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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

#351

Post by chmod600 »

thiht wrote: post #200
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.

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 much easier and faster to pass a law with loopholes that still removes 90%+ of the bad stuff you want to remove.

If you try to solve 100% of the problem you have the bad stuff on the market for another 10 years while the details are sorted out.

Or you just ignore the details and ram through the bill, and find out about a lot of unintended consequences and have a mess.

Ideally, politicians would pass the bill with loopholes first, and then follow up and try to close them to finish solving the problem. But that's one of those things like refactoring and code cleanup that you always mean to do and never get around to.

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

#352

Post by maxerickson »

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.

In lots of places the tailpipe emissions of a modern car are cleaner than the air.

CO2 is a pollutant, but it's not a toxin when the concentration is low and oxygen is available.

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

#353

Post by hammock »

keepamovin wrote: post #326

Also, it makes people irritable and more hostile. so if you noticed your city becoming more rude and less polite, it may be that a lot of the people are getting borderline psychotic or personality disorder because of unenforced lead regulation violations.

There were a lot of irritable and hostile people during the Flint water crisis. Many of them stormed the capitol: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/protesters-storm-michigan-st...

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

#354

Post by c22 »

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…

I wash my cups and dishes with hot water, then I drink and eat from them later.

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

#355

Post by c22 »

kortex wrote: post #266
kube-system wrote: post #257

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?

It happened to me once, now I turn off the water when I go on vacation.

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

#356

Post by m463 »

Willish42 wrote: post #228

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 remember reading somewhere that lead exposure might correlate with poverty. Is this accounted for?

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

#357

Post by nrdvana »

datavirtue wrote: post #294
amluto wrote: 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…

I had a house where a brand new copper line corroded and started leaking 2 years from installation, and I don't mean at joints or anything, I mean the local water just ate right through the wall of the pipe. I switched to Pex and was fairly happy with it.

I never did do the research to figure out what was up with the water, but similarly, when I tried inventing my own sump-pump sensor by dipping copper wire into the sump well, it ate the copper wires apart in 3 days. I tried again with stainless rods and discovered that there was about .05 Volt per inch deep I put the sensor, i.e. the stainless rod near the top of the well would be about 2V higher (or lower, don't recall) than the stainless rod that ran to the bottom. Made it kind of annoying to design the circuit.

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

#358

Post by muglug »

mtalantikite wrote: post #349
Gigachad wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whenever I leave NYC and go anywhere else in the US, walking a mile feels like an act of silent rebellion.

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

#359

Post by Clubber »

lacrimacida wrote: post #350
sneak wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>A small government wouldn’t magically solve this problem though

You'd have a lot fewer corrupt officials though.

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

#360

Post by thenickdude »

frankus wrote: post #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 su…

Depends how long ago, but your hair can be tested for lead exposure. Hair grows at about 6 inches per year. If your hair was 3 ft long you could test back as far as 6 years ago with that method.
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