9 ms·

Could this be related to lead exposure? Leaded gasoline was fully banned for new vehicles in 1996.

by zrail 6y ago

deepsun 6y ago
General aviation (small planes) still use 100LL (low-lead) fuel. Of course there are some newer GA planes that use JetA (kerosene) instead, but due to heavy regulations, it's really hard to make/certify new planes, so most people still fly 40+ year old carburetor planes.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >General aviation (small planes) still use 100LL (low-lead) fuel. In vanishingly small quantities and even smaller concentrations (i.e. thinly distributed in the atmosphere making it hard for anyone to get a large dose) to the point which you can pick pretty much any other class of vehicles or source of lead and be reasonably sure it is causing more disease and death. I know it's easy virtue points to rag on it but leaded avgas is just not an issue. GA has no lobby or economic impact to speak of so it's not like it's sticking around through regulatory capture.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Thousands of people with enough money to own and operate small planes is not "no lobby". There's literally a foundation that spends tens of millions of dollars every year on small pilot interests: https://www.aopa.org/about/governance https://www.aopa.org/about/governance
rpiguy 6y ago
Probably a factor in a multi-factor answer. Think of it this way, not only was lead gasoline banned, but over the last 30 years we have moved manufacturing jobs to Asia (which has not seen the decline in dementia that the west has). Manufacturing exposes workers and the surrounding area to all kinds of dusts, chemicals, etc.
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. I wonder how much of this is related to increased air quality in the west.
- m3kw9 6y ago
  Manufacturing jobs are also mind numbing
  - chapium 6y ago
    We should see an increase in china then?
sandworm101 6y ago
>>The trend may be related to higher rates of smoking, which makes dementia more likely, in those countries. There are any number of not-good things in tobacco smoke. The modern reality that we no longer live in a costant haze of other poeple's smoke is probably a huge factor in overall rates for many diseases.
- woadwarrior01 6y ago
  Smoke exposure of any kind seems to have adverse health consequences over the long run. The first thought that jumped to my mind while reading the article was that the colder parts of the western world have been steadily moving towards electric heating, while similar areas in developing countries still use wood/coal more often.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >Smoke exposure of any kind seems to have adverse health consequences over the long run. It's more general than that. Fine particulate matter (like smoke/soot) tends to get in everywhere and with all the complex molecules in living organisms it's pretty much guaranteed that it will react with something and in large enough quantity that tends to cause disease.
easytiger 6y ago
I used to play with lead sheets as a kid. From roofing stuff my grandfather had around. It was fun because it was pleasingly malleable . Often wonder if it had any relationship with health issues
- opwieurposiu 6y ago
  Elemental lead is way less toxic than organic lead compounds like they used to put in gas. Human body does not adsorb elemental lead very efficiently, but it loves that organic stuff. I played with lead as a child, it is a fun metal because you can bend it with your hands so easily or melt it on the stove and cast it in your sandbox(protip: don't use mom's good saucepan). https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/chapter/9781849730822-00153/978-1-84973-082-2 https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/chapter/9781849730822-00153/...
- elliekelly 6y ago
  As a kid I used to play with the mercury in broken thermometers and now I wonder about the health risks, too.
  - jccooper 6y ago
    Elemental mercury is kind of in the same boat as elemental lead. It's poorly absorbed dermally and GI, so you need continuous exposure to be a real problem. It's worst when you're inhaling it, which is bad news because mercury does evaporate at room temperature, and especially when hot. I doubt you encountered enough mercury, and for long enough, to be any problem unless you were doing something unusual with it. Eating a lot of fish is much more dangerous mercury-wise.
- koolba 6y ago
  Lead was magical as a kid as you could melt it with a basic camp fire.
adrianN 6y ago
Air pollution in general is much better than it used to be. Particulates for example are known to be associated with memory problems: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31746986/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31746986/
spanhandler 6y ago
My mom tells stories about pesticide trucks driving down the street, spraying entire neighborhoods, when she was a kid. Says it happened pretty often. Kids would chase them, playing in the "clouds". Talk about yikes. I do wonder what we interact with regularly that future people would have to be paid very well to even be in the same room with, and will think we were nuts for ever thinking was OK. I'm guessing "basically anything plastic, especially if contact with food" is a likely candidate. Fire retardant chemicals in construction materials and furniture, probably.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >>pesticide trucks driving down the street That was DDT. Occassional exposures like that aren't linked to anything horrible in humans. It was banned for its impacts on birds, specifically their eggs. (Google "silent Spring".)
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't know of any particular harm linked to it, it just seems like something we'd never let kids do these days just in case, since "apply magical chemical, it fixes everything and is entirely safe!" has a history of being wrong about the "entirely safe" part. These days I'd expect any plan that includes "we'll spray clouds of this in neighborhoods" to get shut down before it can even start, for that reason.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Except cholrine in pools. And soap. Soap has all sorts of chemicals in it. And perfume. The reality is that we soak ourselves in various chemicals every day. What if that truck was spaying hand sanitizer? It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution.
      - spanhandler 6y ago
        I think you're thinking I'm in the "ZOMG ban dihydrogen monoxide, it's a chemical!" crowd, and I'm not sure why you think that. Also, yes, I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time convincing people to let you spray hand sanitizer all over their neighborhood, these days, even if they're OK with rubbing it on their hands.
griffordson 6y ago
This thought is the one I keep coming back to over and over again in 2020.
therealcamino 6y ago
In the US, passenger cars haven't used leaded gasoline since 1975.
- Macha 6y ago
  Seems to be one environmental issue the US was ahead on then. My parents first car in Ireland (in the late 90s) was still using leaded petrol. It looks unleaded first became available in 1986 [1] in Ireland and leaded petrol wasn't eliminated until 2000 [2]. [1]: https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1011/823260-unleaded-petrol-on-sale/ https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1011/823260-unleaded-petrol... [2]: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/leaded-petrol-to-be-phased-out-1.218046 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/leaded-petrol-to-be-phased-o...
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  But leaded gasoline was still sold in the US at least into the 80s, in my memory.
oska 6y ago
Japan was the first country to introduce unleaded petrol/gasoline in 1972 and the first to ban leaded petrol in 1986 but, according to the article, they aren't seeing the decreases that Europe and North America are seeing. So that fact doesn't support your hypothesis even though I am sure there have been many other health benefits from the ban.
neuronexmachina 6y ago
Looks like: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/bolstering-link-between-alzheimer-s-disease-and-lead-exposure https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/bolstering-link-betw... > Researchers striving to understand the origins of dementia are building the case against a possible culprit: lead exposure early in life. A study spanning 23 years has now revealed that monkeys who drank a lead-rich formula as infants later developed tangles of a key brain protein, called tau, linked to Alzheimer's disease. Though neuroscientists say more work is needed to confirm the connection, the research suggests that people exposed to lead as children—as many in America used to be before it was eliminated from paint, car emissions, water, and soil—could have an increased risk of the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease.

