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Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

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Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#301
Only loosely related, but are there any affordable non-invasive tests for past lead exposure?

I have a cluster of symptoms that are consistent with lead exposure[1], along with a lot of past activities involving lead (stained glass, old-school electric cars, soldering with lead-based solder, stripping lead-based paint), but my current blood lead levels are normal.

My neurological symptoms also flared up when I was supplementing with kind of a lot of Calcium and Vitamin D.

[1]mostly high blood pressure, somewhat high cholesterol (despite having normal BMI, sleeping reasonably well, exercising regularly) and demyelinating lesions visible on MRI (but no oligoclonal bands, negative AQP4).

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#302
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s another loophole: “lead free” means that the wetted surface is no more than 0.25% lead (by mass, I think). As far as I know, lead has nice properties as an element added to brass alloys. Which is not an excuse for using it, IMO. (Why is any of this still a thing? Stainless steel is cheaper than copper these days, and it’s a great material as long as you aren’t trying to screw one piece of stainless steel into…

I recently fell in love with copper pipes. So many advantages, so easy to work with. Quick and nearly fool-proof. I tried introducing some stainless fixtures and did not have a good time with it. I'm not a pro by any means but I do all of my own plumbing and gas work in my house. Haven't had one issue out of iron gas pipe or copper water lines. I was actually planning a pex install/replacement, and I have worked with…

People often go to Pex because it's way cheaper than copper. I use copper because the rest of my house supply is copper, soldering pipe is a skill that I have and enjoy using, there's a slight anti-microbial action from copper, and I trust it to last longer than I have years left around. I sure don't do it because it's cheaper, though.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#303
post #144
post #63

While a lot of this appears to be estimates... it's pretty wild of 30% of deaths from cardiovascular are caused by lead. Mostly in low/middle income countries. > It's items in the kitchen that are poisoning them On a positive note: This is something that can be fixed.

One problem with a lot of the studies is that the studies have a lot of confoundeing and estimates of lead's harm seem to be rising even as exposure decreases, which should make people stop and think more. But this doesn't come up that much because it is obviously bad for you, and there's generally no good reason not to avoid exposure and not many people care about precisely how bad it is for you. But it's weird that…

Marginal negative impacts of lead diminish with increasing exposure, so studies showing higher sensitivities today are expected.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#304
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, is your criticism that IQ proponents conflate point estimates with unknown population parameters? Is that what other IQ critics see as the core of the disagreement in this debate?

Well I don't want to speak for anyone else.

It's more of a secondary criticism though, that people aren't very careful about reading research papers. And of course that in many fields the researchers aren't careful either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility_revolution).

The primary criticism is that people want there to be something called IQ (or g, or intelligence) that is 1. a real physical variable that causes things 2. an unchangeable attribute of a person that 3. makes you better and more virtuous than people with less of it. This recently causes 4. the belief that if we invented an AI it'd have a lot more of it than us and would take over the world[0].

Whereas I think that:

1. the best reason to know it is to find working interventions to improve it, which they can't find because it isn't real, so they should find some real physical processes.

2. the other reason to know it is to predict someone's ability on a task, and in any such situation there is better evidence you could use for that. Although this one's kinda illegal anyway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.).

3. a superintelligent computer would not take over the world.

[0] The Lesswrong guy, the main advocate of this one, didn't graduate high school but would like to be seen as intelligent, which means it's convenient to believe that intelligence is so inherent you don't have to prove it by performing well at school.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#305
post #287

This feels like a good time to bring up the lead-crime hypothesis (flaws and all). For those who don't know, there's a strong (if faulty) correlation between lead levels in preschool children and crime rates: https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/17991876/crime-drop-murder-lea... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis Regardless of what you think about the hypothesis, the growth and crunch in lead levels…

I like this roundup [1] as it hammers the point home with tons of observations across cultures, times, contexts, and methods of analysis. For instance, different cultures phased out lead gas at different times, and their subsequent crime charts were offset by the equivalent years. [1]: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

The car and its consequences has been a disaster for society. Even today we are pumping so many toxins in to the air to deliver a slower, less efficient, and more expensive form of transport. And it's not a problem that EVs or self driving cars can solve since a huge amount of the pollution comes from tires.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#306
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated to the tea, but cold water is somewhat safer to drink than water coming from your boiler, that's why.

IDK, they said "a terrible way to make tea ", I'm assuming there's some sorta tea lore that I'm unaware of

There are tea drinkers that believe very strongly in using water that isn't "stale" (eg, leftover in the kettle from the last time). Presumably water from the hot water tap would be stale for similar reasons.

I think the theory is that "stale" water lacks sufficient oxygen for tea brewing to fully brew or something.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#307
post #74
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s another loophole: “lead free” means that the wetted surface is no more than 0.25% lead (by mass, I think). As far as I know, lead has nice properties as an element added to brass alloys. Which is not an excuse for using it, IMO. (Why is any of this still a thing? Stainless steel is cheaper than copper these days, and it’s a great material as long as you aren’t trying to screw one piece of stainless steel into…

Are there? It seems like plastics are shaping up to be the modern day lead.

I highly doubt it. They don't seem to be perfect, but they clearly aren't anywhere near as toxic as lead.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#308
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Plastic piping (if equipped) functions as a water hammer arrestor. An expansion tank will as well, though a picky inspector may insist that the automatic valve location must have a water hammer arrestor if you are piped with metal supplies.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#309
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to stress that I actually don't give a shit (I am not that into tea, I just drink it sometimes, it's not a big deal to me), but I am curious as to why.

It's not hot enough. Black tea is usually brewed with boiling hot water around 95 - 100 °C. Green tea is usually brewed a bit lower than that at around 80 °C. But the domestic hot water supply is typically around 50 °C, to prevent burns. It'll be very weak, and probably taste a bit off. Same with coffee, or anything else that requires boiling hot water.

I don't drink tea made from hot water. I put hot water into a pot and heat it up further.

Re: Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study

#310
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ being public might be problematic; I've heard from more than one lawyer that one ought-not use IQ as a hiring filter, unless you have evidence that the IQ test is not biased against any protected groups. Indeed, hiring from more selective universities is, to a certain degree, a way of laundering hiring based off of IQ, since you can pass the buck to the university itself to not be racially biased.

There are some races with average scores of 70. Can you believe it? Why of course I am talking about "white america" in 1900s [1]. [1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/smarter > Over the past 100 years, Americans' mean IQ has been on a slow but steady climb. Between 1900 and 2012, it rose nearly 30 points, which means that the average person of 2012 had a higher IQ than 95 percent of the population had in 1900.

People really don’t like when they get called out for their bigotry, huh? :thinking:
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