17 ms·

Lead poisoning among US children

246 points by CRConrad 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
This reminds me of the Flint, Michigan water drinking "controversy": https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/05/04/flint-water-crisis-michael-moore-barack-obama/83940370/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-... Obama In Flint: 'Can I Get Some Water?' | NBC News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjugN-nUHh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjugN-nUHh8
- refurb 5y ago
  This is true. There was a paper that shower Flint children’s lead level went up slightly during the “crisis” but were still less than half what they were a decade earlier.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
Awareness with surveillance is important. Leaded gasoline (TEL), lead pipes, and leaded paint were a problem for IQ before the 1980's that most Americans view as "solved" today. https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth Here's what the CDC recommends: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources.htm
- hinkley 5y ago
  Urban areas still have high lead content in the soil. The obvious one is around the foundation due to paint flecks, but also any soil near the street, due to accumulation from car exhaust.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  It sounds like a problem of poverty means old buildings were never decontaminated.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    It's also an issue of disrepair. Any house built in the 70s (or before) in California probably has lead paint. Which is a lot of them - that's when the primary population booms occurred. Those houses aren't being stripped of all paint, instead you need to keep the paint in good condition.
    - geekbird 5y ago
      I literally can't get my 1904 Victorian house painted with any of the modern energy saving paint on the outside because the contractors all look at the age of the house and say "that's a lead job" and then can't find a remediation contractor, plus want to charge me $100k for a paint job. But the house has been pressure washed and repainted with lead-free pain by the former owner. Has me tearing my hair, since I'm disabled and can't climb ladders to do it myself. So my house has a decaying paint job.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - johncessna 5y ago
    It's a hard problem. Remediating lead is expensive. The standard appears that you sign an attestation that you don't know there's lead in the house. This leads to a situation where no one actually does any testing. Lead pipes and contaminated ground have their own challenges, but I was under the impression that the cheap way to remediate lead paint was to paint over it. Is that not the case, or have these places not been painted in 45 years?
    - errcorrectcode 5y ago
      It's "screw the poor by sticking ones head in the sand." Paint chips. Kids touch the paint underneath, don't wash their hands, and then ingest toxic residue with their food.
      - 5y ago
willis936 5y ago
I just put in a countertop RO system. It's likely too late for me, but if I have kids I'll do my best to keep them from having dementia.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  Never drank city water, it's always disgusting regardless if it's toxic or not. I've put in and maintained 3 RO under sink systems, but I've never heard of a countertop one. Does it have a product tank? How much are the consumable parts? Currently, since I'm in an apartment, I have a subscription at an independent commercial/retail water store that has a 10-stage system. My mom's house has a 3-stage whole house water filter down to .2 micron, a water softener, and a 6-stage RO filter with UV sterilization. The whole house and RO systems use commodity parts and filters so they're not as expensive as those branded ones with proprietary "easy change" filters.
  - willis936 5y ago
    I bought an Express Water setup that cost $150 with a 3 year supply of filters for $90. I also got an alkaline stage that I put just before the carbon post filter (it wouldn't fit in the kit otherwise). Water input and waste output screws into the kitchen sink aerator. There is no tank, which was the biggest con to me when weighing my options. I considered getting a tank to put inline with the output, but I don't think my pressure is high enough and my SO would not appreciate the counter space loss. I've been using a large Brita tank in my fridge for many years, so I just fill that up daily. It's about 30 minutes of babysitting: very reasonable while doing other chores. It isn't as convenient as it could be, but its a solution that fits the shape of the problem.
    - errcorrectcode 5y ago
      Sounds like you got taken for a ride. You can get a real RO setup for $150 from wateranywhere.com. They're the retail side of AMI who makes RO membranes in SoCal. The filters need to be changed 2-4 times per year, and the membrane 1-2 also. That's going to cost a lot more than 90. If you're not changing the membrane, that's gross. If it is, I don't see how they can do it that cheaply unless it's an ineffective system. A permeate pump (passive device accomplishing pressure exchange) increases the product-to-waste ratio greatly. In all honesty, a 100 gpd system with a tank is the sweet spot because tankless (200 gpd) is too slow. Alkaline is a magical, hocus-pocus trend for Hollywood wellness, "cleanses", and hippies with crystals. They sell that nonsense at my water store because enough ignorant fools asked for it and are willing to shell out money because some celebrity probably endorsed it. Britas are solely for taste, expensive to operate, and filter next to nothing.
paulpauper 5y ago
As usual, bad reporting. "‘We’re losing IQ points’: the lead poisoning crisis unfolding among US children" no mention in the article how many IQ points. based on my research, it's not that much.
- Proven 5y ago
  As usual, the Guardian pop-sci crap. It's almost winter, no catastrophic heat waves in the hemisphere so what choice do they have...
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  Citations and data needed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 5y ago
  I think the reporting is pretty good since it cites most of the claims. However you are correct that none of the sources say how many points you would lose.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "based on my research, it's not that much." How much is not much? What if all i had is not much to begin with?
- queuebert 5y ago
  I mean, does it matter? I would think there is no acceptable level of IQ loss.
oh_sigh 5y ago
There seems to be a disturbing lack of interest in figuring out how these people are actually getting poisoned. Will replacing all the lead pipes actually have an effect? Why is it that hundreds of thousands of people in Rhode Island drink water from lead pipes, but only hundreds are poisoned per year? What about other causes, like lead-based paint exposure, or less obvious things like giving your kid 5oz of fruit juice per day[0]? Every non-child pictured in the article is obese and I begin to wonder what their knowledge or interest in nutrition is - I know multiple people who feed their child way more than 5oz of fruit juice per day, even after I told them about heavy metal concerns, because they can't believe that 'getting fruit' can be bad. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead-are-in-your-fruit-juice-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead...
- hpoe 5y ago
  Shhh, don't bring that up. Come on over here we have a nice identity driven controversy to get you invested in, look at how bad this [OTHER GROUP] is, they did this bad thing. Isn't that much more inflammatory, doesn't that make you want to click and complain more. Good, focus on what we tell you is important. Good see don't you feel that dopamine, doesn't it feel good to be angry about things your identity is invested into.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post this kind of thing to HN. Like most high-indignation/low-information comments, it's well below the quality line for interesting discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dm03514 5y ago
  I'm wondering this too, which exposure vectors? How much exposure is necessary? I really couldn't find anything on it? Will one inhale of lead dust cause poisoning or a spike in levels? Does it require consistent ingestion? Like we know lead is bad for children and the best case is lead free environment, but that's not available to most of us. What's the in between? How does exposure manifest in lead blood levels? I just bought an old house with known lead paint. I had as much remediated as I could but there is still (covered) lead paint on the radiators, door casings, stairs, soil and porches. What sort of exposure does this provide my children? How likely are these to be airborne? How much ingested lead dust is necessary to affect my children's blood levels? We had a baseline blood test before we moved in, but now it's just waiting 4 months until their updated test, and me being an anxious mess and wiping everything down and touching up paint constantly.
