The findings, which appear in PNAS, underscore the vital role of environmental regulations in protecting public health.
The study notes lead rules are now being weakened by the Trump administration in a wide-ranging move to ease environmental protections.
“We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is those regulations have been very important,”
It's interesting that the paper doesn't mention this, but the answer here is Latter Day Saints. They have a very strong culture of genealogy and preserving family history. The study authors are all in Salt Lake City, which is the Mormon capital of the world.
I have a lot of respect for LDS genealogy efforts. It clearly goes beyond the baptizing the dead thing. Many of them take it very seriously, and they don't shy away from things that challenge the Mormon narratives (mainly DNA evidence not giving support for their peculiar American settlement theories).
I remember going to LA in the late 80's and my eyes watering (I also remember the pants-less man on the side of the strode but that is a different story). Environmental regulations are a win. Unfortunately there is a large segment of the population that doesn't believe something until it happens to them directly. That makes it a challenge to maintain environmental, or any regulations for that matter, over generations. It isn't practical, but it would be interesting to create 'pollution cities' where the regulations were loose so long as the entire company drew its workforce (including management) from the local population (like within a mile) and a significant portion of their drinking water and foods must also be sourced locally. Go ahead, pollute your own drinking water. I bet cities like this would be cleaner than ones with stricter regulations.
In Louisana there’s a stretch around all the refineries nicknamed Cancer Alley. The locals work the plants. Everyone gets sick. And they vote for expansion because it brings in more jobs. You need the regulations.
> I bet cities like this would be cleaner than ones with stricter regulations.
I would almost always take the opposite side of this bet. Once responsibility becomes diffuse enough, people would actively poison themselves as they see no alternative.
Yet, there are ample cases of the workers living near a factory and constantly getting cancer. PG&E in Hinckley, CA comes to mind as the most well known, due to the media/movie about Erin Brockovich.
There was a pretty substantial length of time between the beginning of the industrial revolution and the development of transportation infrastructure that allowed people to live far from where they worked, and get most of their food from distant lands. Your experiment was done many times. The result was not clean cities.
You used to be able to buy leaded 110 gas as Sunoco in the early 2000's. It would make your exhaust tips turn white and had a sort of candy like smell when combusted.
no one has mentioned "The Secret History of Lead" published by The Nation in March 2000. The long and detailed article exposed the deliberate and long-standing cover-up of leaded gasoline's dangers by major corporations. Villians include General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon).
In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.
Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights. It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped. Clearly, banning leaded gasoline has that kind of justification, and therefore I'm strongly in favor of maintaining that ban and extending it wherever it isn't in place yet. The same reasonable standard should be applied to other regulations across the board.
It's better to over regulate than under regulate, if you look at it in terms of utility. The damage of under regulation can be catastrophic, like people getting cancer or irreversible loss of species. Based on examples I read here, overregulation is much easier to solve. For example, the weaponisation of environmental regulation to block new development is a political problem not a technical one, which is solvable if people really want to.
It is fair and reasonable to demand that releasing a substance with new and unknown effects into the environment justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data that it is safe, or else get chopped.
I think people's health is more important than corporate profits. If corporations played fair, I'd be more tempted to agree with your formulation than with mine, but history has shown that that isn't the case. Take a current example like PFAS, where as soon there is enough evidence to prohibit one variety because it is harmful, the industry just starts using a very similar one that the legislature hasn't had time to collect evidence against.
I really want to see elimination of lead (projectiles, lead styphnate primers, etc.) in firearms next.
When I go to the range, every once in a while, I'll see one of the older marksmen who's there with his squirrel hunting rifle, chambered in .22 LR. I've noticed that he seems to have a tremor in his hands when he's loading his magazines. Essential tremor is linked to lead exposure [0]
Most .22 LR projectiles are either just lead or have a copper "wash" over the lead, not a proper jacket like you see on other rounds.
I wonder, if you shoot those loads for long enough, and breathe in enough gunsmoke, do you get that problem?
As for the proof being in our hair... well, not mine. Chrome dome over here XD
Fun fact - leaded petrol isn't actually banned in the UK, you can legally buy it and use it. The legislation at the time of bans just made it so that leaded petrol could only be a small % of overall petrol sales by any given fuel station, arguing that it allowed time for owners of unleaded-incompatible cars to purchase it.
And....it worked pretty much exactly as designed - initially only the largest stations carried it because they could justify the storage costs, and eventually it disappeared from almost everywhere. Just before covid there were still 3 small garages selling leaded petrol by the drum, but afaik they all stopped doing so.
