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

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

medicalxpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 479 posts

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

#331

Post by dredmorbius »

nayuki wrote: post #112
amelius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who fill their water boiler with hot tap water ...

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.

The hot tap water likely has more dissolved solids in it. Over time that will precipitate into your distiller.

You can remove that by running a few cycles with vinegar. But if you fill with cold water, you'll get fewer deposits and have to clean less often.

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

#332

Post by hodgesrm »

Gigachad wrote: post #305
npunt wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even today we are pumping so many toxins in to the air to deliver a slower, less efficient, and more expensive form of transport.

Slower than what?

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

#333

Post by sneak »

gmkabro wrote: post #212
thiht wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It’s money. The answer is money. Somebody makes money by producing lead-infused products, so they pay off lawmakers to add a loophole that allows them to continue making money.

Yet people still maintain the popular fiction that corruption isn't that common in the large western countries, and that it's somehow more prevalent in the east. It's nonsense.

Everywhere there are large governments, there is huge corruption that is literally killing people so that others may be enriched without working as much.

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

#334

Post by mwint »

hodgesrm wrote: post #332
Gigachad wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even today we are pumping so many toxins in to the air to deliver a slower, less efficient, and more expensive form of transport. Slower than what?

[flagged]

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

#335

Post by tbrownaw »

swayvil wrote: post #319
pixl97 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>would be immensely useful in countless ways for the management of our society, Such as? Now, maybe if one person had an IQ of 80 and the other contender had an IQ of 105 it seems like it could be useful in some particular fields. But for the most part you'll run into the "I'm 200 times smarter than you because my IQ is 102 and yours is 101". And there is no icing on the cake. Privacy is a multipolar topic and there…

If all of the IQs in a county went down we might investigate that. There's one. If we were looking for smart people for a role in whatever. There's another. If we were rating schools. There's a third. Gee, my imagination is feeling so stretched.

> If all of the IQs in a county went down we might investigate that. There's one.

The average is always by definition exactly 100, neither higher nor lower.

Also, this data already exists. The folks who make standardized tests collect it to use for translating raw results to standardized scores.

> If we were looking for smart people for a role in whatever. There's another.

This is illegal. There are ways to get the same result that are not illegal, and are actively used.

> If we were rating schools. There's a third.

Schooling doesn't do much to iq.

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

#336

Post by kylebyproxy »

swayvil wrote: post #68
aidenn0 wrote: 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.

This is a common predicament. A piece of information that, if it was made public, would be immensely useful in countless ways for the management of our society, But it might also be exploited by bad people. So it is made private. And the icing on the cake. We say "it's private because privacy is intrinsically good and a basic human right ". Not, "It's private because we fear bad people".

> "It's private because we fear bad people"

I wonder if the thought process even goes that far. Oftentimes, the motive seems more like self-conscious social pressures, e.g., fear of embarrassment.

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

#337

Post by conception »

bloaf wrote: post #195
98codes wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow -- how often for how long were/are they going?

There was a recent study which found child blood lead levels were higher in areas with high gun ownership after controlling for socioeconomics. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-f...

This is definitely one of the reasons Republicans have blocked funding for gun research.

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

#338

Post by Gigachad »

hodgesrm wrote: post #332
Gigachad wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even today we are pumping so many toxins in to the air to deliver a slower, less efficient, and more expensive form of transport. Slower than what?

Walkable cities + public transport. When I had a car it used to take me a minimum of 10 minutes to get anywhere. Cars have spaced out everything so far that over all we spend so much more time traveling. Now I live in a walkable area and almost everything I need is a few minutes away on foot, or a 20 minute train trip to the main city area.

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

#339

Post by hodgesrm »

tlrobinson wrote: post #235
gmkabro wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s money. The answer is money. Somebody makes money by producing lead-infused products, so they pay off lawmakers to add a loophole that allows them to continue making money.

Bill Gurley’s recent talk is worth a watch https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM

That's an excellent talk. Thanks for posting.

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

#340

Post by Willish42 »

keepamovin wrote: post #327
Willish42 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had meant that despite the statistical correlation being objective and strong, the logic behind a causal link was faulty. That might not be the case though (?), see https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le... from the other reply

Do you mean faulty, logic, or faulty, supporting evidence? I think if something is plausible, but unsupported by evidence, the logic can be sound, but the supporting evidence faulty; but if something is implausible, then it would be the logic that was faulty and to me it seems like that crime and behavioral changes are caused by lead is certainly plausible, so I don’t think it’s a logical failure here. It may just be…

See above. The Vox article made this seem like logic around the hypothesis is more faulty than it probably is, given other replies.

I understand my meaning might've confused HN commenters but I genuinely feel that the intent of my words in the initial comment is intuitive, and don't have time or bandwidth to argue about the semantics. I am sorry for the confusion. I obviously can't definitively prove it is faulty, and was merely trying (likely incorrectly so) to summarize the believed veracity of the hypothesis.

Post reply on HN