiritual desert of modern adolescence, and insufficient iron in the diet. And I remember thinking "Man, I hope it’s the iron one, because that seems a lot easier to fix." The discovery that we can dramatically reduce mortality by the relatively st…
Wow. How does one develop an iron deficiency in America? Bread and breakfast cereals are fortified with it and it's in multivitamins, eggs, pasta, most meats, and even some chocolate. I get spinach and peas aren't for everyone, but how does one end up with a deficiency in iron when it's added to the trashiest of food? (We shit on it now, but maybe this is why the "food pyramid" was shaped so contrary to current sensi…
In general though, I wouldn't place the blame on plants, but on the low quality, highly processed diet the average person consumes.
I have ADHD, and I've noticed symptoms of low iron whenever I stray from my very low carb diet: restless legs, low energy, ADHD symptoms getting worse. Note that iron is a necessary component for the synthesis of dopamine. Given that I take amphetamine-based stimulants, which increase dopamine release as well as inhibiting reuptake, I might need a little more iron that usual.
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I had no idea it was unsafe to drink from green garden hoses until it was pointed out by an RV salesman trying to sell me a white hose for potable water-- in my 20s. I thought he was full of shit, but I was proven wrong. Hot water lines can't be the only loophole causing lead ingestion.
Interesting, I had no idea (I thought only the fittings would have lead, but it's the hose material): https://toxicfreefuture.org/press-room/new-study-rates-best-...
It can be either, depending on context. (Being pedantic here just so nobody comes away thinking it can only be one or the other.)
The guy who pointed it out to me was making a sales pitch for an RV, so the hose he was upselling was for potable water-- the fitting for it on the RV was presumably selected for potability as well. Connecting a white hose to the spigot on your house could mean you're passing dirty water through a safe hose.
To be real anal, with aquaculture you have to screen fittings for other metals too. Exposure to brass will kill pretty much everything in a saltwater tank.