And regardless - you can stil buy actual real Tetraethyl Lead fuel additive which turns your petrol into actual real 4-star leaded petrol, just like in the old days:
During the past year I have discovered that almost all retailers here in Sweden have voluntarily replaced their usual Teflon/polytetrafluoroethylene/PTFE frying pan coatings with something called 'ceramic'. (This includes IKEA globally, I assume.)
The thing is - it's simply not as good. The worst case is probably frying frozen gyoza. They will get stuck when they get gelatinous on that 'ceramic' surface.
I ended up looking up some slightly offbrand stores to get the pan that I wanted.
Yeah, the alternatives aren't as good. They're safer, though.
Teflon and it's relatives--so long as you don't expose them to enough heat to mess with the C-F bonds, they're probably safe. But Teflon only exists as a solid, it will decompose before melting, thus the problem becomes how to form it? You need a solvent--a solvent that dissolves that which is famous for being impervious. To date only one such solvent has ever been found: it's pretty close chemically but one bond doesn't have a F stuck on it so it will play nice with both Teflon (which is what most of the molecule looks like) and other things (the piece that isn't like Teflon.) Can you hope to recover all of the solvent from the finished product? No way. And that solvent will react in the body, it's not inert like the Teflon. Toxic down to the detection threshold.
They have played games, producing "different" solvents but they're all the same thing, the same reactive part connected to a chain of a different length that is fully fluorinated. The length of the inert chain doesn't change anything, the toxicity comes from the one reactive part.
I wish someone would do a large RCT of water fluoridation in pregnant women looking at long term cognitive outcomes if fetuses. It would be an easy study to do (just randomize each group to receive free deliveries of either fluoridated or not fluoridated water) and then look at their offspring’s scores on cognitive tests every few years. I think reputable scientists don’t touch this because they’re afraid of being labelled kooky.
Does the word Tuskegee mean anything to you? Because that's basically what you are asking for.
Nor is there any need for such a study as we have a natural one: some areas have more fluorine in the water than others. We started putting fluorine in the water because we noticed that the places with higher natural levels had better teeth. There comes a point where it's too much and downsides appear, but, again, we already knew that. Note that this is a completely normal thing--there is nothing which is not toxic in sufficient quantity. Including *everything* that is necessary for human life. What would be strange is if there wasn't some maximum safe level. Some things the body easily eliminates and the range between minimum and maximum is quite wide. Things which are not so easily eliminated have narrower ranges. Thus we have the situation where overdose of water-soluble vitamins is basically unheard-of, but overdose of fat-soluble vitamins very definitely happens.
Don’t worry, we can get our lead from spices and every food that includes them. Lead is cheaper to get than cinnamon and even cocoa, so it ends up being favored adulterant to increase weight at sale.
That is expected. The problem is that people are not getting healthier, or more intelligent, quite the opposite.
Obviously there is an absolutely massive problem that you're missing as you're congratulating yourself on "succeeding" with a massive effort with no clear result.
But when you do look at the details it doesn't look like the results point to the measured lead coming directly from gasoline itself.
Just as likely if not more so coming from the neighborhood lead smelter that operated over a period of decades where the phaseout probably overlapped from both mineral and gasoline sources, in step with the regulations.
These are rare samples but I wonder if it would be possible to determine how much lead was on the outside of the hairs which could be expected to settle from the atmosphere, compared to within the biological matrix itself which could have been incorporated metabolically?
And in a ubiquitous TEL-using environment, would that form of lead build up more so on the outside of the hairs or the inside?
With or without a lead smelter in the neighborhood?
As if tetraethyl lead in gasoline wasn't bad enough, they also added ethylene dichloride and/or ethylene dibromide, which acted as a lead scavengers, preventing deposits of insoluble lead (II) oxide from forming and clogging up engines/exhaust equipment. Instead, water-soluble-at-high-temperatures lead (II) chloride and lead (II) chloride were blasted out the tailpipes of vehicles using tetraethyl lead. These are mildly soluble at ambient temperatures, allowing the lead to permeate even further than it otherwise would have.
38 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 57.1 ms ] threadDefinitively interesting that they could get so many old hair samples with good provenance.
I have a lot of respect for LDS genealogy efforts. It clearly goes beyond the baptizing the dead thing. Many of them take it very seriously, and they don't shy away from things that challenge the Mormon narratives (mainly DNA evidence not giving support for their peculiar American settlement theories).