ryankask 5y ago
As an American living in the UK, it's interesting to see the disparity in almost all aspects of the treatment of lead. In the US, for example, there is an abundance of research and activism coupled with laws and a huge abatement/remediation industry. In the UK, however, where there is a large stock of old housing that very likely contains lead paint, pipes, and other products, there is nothing comparable. Are children in the UK silently suffering from lead poisoning, or "losing IQ points"? I have lead paint in my house and If I took my children to get tested at the GP, I would expect a strange look in response. Compare this to asbestos, where a survey is always recommended when purchasing an older property in the UK. While I think a lead survey would be suggested in the US if purchasing a pre-1978 property (and is required in some areas when renting to a family with children), I would guess only a handful are done here every year.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  In France lead paint completely disappeared. But the main driver of criminal behaviour and loss of IQ is lead gasoline you breath all day long anyway and that's nearly gone too. I think Algeria is finally removing it this year, it was one of the last country.
  - Svip 5y ago
    Algeria ended it this summer.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/30/leaded-petrol-era-officially-over-as-algeria-ends-pump-sales https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/30/leaded-p...
  - throwaway946513 5y ago
    I'm curious as to if Cuba still uses leaded gasoline, as quite a few years ago I spent a night in Havana during a cruise and some sight-seeing around the old city. I knew that the exhaust of vehicles smelled different from the U.S., or even busy cities in the U.S.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Cuba might not have a choice, thanks to US sanctions.
nikkinana 5y ago
China is poisoning us with all their lead paints in toys and shit.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
> When public health officials in New York, Baltimore, and Chicago tried to enact regulations in the 1950s that threatened the industry's interests, lobbyists visited legislators and governors to get restrictions lifted. They succeeded. When Baltimore's health department called for the removal of lead from paint, the industry countered by proposing and winning a "voluntary" standard, reducing the lead content in paint. When New York City's health department proposed a warning label saying that the product was poisonous to children, the industry rejected the "poison" label and lobbied successfully for another label that simply advised parents not to use it on "toys, furniture, or interior surfaces that might be chewed by children," and deliberately avoided mentioning that lead paint was poisonous. It hired public relations firms to plan out strategies to forestall threats to the lead market. > The lead industry even sought to place the blame for lead poisoning epidemic on parents and children, claiming that the problem was not with the lead paint but with the "uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican" parents who "failed" to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths. Children poisoned by lead, the industry claimed, had a disease that led them to suck on "unnatural objects" and thereby get poisoned. > But the industry wouldn't remove all lead from their products. It fought every attempt at regulation. Industry representatives threatened lawsuits against television stations such as CBS that aired popular shows like Highway Patrol in which the product was depicted as dangerous ... All this despite records that show that the industry knew that their product was poisoning children. You know how many Americans have a weird dislike of government intervention. These are the guys that paid to make that happen.
- GordonS 5y ago
  The level damage that lobbying has caused and continues to cause in the US is absolutely crazy - you could say poisonous. How can this status quo possibly ever be changed though, when the only people who could do so are the ones that benefit from it the most (corrupt politicians)?
- thewarrior 5y ago
  And then lead poisoned voters with poor cognitive skills are more easily manipulated into voting against their own interests or their poverty is used to polarize the rest of the electorate and achieve the same outcome.
adolph 5y ago
Findings This cross-sectional study linking Quest Diagnostics childhood lead testing and US Census data captured individual- and community-level disparities in lead exposure from October 2018 through February 2020. In adjusted models, the proportion of children with detectable (≥1.0 μg/dL) and elevated (≥5.0 μg/dL) [Blood Lead Levels] BLLs increased significantly among those with public insurance and for progressive quintiles of community pre-1950s housing and poverty. Results Of the 1,141,441 children (586,703 boys [51.4%]; mean [SD] age, 2.3 [1.4] years) in the study, more than half of the children tested (576,092 [50.5%; 95% CI, 50.4%-50.6%]) had detectable BLLs, and 21,172 children (1.9% [95% CI, 1.8%-1.9%]) had BLLs of 5.0 μg/dL or more. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2784260 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst...
AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
To add some more color to the discussion: a water filter removing 99% of lead from water can be had for under 50 bucks. https://www.consumerreports.org/products/water-filters-32980/water-filter-pitchers-200280/pur-ultimate-with-lead-reduction-ppt711w-393729/ https://www.consumerreports.org/products/water-filters-32980...
- newaccount74 5y ago
  The average family uses a lot more water than a pitcher like that can filter in a day.
  - ars 5y ago
    You can install 06-250-10-GREEN or 06-250-125-975 in an undersink filter.
  - dpflug 5y ago
    We have a similar one with a larger reservoir. I haven't measured, but it can easily filter several gallons a day. If we needed more, I'd buy a second. If you can, under-sink filters are cheaper/gal and more convenient. Make sure you're using fluoride toothpaste so your pearly whites stay pearly.
  - AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
    Brita uses 2 gallons per day as a guideline [1] for a small filter. Which is pretty much the recommended 2 liters per day per person for the family of four. [1] https://www.hunker.com/13408481/how-often-do-you-really-need-to-replace-a-brita-pitcher-filter https://www.hunker.com/13408481/how-often-do-you-really-need...
    - newaccount74 5y ago
      I was thinking that you'd want to use filtered water for cooking/washing foods/etc and not just for drinking. But I guess just filtering the water you drink is probably already a big win.
- 5y ago
wittyusername 5y ago
We bought some children's sized coat hangars off Amazon and used a lead testing kit on them. They popped positive for lead :( No name brand from China. I wonder what else in our lives might have lead in it..
- dwater 5y ago
  Lead is still popular in alloying metals because it's ductile, easy to work, and easy to machine. I would assume if I was buying a brass product made in China it would have lead in it. I try to buy copper and brass plumbing products made in the US, South Korea, or other countries with strong regulation and legal systems.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Leaded brass fittings are still permitted for non-potable applications. You won't find them at Home Depot and other places that have giant consumer lawsuit targets on their back but if you're buying fittings not commonly used for potable water from sources that mostly do B2B sales you'll still encounter them and (IMO it's basically a non-issue in that context).
  - elsonrodriguez 5y ago
    Just a note, is is almost impossible to buy lead-free brass in the US. Most brass labeled "lead-free" is actually low lead. Naval Brass is the closest I've seen, and it's not exactly at the corner store.
- bhouston 5y ago
  I bet a bunch of Wish, Amazon and AliExpress cheap goods are filled with toxic chemicals.
  - jakub_g 5y ago
    FR gov asked Google and others last month to shadow ban Wish as they're basically a hazardous materials shop. https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against...