Could this be related to lead exposure? Leaded gasoline was fully banned for new vehicles in 1996.

by zrail 6y ago

Could this be related to lead exposure? Leaded gasoline was fully banned for new vehicles in 1996.

General aviation (small planes) still use 100LL (low-lead) fuel. Of course there are some newer GA planes that use JetA (kerosene) instead, but due to heavy regulations, it's really hard to make/certify new planes, so most people still fly 40+ year old carburetor planes.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>General aviation (small planes) still use 100LL (low-lead) fuel. In vanishingly small quantities and even smaller concentrations (i.e. thinly distributed in the atmosphere making it hard for anyone to get a large dose) to the point which you can pick pretty much any other class of vehicles or source of lead and be reasonably sure it is causing more disease and death. I know it's easy virtue points to rag on it but leaded avgas is just not an issue. GA has no lobby or economic impact to speak of so it's not like it's sticking around through regulatory capture.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Thousands of people with enough money to own and operate small planes is not "no lobby". There's literally a foundation that spends tens of millions of dollars every year on small pilot interests: https://www.aopa.org/about/governance https://www.aopa.org/about/governance

rpiguy 6y ago

Probably a factor in a multi-factor answer. Think of it this way, not only was lead gasoline banned, but over the last 30 years we have moved manufacturing jobs to Asia (which has not seen the decline in dementia that the west has). Manufacturing exposes workers and the surrounding area to all kinds of dusts, chemicals, etc.

thinkharderdev 6y ago
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder how much of this is related to increased air quality in the west.
m3kw9 6y ago
Manufacturing jobs are also mind numbing
- chapium 6y ago
  We should see an increase in china then?

sandworm101 6y ago

>>The trend may be related to higher rates of smoking, which makes dementia more likely, in those countries. There are any number of not-good things in tobacco smoke. The modern reality that we no longer live in a costant haze of other poeple's smoke is probably a huge factor in overall rates for many diseases.

woadwarrior01 6y ago
Smoke exposure of any kind seems to have adverse health consequences over the long run. The first thought that jumped to my mind while reading the article was that the colder parts of the western world have been steadily moving towards electric heating, while similar areas in developing countries still use wood/coal more often.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Smoke exposure of any kind seems to have adverse health consequences over the long run. It's more general than that. Fine particulate matter (like smoke/soot) tends to get in everywhere and with all the complex molecules in living organisms it's pretty much guaranteed that it will react with something and in large enough quantity that tends to cause disease.