I would almost always take the opposite side of this bet. Once responsibility becomes diffuse enough, people would actively poison themselves as they see no alternative.
Is it though? How much lead can you breathe before you totally lose your mind?
Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights. It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped. Clearly, banning leaded gasoline has that kind of justification, and therefore I'm strongly in favor of maintaining that ban and extending it wherever it isn't in place yet. The same reasonable standard should be applied to other regulations across the board.
I think people's health is more important than corporate profits. If corporations played fair, I'd be more tempted to agree with your formulation than with mine, but history has shown that that isn't the case. Take a current example like PFAS, where as soon there is enough evidence to prohibit one variety because it is harmful, the industry just starts using a very similar one that the legislature hasn't had time to collect evidence against.
then lead is being sprayed all over you, your car and home, daily
for THREE DECADES NOW
no rush, not like it's poison or does permanent damage to your health/IQ
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
When I go to the range, every once in a while, I'll see one of the older marksmen who's there with his squirrel hunting rifle, chambered in .22 LR. I've noticed that he seems to have a tremor in his hands when he's loading his magazines. Essential tremor is linked to lead exposure [0]
Most .22 LR projectiles are either just lead or have a copper "wash" over the lead, not a proper jacket like you see on other rounds.
I wonder, if you shoot those loads for long enough, and breathe in enough gunsmoke, do you get that problem?
As for the proof being in our hair... well, not mine. Chrome dome over here XD
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1241711/
And....it worked pretty much exactly as designed - initially only the largest stations carried it because they could justify the storage costs, and eventually it disappeared from almost everywhere. Just before covid there were still 3 small garages selling leaded petrol by the drum, but afaik they all stopped doing so.
And regardless - you can stil buy actual real Tetraethyl Lead fuel additive which turns your petrol into actual real 4-star leaded petrol, just like in the old days:
https://www.demon-tweeks.com/tetraboost-e-guard-15-fuel-addi...
The thing is - it's simply not as good. The worst case is probably frying frozen gyoza. They will get stuck when they get gelatinous on that 'ceramic' surface.
I ended up looking up some slightly offbrand stores to get the pan that I wanted.
Teflon and it's relatives--so long as you don't expose them to enough heat to mess with the C-F bonds, they're probably safe. But Teflon only exists as a solid, it will decompose before melting, thus the problem becomes how to form it? You need a solvent--a solvent that dissolves that which is famous for being impervious. To date only one such solvent has ever been found: it's pretty close chemically but one bond doesn't have a F stuck on it so it will play nice with both Teflon (which is what most of the molecule looks like) and other things (the piece that isn't like Teflon.) Can you hope to recover all of the solvent from the finished product? No way. And that solvent will react in the body, it's not inert like the Teflon. Toxic down to the detection threshold.
They have played games, producing "different" solvents but they're all the same thing, the same reactive part connected to a chain of a different length that is fully fluorinated. The length of the inert chain doesn't change anything, the toxicity comes from the one reactive part.
Nor is there any need for such a study as we have a natural one: some areas have more fluorine in the water than others. We started putting fluorine in the water because we noticed that the places with higher natural levels had better teeth. There comes a point where it's too much and downsides appear, but, again, we already knew that. Note that this is a completely normal thing--there is nothing which is not toxic in sufficient quantity. Including *everything* that is necessary for human life. What would be strange is if there wasn't some maximum safe level. Some things the body easily eliminates and the range between minimum and maximum is quite wide. Things which are not so easily eliminated have narrower ranges. Thus we have the situation where overdose of water-soluble vitamins is basically unheard-of, but overdose of fat-soluble vitamins very definitely happens.
Obviously there is an absolutely massive problem that you're missing as you're congratulating yourself on "succeeding" with a massive effort with no clear result.
But when you do look at the details it doesn't look like the results point to the measured lead coming directly from gasoline itself.
Just as likely if not more so coming from the neighborhood lead smelter that operated over a period of decades where the phaseout probably overlapped from both mineral and gasoline sources, in step with the regulations.
These are rare samples but I wonder if it would be possible to determine how much lead was on the outside of the hairs which could be expected to settle from the atmosphere, compared to within the biological matrix itself which could have been incorporated metabolically?
And in a ubiquitous TEL-using environment, would that form of lead build up more so on the outside of the hairs or the inside?
With or without a lead smelter in the neighborhood?