mcbuilder 5y ago
I had a horrible experience recently due to a demolition of a 1930s house just a dozen feet away from dozen feet away from our home. I have 3 kids 10 or under, 1 aged 2. The home's exterior was covered in lead paint, probably all original. The contractors doing the job were completely ignorant of the dangers of lead, and did not follow the basic EPA guidelines (e.g. laying down plastic, picking up paint chips, paint chips scattering into our yard, etc). It was basically an illegal operation. We kept mentioning the problem to them, but you could tell they were ignorant of the dangers. The general contractors quote was "I'd be doing this the same if it was my daughter in your house". Anyway, I printed out the EPA guidelines, shouted them down when they fired up the back hoe that they were in violation of federal law. Luckily that stalled them for the day it took the city to get out to the site and shut it down. Now the GC was no idiot, but his general attitude was that we were overblowing the problem. When they resumed work, plastic was laid down, they picked up the paint chips, but none of the workers wore masks. If I didn't aggressively take action, nothing would have been done.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Anyway, I printed out the EPA guidelines, shouted them down when they fired up the back hoe that they were in violation of federal law. When in doubt, call up your city's code enforcement office. They love showing up to work sites and catching contractors violating code. And the contractors will listen, too.
  - afandian 5y ago
    A someone outside of the US (and who never quite understood the state/federal divide!), I'm really curious about what state regulatory enforcement is in now. It seemed [0] that the recent Republican government aimed to make as much damage as possible to these safety nets. Are they still there and functional? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Do...
    - Wohlf 5y ago
      The states and larger cities have their own sets of regulations and enforcement agencies so it's not a simple question, but as best I can tell COVID restrictions and hiring issues have been a bigger blow to regulatory enforcement than the past administration, any changes they made would be marginal in comparison and are likely already undone by the new administration.
aaron695 5y ago
[dead]
samstave 5y ago
Remember when they burnt down that super cockroach infested home, and it turned out it had like 50 years of layers of lead paint on it and the smoke affected a bunch of people in the area I’ll find a link..
samstave 5y ago
Combine this phthalates and Teflon and the Hormonal balance of newborn and frowning young organisms, the the balance of the endocrine system is fucked. —— I have a theory about the seemingly rise in gay/trans people is related to the pesticides and the rise of this… So in the Philippines and other sea countries, pesticides are so heavily pushed to rural farmers to the point where they actually have advertising signs (think political lawn signs) that they place in the rice fields that advertise the pesticide they are spraying on the rice… The exposure to pesticides and phthalates and lead, and the robust bust still fragile chemical balance of the hormonal systems in biological organisms is whacked and results in, my personal opinion, an additive factor to all the different expressions of how humans identify… /r/unpopularopinion
gengelbro 5y ago
This might be my hobby horse, and I've commented to this effect a few times in the past, but here goes: Hobby aviation still uses leaded fuel and this is detectable near regional airports. The primary reason for this that the vast majority of the existing fleet is stuck in the 1970s essentially as new airframes and engine designs are expensive and viewed as risky.
- gengelbro 5y ago
  A huge amount of this, "spraying lead on your head" is not for training or any similar purpose, but for amusement.
  - edrxty 5y ago
    The vast majority is flight training, fulfilling currency requirements and commercial operations (135 charter ops, survey and similar, fire fighting, etc.) Most of the pushback against lead free fuel is actually from the commercial operators that consume the vast majority of the fuel and operate higher compression engines that need the octane boost normally obtained with lead. The recreational side could have switched ages ago if not for the shared infrastructure. The recreational part 91 side is already increasingly using automotive gasoline through newer engines (rotax 91x series), increasingly common EAB airframes and mogas STCs. Given that auto gas is half the price in most areas, the cost sensitive recreational market has already been moving in that direction.
    - gengelbro 5y ago
      > The vast majority is flight training Can you substantiate that claim for me? I've never seen a breakdown, since you've claimed 'vast majority' perhaps you know better.
      - kayfox 5y ago
        https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/general_aviation/CY2018/ https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/g... These stats sorta disprove the OPs comment, but I think these stats kinda bury how a lot of personal flight time is also for currency and flight training, as a lot of pilots schedule personal trips to maintain their currency. Also to note is that a lot of General Aviation is a pipeline for airline pilots and in countries where there is not such a strong general aviation industry there are higher accident rates.
bmitc 5y ago
> “But if you don’t test for it, it’s like it doesn’t exist.” This is exactly it. During our house purchasing process, our state gives you the so-called right to know if lead exists in a house. But all a seller has to do is check on the form that they have no knowledge of lead in the house. The house could literally be filled with it on the walls, door jams, windows, but if they check "we're not sure", then both them and the state have washed their hands of the issue. So basically, you need to test for yourself. Meanwhile, the state has covered their ass by providing the requirement of the disclosure, even though the disclosure is completely worthless. The same goes for radon testing. And it's practically impossible to get an offer accepted if you do not waive your right to test for lead and radon before purchasing. It's just irritating to me that industries and the government go through all this trouble to do nothing but cover their ass and stop right before they do something that would actually help the issue in the real world. Additionally, nearly all of the stuff you do when purchasing a house protects somebody else except you as a buyer. It's amazing to me that there aren't stricter requirements, standards for testing, and regulations around testing for lead and radon, two things that are easy to test for but have seriously adverse health effects. Also, it's surprising just how much stuff still has lead in it. When I was researching ideas for a compost bin in my backyard, many suggested wire mesh (aka chicken wire, wire cloth, etc.). However, I found out that the galvanizing process leaves a fair amount of lead on the wire, which could then leach into the resulting compost, then the ground the compost is used on, and then your garden vegetables. Just touching the stuff at the store now means you have lead dust on your hands. Even researching what soldering wire to use is a pain because apparently leaded solder is just so much "better" when it comes to flowing than non-leaded. It just doesn't seem to be taken that seriously at the hobbyist level (whereas my understanding is that industrial processes already have switched to non-leaded solder). I get that it's easier to use, but what about when kids or pets are around, or you forget to wash your hands, or when disposing of it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 5y ago