easytiger 6y ago

I used to play with lead sheets as a kid. From roofing stuff my grandfather had around. It was fun because it was pleasingly malleable . Often wonder if it had any relationship with health issues

opwieurposiu 6y ago
Elemental lead is way less toxic than organic lead compounds like they used to put in gas. Human body does not adsorb elemental lead very efficiently, but it loves that organic stuff. I played with lead as a child, it is a fun metal because you can bend it with your hands so easily or melt it on the stove and cast it in your sandbox(protip: don't use mom's good saucepan). https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/chapter/9781849730822-00153/978-1-84973-082-2 https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/chapter/9781849730822-00153/...
elliekelly 6y ago
As a kid I used to play with the mercury in broken thermometers and now I wonder about the health risks, too.
- jccooper 6y ago
  Elemental mercury is kind of in the same boat as elemental lead. It's poorly absorbed dermally and GI, so you need continuous exposure to be a real problem. It's worst when you're inhaling it, which is bad news because mercury does evaporate at room temperature, and especially when hot. I doubt you encountered enough mercury, and for long enough, to be any problem unless you were doing something unusual with it. Eating a lot of fish is much more dangerous mercury-wise.
koolba 6y ago
Lead was magical as a kid as you could melt it with a basic camp fire.

adrianN 6y ago

Air pollution in general is much better than it used to be. Particulates for example are known to be associated with memory problems: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31746986/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31746986/

spanhandler 6y ago

My mom tells stories about pesticide trucks driving down the street, spraying entire neighborhoods, when she was a kid. Says it happened pretty often. Kids would chase them, playing in the "clouds". Talk about yikes. I do wonder what we interact with regularly that future people would have to be paid very well to even be in the same room with, and will think we were nuts for ever thinking was OK. I'm guessing "basically anything plastic, especially if contact with food" is a likely candidate. Fire retardant chemicals in construction materials and furniture, probably.

sandworm101 6y ago
>>pesticide trucks driving down the street That was DDT. Occassional exposures like that aren't linked to anything horrible in humans. It was banned for its impacts on birds, specifically their eggs. (Google "silent Spring".)
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't know of any particular harm linked to it, it just seems like something we'd never let kids do these days just in case, since "apply magical chemical, it fixes everything and is entirely safe!" has a history of being wrong about the "entirely safe" part. These days I'd expect any plan that includes "we'll spray clouds of this in neighborhoods" to get shut down before it can even start, for that reason.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Except cholrine in pools. And soap. Soap has all sorts of chemicals in it. And perfume. The reality is that we soak ourselves in various chemicals every day. What if that truck was spaying hand sanitizer? It is the chemical that matters, not the method of distribution.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      I think you're thinking I'm in the "ZOMG ban dihydrogen monoxide, it's a chemical!" crowd, and I'm not sure why you think that. Also, yes, I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time convincing people to let you spray hand sanitizer all over their neighborhood, these days, even if they're OK with rubbing it on their hands.

griffordson 6y ago

This thought is the one I keep coming back to over and over again in 2020.

therealcamino 6y ago

In the US, passenger cars haven't used leaded gasoline since 1975.

Macha 6y ago
Seems to be one environmental issue the US was ahead on then. My parents first car in Ireland (in the late 90s) was still using leaded petrol. It looks unleaded first became available in 1986 [1] in Ireland and leaded petrol wasn't eliminated until 2000 [2]. [1]: https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1011/823260-unleaded-petrol-on-sale/ https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/1011/823260-unleaded-petrol... [2]: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/leaded-petrol-to-be-phased-out-1.218046 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/leaded-petrol-to-be-phased-o...
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
But leaded gasoline was still sold in the US at least into the 80s, in my memory.

oska 6y ago

Japan was the first country to introduce unleaded petrol/gasoline in 1972 and the first to ban leaded petrol in 1986 but, according to the article, they aren't seeing the decreases that Europe and North America are seeing. So that fact doesn't support your hypothesis even though I am sure there have been many other health benefits from the ban.

neuronexmachina 6y ago

Looks like: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/bolstering-link-between-alzheimer-s-disease-and-lead-exposure https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/bolstering-link-betw... > Researchers striving to understand the origins of dementia are building the case against a possible culprit: lead exposure early in life. A study spanning 23 years has now revealed that monkeys who drank a lead-rich formula as infants later developed tangles of a key brain protein, called tau, linked to Alzheimer's disease. Though neuroscientists say more work is needed to confirm the connection, the research suggests that people exposed to lead as children—as many in America used to be before it was eliminated from paint, car emissions, water, and soil—could have an increased risk of the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease.