421–430 of 479 posts
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…
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.
Hopefully you don't have a fire....See: Notre Dame
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never heard of copper-lined PEX, can you tell me more?
I think op may be referring to 'barrier pipe', which is a plastic -copper-plastic sandwich, which is designed to keep out pollutants which can diffuse through the plastic - eg. Diesel oil. If you don't use it for underground water pipes in cities, you'll normally get complaints from homeowners about 'chemical smelling' water, particularly first thing in the morning when water has been sitting stationary in pipes all…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also an exception for leaded gas in small/private jets ("AVGas") so its used in some of those formulations.
No jets use or have ever used leaded products. Jets run on Jet-A, which is a close relative of kerosene. It has never been leaded. The purpose of lead was to prevent cylinders from prematurely detonating ("knocking") in internal combustion engines. Jets do not have any cylinders to knock; the fuel burns continually in an open combustion chamber. You may have been thinking of 100LL (100 Low Lead) fuel for piston engin…
Judging by the size of the GA fleet, and by the fact that a sizeable portion of that fleet is not certified to fly with UL94, allow me to doubt the seriousness of that news..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Late Soviet writers such as Strugatsky brothers would often bring out the topic of barbarism and brutality which is characteristic of Human race and had to be fought at all times... ...which is, as far as we know now, not innate but looks like symptoms of chronic lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning is far from the _only_ cause of the darker side of human nature.
People around them ended up not wanting to actively destroy themselves and their environment. That was the big surprise of 00's and it coincided with aftermatch of when the lead gas was outlawed.
It seems based on the last years' news that the USA is having a reenactment of that now, though. I wonder what it takes this time to fix things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HDPE Nalgene bottles probably leach PFAS: https://www.reddit.com/r/Nalgene/comments/wqdgbi/are_nalgene... Glass or stainless steel would be a better choice (especially for storage).
Whats my risk of exposure to lead from improperly made glass or stainless steel?
("Measuring the amount of lead (Pb) consumed when drinking from lead crystal glassware. Is it safe?")
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're never supposed to cook with hot tap water. Even if lead is not a concern, there are other possible contaminants that can leech from plastic and copper pipes, or from the tank itself.
This is not taught in the US and we blend hot and cold together. Why are the lines blended at the faucet if that’s the case?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does correlate, and it is accounted for. We have evidence to believe the causal arrow points lead=>poverty. This is because the natural experiments of phasing out leaded gasoline in different countries at effectively randomized times produce subsequent decreases in lead poisoning (and downstream crime). This is as close to a controlled "give one population lead poisoning" experiment as you can ethically run.
But there is also poverty => poor housing in less desirable areas => more pollution in general. Including Air pollution, car exhausts, lead from leaded gasoline. This is well known e.g. (1) and seems like it would be a large effect. I'm not saying that this invalidates the studies on lead, I'm sure that the researchers know how to do it far better than I do, and have spend a lot more time on accounting for it; just t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a stop valve that went bad and I wanted to replace it with a ball-valve because I prefer quarter-turn valves for shutoff valves. No ball-valves at the hardware store were lead free.
just a fair warning that you should close that quarter-turn valve very gradually when there is running water if you ever find a non-leaded version... water hammer can and will burst the weakest of your pipes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there is also poverty => poor housing in less desirable areas => more pollution in general. Including Air pollution, car exhausts, lead from leaded gasoline. This is well known e.g. (1) and seems like it would be a large effect. I'm not saying that this invalidates the studies on lead, I'm sure that the researchers know how to do it far better than I do, and have spend a lot more time on accounting for it; just t…
For poverty effects to dominate across countries, there would need to be a causal relationship between phasing out leaded petrol and countries' distribution of income; it looks implausible at first glance. It's much easier to phase out leaded petrol than to make persistent changes in the distribution of income. It would be very surprising if all countries not only did so, but did so at the same time.
This is not the same thing as "poverty drives increased pollution exposure, as a general rule" which is still true.
Other things drive pollution exposure too, like general use of leaded petrol.