  > But all a seller has to do is check on the form that they have no knowledge of lead in the house. The house could literally be filled with it on the walls, door jams, windows, but if they check "we're not sure", then both them and the state have washed their hands of the issue You're using moralizing language, but what else do you think could happen here? Barring government funding, by-the-book remediation costs a lot of money. So the two options are either completely remediating the lead and offer that as a selling point, or just kicking the can down the road ("I don't know but it was painted before 1978 so make your own informed guess"). If the seller checked the box for positive existence of lead, they would be doing you no favors since you'd be getting the exact same physical house, but would also have to check the known-lead box when selling the house down the line. If you only want to buy a house that has been fully remediated, you could make your offer contingent upon that. But since your offer has to be competitive with the rest of the market, that would cost a similar amount to buying the house as it is and then doing your own remediation afterwards. If you go to rent that house out and the renters have small kids, then you can no longer kick the can down the road. It makes for a painful immediate situation, but barring government funded remediation or straight up mandating that every bit of lead paint needs to be remediated before a house can be sold (despite it being fine for the majority of people), I don't see how else it could be handled.
k2enemy 5y ago
A few years ago I bought a 90 year old house and it was an eye opening experience. My state has fairly strict lead laws and a lead paint test is required if you purchase a house built before a certain date and have children below a certain age. But I only knew that because I carefully read all paperwork in the process. No realtor mentioned it, but begrudgingly agreed when asked about it. None of my friends with kids had done a lead test when they purchased homes built before the cutoff date. Many of whom have gone on to do renovations. So I get the lead test (independent lead testing company as required by state law) and many painted wooden surface had lead paint at the base layer (but not the top). The required mediation was for all lead paint to be removed from friction surfaces and windowsills, and all other surfaces needed intact paint over the lead paint. It cost $40k for the remediation and they did an absolutely horrible job. Zero common sense. It didn't fit the letter of the law or spirit of the law. The house would have been hardly safer than before mediation. Yet it passed independent inspection with no problem. I had to fight hard to get the remediation company to come back and fix the sloppy work. It took almost $60k and delayed moving in to the house for four months. I came away from the experience convinced that the lead remediation operations in my area are a racket. The inspectors don't care. The remediators don't care. And I only know one other family that even bothered to do the required testing when they bought their house. And this is in a fairly affluent area. So it does not surprise me that we have a lead poisoning problem.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  There's a reason people avoid the testing. It's because the remediation companies are a racket and the fact of learning you have lead in the house is value destructive way beyond the value gained from the knowledge. My house was built in 1926. I'm sure it had lead paint. The windows have all been replaced with (crappy) vinyl windows. If that wasn't the case, we'd have done it, but otherwise, I had no intention to perform any testing for lead paint.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  Sloppy remediation can make the problem worse. Can you talk more about the work they did on your house?
denimnerd42 5y ago
I live in a 1920s home. No asbestos that I know of thankfully but it does have lead paint that's been covered by 20+ layers of paint. The windows are the biggest concern since they are original and in relatively poor condition. They are painted shut so no issues of paint chipping off during opening. Unfortunately single pane windows are just prone to condense water which leads the paint to chip so annual re-painting is what I do. My young toddler loves playing on the windows and there's not much one can do to stop him. I just try to wash his hands before meals. Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. I am going to switch doctors and try to push harder at the next checkup. I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. I'm sure the neighborhood has lead all over in the soil so it'd be nice to keep an eye on the levels. There's also some more modern concerns like the shredded tires used in one playground or the crumb rubber used in another.
- cure 5y ago
  > Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. I am going to switch doctors and try to push harder at the next checkup. I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. Huh, yeah, sounds like you need a better pediatrician. That's not cool. Several states in the Northeast also have mandatory testing for lead levels for young children.
- howdydoo 5y ago
  >I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary Ask to get that refusal in writing. I bet they'll change their mind.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. It's certainly not part of the usual screening tests but it would make sense for certain populations. Lead exposure seems to be more common in the USA, the CDC even recommends testing. In my country lead exposure is most common in certain jobs and those workers are certainly tested every 6 months or so. > I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. The finger prick test is more sensitive. It has a higher rate of false positives. A negative result is good but a positive result must be followed up with a proper blood test.
newbamboo 5y ago
This is why the romans couldn’t accomplish much. They would go to watch Christians being fed to the lions. Not at all unlike contemporary American culture. I hate lead so much.
exact_string 5y ago
In some European countries there is a New Year tradition of melting lead and pouring it into water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdomancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdomancy). The sale of these kits was only banned in 2018.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  TIL! There's similar thing in Poland but with wax and on 29th November (St. Andrew's). Arguably, less harmful than using lead :)
dionidium 5y ago
I always come away from these articles about lead more confused than before. I grew up in a house that almost certainly had lead paint. We currently live in a house (in Rhode Island) that almost certainly has lead paint (an initial test was inconclusive, but it's very likely). Millions and millions of households have lead paint. So why was the kid in this article found to have levels many, many times higher than the average kid living in houses with lead paint? What are the practical concerns for a parent living in such a house? What happened here? It's not even remotely clear.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Presumably living in a house with a lot of old flaking paint with paint chips all over the place. Which is the reason it's generally a class/income problem; houses of poorer people are often less well-maintained--especially if they're rented. In general, the houses with lead paint owned by people who are better off have the lead fairly well covered with newer paint. And/or lead pipes which haven't been updated.
jquast 5y ago
Just bought a 1985 home in rural Michigan with well water, testing for lead was never required by any part of the process. Post-sale I paid for a detailed water analysis, about $200, which found 4PPB of Lead. I called a few plumbers and they weren’t willing to do any inspection or make any recommendations. It cost about $6k in total to install a (Kinetico) water softener & RO system to remove it from my drinking water. I previously lived in Flint during the early few years of the changes that introduced high lead levels in the city drinking water. I tell this to doctors but they suggest there isn’t any tests they can do, as it is deposited into tissues and bones and not really found in blood tests, that such tests are typically for children. I guess I’m just saying there is no doubt I’ve had a great deal of lead in my drinking water throughout my life so I think a lot about how it shaped me and the communities I’ve lived in, how it shaped my experience with school and work. How many people are being treated for anxiety, anger, or depression in a seemingly incurable medicated loop, all the while unknowingly exposed to lead? Anyway as a PSA, I suggest that you should only believe that your water is lead-free when it has been tested directly from the tap and you have a report of 0PPB. Landlords and home sellers have a financial incentive to ensure that such testing is never done, and if lead is found, I don’t know what can be done other than pulling out your wallet one way or another
nfw2 5y ago
In 2014 I consulted my father, a lawyer, in writing an amicus brief to a lawsuit relating to lead exposure in baby food. Basically, lead exposure testing in food can have highly-variable results because of how the particles adhere to the food substrate, variability between food batches, and the way the exposure tests work. Because of this, lead exposure testing generally involves testing several samples and taking the mean to estimate the real level of exposure. Despite several samples showing high levels of lead, the defense got off by claiming that the geometric mean was the correct average to use to infer the total exposure. This is obviously incorrect because the geometric mean is a multiplicative mean. With a geometric mean, all you need is one sample with lead exposure close to 0 to get a mean that's close to 0, even if all the other samples tested positive for extreme levels of lead exposure. Just as a sanity check, we checked official literature on food toxicology, and every resource we could find stated that using arithmetic mean was the correct methodology, and not one mentioned geometric means. The defense ended up winning the case, which is absolutely horrifying because 1.) baby food is the most dangerous product imaginable to contain lead and 2.) now there is a legal precedent to defend yourself against lead exposure claims using total BS statistics. Edit: thankfully, it looks like the FDA is getting involved now https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/10/01/baby-foods-containing-heavy-metal-werent-recalled-report-finds/5933175001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/10/01/baby-foods-co...
- BeetleB 5y ago
  > With a geometric mean, all you need is one sample with lead exposure close to 0 to get a mean that's close to 0, even if all the other samples tested positive for extreme levels of lead exposure. Not going to comment on whether arithmetic or geometric mean is more appropriate, but your comment is incorrect. Yes, a number close to 0 brings everything down. But then you take the nth-root, which brings it back up again. Some examples - assume one of the numbers is 0.01 (close to 0). 2 samples means square root - that becomes 0.1 3 samples means cube root - that becomes 0.215 10 samples means 10th root - that becomes 0.63 20 samples means 20th root - that becomes 0.794 The more samples, the less impact an outlier like a number close to 0 will have. Put another way, the arithmetic mean has the same problem. Extreme outliers can greatly influence the sum. But if you have enough samples, each extreme outlier is tempered a bit by dividing by n.
jhallenworld 5y ago
The tap water pH in my town is 9.3. This seems extreme until you realize the lead risk with anything lower. https://www.belmont-ma.gov/dpw-water-division/faq/what-is-the-ph-of-belmont%E2%80%99s-drinking-water https://www.belmont-ma.gov/dpw-water-division/faq/what-is-th...
trezemanero 5y ago
teehee amongus sus
theptip 5y ago
I suspect that if we did an ROI calculation on government funding to remove lead from buildings, we’d find a very good return vs. other spending in the infrastructure bills. This could serve as a solid backlog of Keynesian stimulus to inject money & jobs into the economy in recessions. I recall in 2008 the recovery act included funds for broadband build-out, which took years to actually get through planning, and so did not serve the stated goal of getting people back to work; seems like you could do many of these smaller lead removal projects on a much shorter timeframe (especially during a recession when construction resources would tend to be underutilized as investment dries up).
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  I suspect ROI will be negative (especially given sky-high cost of US infrastructure projects) - lead is safe if not consumed inside. And AFAIK it happens mostly in two situations - old chipping paint and lead pipes. Even chipping paint should be a problem either when paint dust is everywhere or when children are playing with paint chips. Lead pipes are more dangerous and should be replaced but even lead pipes leak significant lead amounts only if pH is high (or water flow is high). In comments to this thread I see what looks to me like a moral panic - people leaving in safe conditions are full of fear (and who are really unsafe are not represented on HN). Lead is not something which can kill you at a distance, or if you consume 1 μg of it.
questiondev 5y ago
i worked construction for a bit, and you wouldn’t believe the exceptions we made for certain “historic” buildings. i remember discussing this with my foreman, we were in an impoverished area of the city that just so happened to be “historical” by the cities standards. i am a-ok with preserving the past but these engineers told us that when we pull out the old lead piping, we gotta replace it with another lead pipe to “preserve the historical value” of the property. this was the lateral going into the housing from the water main. do you realize how ridiculous that is? their excuse was that lead pipes deal with expansion and contraction better than pvc, or some other type of piping. and they said that the inside of the pipes are now coated with some type of sealant that keeps the lead from seeping into the residence water supply. so next time you buy a city property make sure you check the water laterals, you can get this information from the city engineering office. i think the records are found in the same building as where you get your construction permits but you’ll have to double check.
thehappypm 5y ago
Huge amount of misconceptions in the comments. I bought a house and my realtor never suggested a lead test. Basically it’s on the homeowner or the buyer to request it, because lead is such a low risk to adults, it’s better to be willingly ignorant. This is especially true in urban environments where it’s far less likely that a kid will ever live there. At the same time, you can 100% test for lead as part of an inspection. It’s just that there’s not a lot you can do with the information. If it’s lead free that’s awesome. Likely it’s not though, if it’s old. Sellers won’t really lower the price because older homes are basically guaranteed to have lead, so the test just clarified what should be assumed. Now, I had a test done and there was a lot of lead. I had it mitigated. Lead paint was stripped to bare wood in tons of places, but it’s actually safe to have lead paint in places like intact walls. Walls don’t chip. Windowsills, door jambs, they chip. Even a very strict town in a strict state like Massachusetts won’t make you fully 100% de-lead, you have to remove anything with a risk of a kid eating it, or it sloughing off (like a door or window rubbing). All in all it cost me a few thousand dollars but I feel much better about the place.
forix 5y ago
As a kid (~10-11yo) growing up in Eastern Europe my friends and I would look for old car batteries left by dumpsters. We'd break them, take the lead grids out and clean them up, build a small fire, melt the lead, and then pour it into molds we'd make of wood, usually in the shape of ninja stars to play with. Fun times!
leemcd56 5y ago
My wife and I, along with our two girls, recently moved out of my MIL’s and into a building that serves as our home and my business (we do computer repair). During a wellness checkup, my youngest had to do a lead test because of the age of our new home (built in 1931), and they discovered she had lead in her system. At the time it was at level 14, so they recommended we do some tests, and try to do our best to keep her away from any chipped paint. It was another four months until she was checked again, and we thought we had done so much better, but her level was up to 22. The health department had to come investigate. Needless to say, our new home is covered in lead, and given our financial situation, this being my source of income and our home, we’re in a peculiar situation. We’ve got a lot of surfaces to treat, and her levels will take some time to go down. The building owner never informed us, and by law they’re not responsible for fixing any of it, but even so we’re not holding it against them.
gh0std3v 5y ago
> "The lead epidemic is the longest-running epidemic in our country" This is probably one of the most depressing lines I read in this article. I've watched some of John Oliver's videos on PFAs and Lead (regardless of what you think about his other political views, I would say his videos on subject matter like this is quite informative). It's astonishing to think that organizations like the EPA were formed in the latter half of the twentieth century to remedy the negligence in making chemically and biologically safe products for human beings to use. Seriously, up until the 50s we were making "radioactive toothpaste" and advertising it to the general population as being safe and effective: https://awesci.com/radioactive-toothpaste-shocking-ad-50s/ https://awesci.com/radioactive-toothpaste-shocking-ad-50s/

