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Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

abc.net.au

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Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#41

Post by tehjoker »

FredPret wrote: post #38
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the seat of power in the west is not with governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up being there to keep them happy and avoid conflicts between them. They've mostly stripped themselves of the ability to do anything they could be bribed over.

I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of months what the biggest companies are worth in total. According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth around one month of government spending. How can a whale be beholden to a fle…

The government is designed for rich people from its foundation, it's a cozy revolving door for the elites and functions to repress popular movements. Officials identify with business and owners and can pick up do-nothing or interesting jobs after their government services.

US elections are some of the most expensive in the world and politicians rely on donations to win their campaigns. The connections between business and government are a spider web. Business also isn't a set of individual companies, they in fact cooperate on public policy through think tanks such as the chamber of commerce and the business round table.

Furthermore, since business controls the commodities and processes that sustain life, business holds a veto over economic policy with "capital strikes". Government could seize these properties, but our left wing is very weak.

Think about it another way, why do you assume that elected officials have any obligation to the public when there is essentially no recourse except through elections and elections generally require oodles of money to win?

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#42

Post by jasonjayr »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #18
jasonjayr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public Health agencies (at least in the US) collecting data about residents is a thing. People just get a little touchy about government programs collecting all this data ...

What? Public health agencies are "goverment programs." Also: corporations lobby against funding / legislation / regulation for public health data collection - and then tell conservative voters it's about "their privacy." Meanwhile, corporate America is selling literally every scrap of data it can to each other, LexisNexis, Palantir... It's not just other corporations buying up that commercially available data; it's i…

Yes -- I wasn't implying that public health organzations != government.

And I know that (at least they're supposed to) government collected data has strict policies on handling + processing it, where as commercially available data is more "loosy-goosey". (Which, government has learned they can also use with little more than a polite word)

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#43

Post by cmrdporcupine »

gwervc wrote: post #36
soulofmischief wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money just flows through different channels, but that's a funny observation.

Exactly, corruption is more sophisticated, but it exists and is huge nonetheless. The big difference is that the starting GDP is higher, which allows for a little more to reach normal citizens after corruption is taken into account.

An old friend of mine who was originally from Iran told me something a family member of his said to him, which was basically: "In the west you may not have bribery, but the ability to influence decisions is mostly out of your reach. At least here little people can have some small control over their environment through small bribes." I had never heard bribery pitched that way before, and it's obviously... a garbage... way to run a society. But.

In Roman times, decision making, power, etc was in large part done through systems of explicit patronage. We now -- in public at least -- consider patronage to be a corrupt and awful thing, but then having a powerful patron was a sign of virtue and goodness. Having a wealthy famous patron literally made you a better person, "not-guilty" in various crimes, etc.

I am not convinced that that ethic has ever really gone away. Just maybe more hidden.

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#44

Post by somenameforme »

FredPret wrote: post #38
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the seat of power in the west is not with governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up being there to keep them happy and avoid conflicts between them. They've mostly stripped themselves of the ability to do anything they could be bribed over.

I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of months what the biggest companies are worth in total. According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth around one month of government spending. How can a whale be beholden to a fle…

Because government is not a singular entity, but made up of lots of individual people. And the overall electoral process of using a silver tongue to convince millions of people that you agree with all of them on everything, especially on things they disagree with each other on, and/or that the world will end if the other guy gets elected, ensures you select away from any sort of pesky things like values or ethics.

The wildest thing, to me, is just how cheap it is to buy a politician. Senator Menendez [1] made it a bit too overt and ended up getting convicted so there's no speculation involved there. International/country level corruption of a senior Senator, who was also the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including getting him to directly interfere in criminal cases? Less than a million bucks. I guess it's more of a buyer's market, which is pretty 'funny' in and of itself.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Menendez#Allegations_of_co...

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#45

Post by Nouser76 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #9
zug_zug wrote: post #4

It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently damage the human mind. I have to admit there's a part of me that almost wants to be skeptical, that mg of a rock could overcome the wonderous self-aware human mind. Every so often I have to remind that skeptical piece of me that it's an idiot and that every human alive is wildly fragile to any number of elements and chemicals. ------ Onto the article, i…

Well as they say, an entire human body is just > Water (35 L), Carbon (20 kg), Ammonia (4 L), Lime (1.5 kg), Phosphorous (800 g), Salt (250 g), Saltpeter (100 g), Sulfur (80 g), Fluorine (7.5 g), Iron (5 g), Silicon (3 g) and trace amounts of fifteen other elements. (The amounts are off somewhat but you get the idea)

This leaves out the fact that attempting to make a human out of these just results in an abomination (and the ability to do alchemy without a transmutation circle).

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#46

Post by nanomonkey »

Cordiali wrote: post #14
nanomonkey wrote: post #10

Anyone know a simple method of testing for lead in food? Say a wet chemistry method? I live in California, and I've noticed that everything has a CA Proposition 65 warning label. When I look into it it's generally lead that has bioaccumulated in the plant. What I can't find is how much or how widespread it is in the food.

There's test swabs for leaded paint, but I don't know if they'd be sensitive enough for food. At least where I live, they're pretty cheap, so it could be an interesting experiment. I remember seeing an article a while ago, where some local councils here specifically recommended building raised garden beds for veggie gardens. They apparently found, that in cities/towns older than about a hundred years, the risk of soi…

Yeah, City Slickers in Oakland stopped testing the soil and just told everyone that they should use raised beds. Problem is that there are so many fruit trees and self starting plants that I want to eat (I'm looking at you collards), but I'd like to know what I'm getting into.

Also I've read that sunflowers are really good at pulling up heavy metals, and all of the bags that I purchase have warning labels on them. I'm curious if this is a real concern!

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#47

Post by nanomonkey »

nanomonkey wrote: post #10

Anyone know a simple method of testing for lead in food? Say a wet chemistry method? I live in California, and I've noticed that everything has a CA Proposition 65 warning label. When I look into it it's generally lead that has bioaccumulated in the plant. What I can't find is how much or how widespread it is in the food.

To answer my own question: potassium rhodizonate mixed with glacial vinegar creates a visual test for lead.

I assume that I could grind up the food, test the slurry and then maybe do a more in depth test involving putting the food in a kiln and testing the ash for lead (assuming you use temps low enough to not vaporize the lead, below 1750C).

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#48

Post by nashashmi »

zug_zug wrote: post #4

It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently damage the human mind. I have to admit there's a part of me that almost wants to be skeptical, that mg of a rock could overcome the wonderous self-aware human mind. Every so often I have to remind that skeptical piece of me that it's an idiot and that every human alive is wildly fragile to any number of elements and chemicals. ------ Onto the article, i…

Actually considering how functional humans can be with a little lead, we are quite robust.

I wonder why lead causes brain problems. I think it’s because lead in the brain affects electrons and neurons. Maybe lead is magnetic?

Re: Sparrows may be 'canary in the coal mine' for lead poisoning in children: study

#50

Post by Terr_ »

nashashmi wrote: post #48
zug_zug wrote: post #4

It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently damage the human mind. I have to admit there's a part of me that almost wants to be skeptical, that mg of a rock could overcome the wonderous self-aware human mind. Every so often I have to remind that skeptical piece of me that it's an idiot and that every human alive is wildly fragile to any number of elements and chemicals. ------ Onto the article, i…

Actually considering how functional humans can be with a little lead, we are quite robust. I wonder why lead causes brain problems. I think it’s because lead in the brain affects electrons and neurons. Maybe lead is magnetic?

No, Lead is not magnetic to any significant degree.

What happens is that calcium is very important for your neurons to operate and signal each-other, and lead happens to be "close enough" that is competes/interferes with those mechanisms, gumming things up permanently.

This causes the cells and their connections to wither and die, or to fail to form properly at all.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/deadly-biology-lead-...

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