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

medicalxpress.com

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

#341

Post by prewett »

13of40 wrote: post #313
hadlock wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead roofing tends to get recycled into bullets in time of war, but those roofs that don't, are typically there forever (400+ years) and never leak. Some plastics are UV resistant due to additives but even copper struggles to compete with lead as a roofing material. You only need to look back to the 1970s to find PEX water piping and the disaster/flooding it can cause due to age.

> Lead roofing tends to get recycled into bullets in time of war That's interesting - I've read that there are a lot of castles and stately houses whose demise started from the owners selling off the lead roof, but I never understood why it would be so valuable that you'd destroy the building for it. Is that why?

Quite a number of British monastic churches and castles had their roofs sold off by Henry VIII, who was fully intending to destroy the building.

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

#342

Post by standardUser »

ip26 wrote: post #215
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?

There are often fairly sensible reasons or good intent behind many of them. People don't normally drink hot water; it's not a great idea, as it has higher levels of dissolved solids and higher risk of contamination by organisms (like legionnaires). Meanwhile, lead helps make metals and solders more resilient to high temperatures and fatigue at low cost. Banning lead from the hot side could therefore decrease reliabil…

[flagged]

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

#343

Post by hinkley »

hinkley wrote: post #224
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> estimates of lead's harm seem to be rising even as exposure decreases, which should make people stop and think more Is the effect size or confidence rising? The latter makes sense. We're moving from a population systematically exposed to lead (no control) to one with lead-free kids for a change.

You think the effect of a toxin is a certain curve. A giant initiative to remove it is moderately successful, but the numbers in the population are not coming down as much as you expected. Is it that the toxin is correlated with another substance that is responsible for part of the harm? Is it corruption and the cleanups have been faked, leading to underreporting of exposure without underreporting of results? Or did…

Sheesh I can't believe I missed one:

Corruption caused the original numbers to be incorrect, leading to anchoring in subsequent experiments.

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

#344

Post by mlyle »

YokoZar wrote: post #306
insanitybit wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not O2: if you let water sit out, various things (including CO2) dissolve in it, making it slightly acidic and taste stale.

I'm not a big tea drinker, but I am definitely not a super fan of water that's been sitting out a day. There's not been time for stuff to grow in it yet, but it still tastes gross.

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

#345

Post by hinkley »

georgeg23 wrote: post #249
hinkley wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I moved I did a search not only for garden hose without lead but also without phthalates and BPA. There are a few goodun’s out there. Expensive though, but I also have hose connections that don’t leak because tolerances and decent seals.

In particular I would recommend the ELEY Garden Hose

Good luck with Water Wright. They come in long runs and aren't very heavy. Occasional problems with inventory, but do you really need the red one?

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

#346

Post by forgetm3 »

sneak wrote: post #333
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.

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.

Corruption exists everywhere, but in western countries is a lot less likely that you'll be bribing police, school teachers, medical services, banks etc as an 'individual' to get the services you expect from them. Can you find examples of people bribing those in those positions? Sure, it can and does happen. And on the whole, it's the exception rather than the rule. And definitely not at the scale of other countries.

Big business interests affecting policy for the point of profit is a universal issue though.

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

#347

Post by bluedino »

jstarfish wrote: post #175
hedora wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Hose water is delicious

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

#348

Post by LTL_FTC »

mschuster91 wrote: post #76
djmips wrote: post #26

Does anyone know the the risk is for electronics hobbyist?

Unless you're dealing with electronics made prior to 2006, almost all of what you'll be soldering with is lead-free. Thank the EU's RoHS directive for that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

Was hired as a software engineer at a tiny company, in April of this year, that produces surveillance cameras. They had me building and repairing their cameras which involved a non-trivial amount of soldering. They never told me I was handling lead and I wouldn't have known if I wasn't a curious person but it turns out they thought lead-free solder "sucked" and wouldn't switch.

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

#349

Post by mtalantikite »

Gigachad wrote: post #338
hodgesrm wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I swear that living in NYC for nearly two decades has made me incapable of making a grocery list and shopping like pretty much everyone else in the country (only slightly kidding). I just walk down the street and grab what I need.

I did just miss the 6 train by 15 seconds and am standing on the platform as I write this, which I guess is annoying? I’ll take it over driving in traffic though.

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

#350

Post by lacrimacida »

sneak wrote: post #333
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.

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.

A small government wouldn’t magically solve this problem though
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