246 points by CRConrad 5y ago

This reminds me of the Flint, Michigan water drinking "controversy": https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/05/04/flint-water-crisis-michael-moore-barack-obama/83940370/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-... Obama In Flint: 'Can I Get Some Water?' | NBC News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjugN-nUHh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjugN-nUHh8

refurb 5y ago
This is true. There was a paper that shower Flint children’s lead level went up slightly during the “crisis” but were still less than half what they were a decade earlier.

errcorrectcode 5y ago

Awareness with surveillance is important. Leaded gasoline (TEL), lead pipes, and leaded paint were a problem for IQ before the 1980's that most Americans view as "solved" today. https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth Here's what the CDC recommends: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources.htm

hinkley 5y ago
Urban areas still have high lead content in the soil. The obvious one is around the foundation due to paint flecks, but also any soil near the street, due to accumulation from car exhaust.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
It sounds like a problem of poverty means old buildings were never decontaminated.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  It's also an issue of disrepair. Any house built in the 70s (or before) in California probably has lead paint. Which is a lot of them - that's when the primary population booms occurred. Those houses aren't being stripped of all paint, instead you need to keep the paint in good condition.
  - geekbird 5y ago
    I literally can't get my 1904 Victorian house painted with any of the modern energy saving paint on the outside because the contractors all look at the age of the house and say "that's a lead job" and then can't find a remediation contractor, plus want to charge me $100k for a paint job. But the house has been pressure washed and repainted with lead-free pain by the former owner. Has me tearing my hair, since I'm disabled and can't climb ladders to do it myself. So my house has a decaying paint job.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- johncessna 5y ago
  It's a hard problem. Remediating lead is expensive. The standard appears that you sign an attestation that you don't know there's lead in the house. This leads to a situation where no one actually does any testing. Lead pipes and contaminated ground have their own challenges, but I was under the impression that the cheap way to remediate lead paint was to paint over it. Is that not the case, or have these places not been painted in 45 years?
  - errcorrectcode 5y ago
    It's "screw the poor by sticking ones head in the sand." Paint chips. Kids touch the paint underneath, don't wash their hands, and then ingest toxic residue with their food.
    - 5y ago

willis936 5y ago

I just put in a countertop RO system. It's likely too late for me, but if I have kids I'll do my best to keep them from having dementia.

errcorrectcode 5y ago
Never drank city water, it's always disgusting regardless if it's toxic or not. I've put in and maintained 3 RO under sink systems, but I've never heard of a countertop one. Does it have a product tank? How much are the consumable parts? Currently, since I'm in an apartment, I have a subscription at an independent commercial/retail water store that has a 10-stage system. My mom's house has a 3-stage whole house water filter down to .2 micron, a water softener, and a 6-stage RO filter with UV sterilization. The whole house and RO systems use commodity parts and filters so they're not as expensive as those branded ones with proprietary "easy change" filters.
- willis936 5y ago
  I bought an Express Water setup that cost $150 with a 3 year supply of filters for $90. I also got an alkaline stage that I put just before the carbon post filter (it wouldn't fit in the kit otherwise). Water input and waste output screws into the kitchen sink aerator. There is no tank, which was the biggest con to me when weighing my options. I considered getting a tank to put inline with the output, but I don't think my pressure is high enough and my SO would not appreciate the counter space loss. I've been using a large Brita tank in my fridge for many years, so I just fill that up daily. It's about 30 minutes of babysitting: very reasonable while doing other chores. It isn't as convenient as it could be, but its a solution that fits the shape of the problem.
  - errcorrectcode 5y ago
    Sounds like you got taken for a ride. You can get a real RO setup for $150 from wateranywhere.com. They're the retail side of AMI who makes RO membranes in SoCal. The filters need to be changed 2-4 times per year, and the membrane 1-2 also. That's going to cost a lot more than 90. If you're not changing the membrane, that's gross. If it is, I don't see how they can do it that cheaply unless it's an ineffective system. A permeate pump (passive device accomplishing pressure exchange) increases the product-to-waste ratio greatly. In all honesty, a 100 gpd system with a tank is the sweet spot because tankless (200 gpd) is too slow. Alkaline is a magical, hocus-pocus trend for Hollywood wellness, "cleanses", and hippies with crystals. They sell that nonsense at my water store because enough ignorant fools asked for it and are willing to shell out money because some celebrity probably endorsed it. Britas are solely for taste, expensive to operate, and filter next to nothing.

paulpauper 5y ago

As usual, bad reporting. "‘We’re losing IQ points’: the lead poisoning crisis unfolding among US children" no mention in the article how many IQ points. based on my research, it's not that much.

Proven 5y ago
As usual, the Guardian pop-sci crap. It's almost winter, no catastrophic heat waves in the hemisphere so what choice do they have...
errcorrectcode 5y ago
Citations and data needed.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 5y ago
I think the reporting is pretty good since it cites most of the claims. However you are correct that none of the sources say how many points you would lose.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"based on my research, it's not that much." How much is not much? What if all i had is not much to begin with?
queuebert 5y ago
I mean, does it matter? I would think there is no acceptable level of IQ loss.

oh_sigh 5y ago

There seems to be a disturbing lack of interest in figuring out how these people are actually getting poisoned. Will replacing all the lead pipes actually have an effect? Why is it that hundreds of thousands of people in Rhode Island drink water from lead pipes, but only hundreds are poisoned per year? What about other causes, like lead-based paint exposure, or less obvious things like giving your kid 5oz of fruit juice per day[0]? Every non-child pictured in the article is obese and I begin to wonder what their knowledge or interest in nutrition is - I know multiple people who feed their child way more than 5oz of fruit juice per day, even after I told them about heavy metal concerns, because they can't believe that 'getting fruit' can be bad. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead-are-in-your-fruit-juice-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead...

hpoe 5y ago
Shhh, don't bring that up. Come on over here we have a nice identity driven controversy to get you invested in, look at how bad this [OTHER GROUP] is, they did this bad thing. Isn't that much more inflammatory, doesn't that make you want to click and complain more. Good, focus on what we tell you is important. Good see don't you feel that dopamine, doesn't it feel good to be angry about things your identity is invested into.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post this kind of thing to HN. Like most high-indignation/low-information comments, it's well below the quality line for interesting discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dm03514 5y ago
I'm wondering this too, which exposure vectors? How much exposure is necessary? I really couldn't find anything on it? Will one inhale of lead dust cause poisoning or a spike in levels? Does it require consistent ingestion? Like we know lead is bad for children and the best case is lead free environment, but that's not available to most of us. What's the in between? How does exposure manifest in lead blood levels? I just bought an old house with known lead paint. I had as much remediated as I could but there is still (covered) lead paint on the radiators, door casings, stairs, soil and porches. What sort of exposure does this provide my children? How likely are these to be airborne? How much ingested lead dust is necessary to affect my children's blood levels? We had a baseline blood test before we moved in, but now it's just waiting 4 months until their updated test, and me being an anxious mess and wiping everything down and touching up paint constantly.

ryankask 5y ago

As an American living in the UK, it's interesting to see the disparity in almost all aspects of the treatment of lead. In the US, for example, there is an abundance of research and activism coupled with laws and a huge abatement/remediation industry. In the UK, however, where there is a large stock of old housing that very likely contains lead paint, pipes, and other products, there is nothing comparable. Are children in the UK silently suffering from lead poisoning, or "losing IQ points"? I have lead paint in my house and If I took my children to get tested at the GP, I would expect a strange look in response. Compare this to asbestos, where a survey is always recommended when purchasing an older property in the UK. While I think a lead survey would be suggested in the US if purchasing a pre-1978 property (and is required in some areas when renting to a family with children), I would guess only a handful are done here every year.

xwolfi 5y ago
In France lead paint completely disappeared. But the main driver of criminal behaviour and loss of IQ is lead gasoline you breath all day long anyway and that's nearly gone too. I think Algeria is finally removing it this year, it was one of the last country.
- Svip 5y ago
  Algeria ended it this summer.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/30/leaded-petrol-era-officially-over-as-algeria-ends-pump-sales https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/30/leaded-p...
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  I'm curious as to if Cuba still uses leaded gasoline, as quite a few years ago I spent a night in Havana during a cruise and some sight-seeing around the old city. I knew that the exhaust of vehicles smelled different from the U.S., or even busy cities in the U.S.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Cuba might not have a choice, thanks to US sanctions.

nikkinana 5y ago

China is poisoning us with all their lead paints in toys and shit.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

> When public health officials in New York, Baltimore, and Chicago tried to enact regulations in the 1950s that threatened the industry's interests, lobbyists visited legislators and governors to get restrictions lifted. They succeeded. When Baltimore's health department called for the removal of lead from paint, the industry countered by proposing and winning a "voluntary" standard, reducing the lead content in paint. When New York City's health department proposed a warning label saying that the product was poisonous to children, the industry rejected the "poison" label and lobbied successfully for another label that simply advised parents not to use it on "toys, furniture, or interior surfaces that might be chewed by children," and deliberately avoided mentioning that lead paint was poisonous. It hired public relations firms to plan out strategies to forestall threats to the lead market. > The lead industry even sought to place the blame for lead poisoning epidemic on parents and children, claiming that the problem was not with the lead paint but with the "uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican" parents who "failed" to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths. Children poisoned by lead, the industry claimed, had a disease that led them to suck on "unnatural objects" and thereby get poisoned. > But the industry wouldn't remove all lead from their products. It fought every attempt at regulation. Industry representatives threatened lawsuits against television stations such as CBS that aired popular shows like Highway Patrol in which the product was depicted as dangerous ... All this despite records that show that the industry knew that their product was poisoning children. You know how many Americans have a weird dislike of government intervention. These are the guys that paid to make that happen.

GordonS 5y ago
The level damage that lobbying has caused and continues to cause in the US is absolutely crazy - you could say poisonous. How can this status quo possibly ever be changed though, when the only people who could do so are the ones that benefit from it the most (corrupt politicians)?
thewarrior 5y ago
And then lead poisoned voters with poor cognitive skills are more easily manipulated into voting against their own interests or their poverty is used to polarize the rest of the electorate and achieve the same outcome.

adolph 5y ago

Findings This cross-sectional study linking Quest Diagnostics childhood lead testing and US Census data captured individual- and community-level disparities in lead exposure from October 2018 through February 2020. In adjusted models, the proportion of children with detectable (≥1.0 μg/dL) and elevated (≥5.0 μg/dL) [Blood Lead Levels] BLLs increased significantly among those with public insurance and for progressive quintiles of community pre-1950s housing and poverty. Results Of the 1,141,441 children (586,703 boys [51.4%]; mean [SD] age, 2.3 [1.4] years) in the study, more than half of the children tested (576,092 [50.5%; 95% CI, 50.4%-50.6%]) had detectable BLLs, and 21,172 children (1.9% [95% CI, 1.8%-1.9%]) had BLLs of 5.0 μg/dL or more. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2784260 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst...

AlexTWithBeard 5y ago

To add some more color to the discussion: a water filter removing 99% of lead from water can be had for under 50 bucks. https://www.consumerreports.org/products/water-filters-32980/water-filter-pitchers-200280/pur-ultimate-with-lead-reduction-ppt711w-393729/ https://www.consumerreports.org/products/water-filters-32980...

newaccount74 5y ago
The average family uses a lot more water than a pitcher like that can filter in a day.
- ars 5y ago
  You can install 06-250-10-GREEN or 06-250-125-975 in an undersink filter.
- dpflug 5y ago
  We have a similar one with a larger reservoir. I haven't measured, but it can easily filter several gallons a day. If we needed more, I'd buy a second. If you can, under-sink filters are cheaper/gal and more convenient. Make sure you're using fluoride toothpaste so your pearly whites stay pearly.
- AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
  Brita uses 2 gallons per day as a guideline [1] for a small filter. Which is pretty much the recommended 2 liters per day per person for the family of four. [1] https://www.hunker.com/13408481/how-often-do-you-really-need-to-replace-a-brita-pitcher-filter https://www.hunker.com/13408481/how-often-do-you-really-need...
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    I was thinking that you'd want to use filtered water for cooking/washing foods/etc and not just for drinking. But I guess just filtering the water you drink is probably already a big win.
5y ago

wittyusername 5y ago

We bought some children's sized coat hangars off Amazon and used a lead testing kit on them. They popped positive for lead :( No name brand from China. I wonder what else in our lives might have lead in it..

dwater 5y ago
Lead is still popular in alloying metals because it's ductile, easy to work, and easy to machine. I would assume if I was buying a brass product made in China it would have lead in it. I try to buy copper and brass plumbing products made in the US, South Korea, or other countries with strong regulation and legal systems.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Leaded brass fittings are still permitted for non-potable applications. You won't find them at Home Depot and other places that have giant consumer lawsuit targets on their back but if you're buying fittings not commonly used for potable water from sources that mostly do B2B sales you'll still encounter them and (IMO it's basically a non-issue in that context).
- elsonrodriguez 5y ago
  Just a note, is is almost impossible to buy lead-free brass in the US. Most brass labeled "lead-free" is actually low lead. Naval Brass is the closest I've seen, and it's not exactly at the corner store.
bhouston 5y ago
I bet a bunch of Wish, Amazon and AliExpress cheap goods are filled with toxic chemicals.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  FR gov asked Google and others last month to shadow ban Wish as they're basically a hazardous materials shop. https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against...

mcbuilder 5y ago

I had a horrible experience recently due to a demolition of a 1930s house just a dozen feet away from dozen feet away from our home. I have 3 kids 10 or under, 1 aged 2. The home's exterior was covered in lead paint, probably all original. The contractors doing the job were completely ignorant of the dangers of lead, and did not follow the basic EPA guidelines (e.g. laying down plastic, picking up paint chips, paint chips scattering into our yard, etc). It was basically an illegal operation. We kept mentioning the problem to them, but you could tell they were ignorant of the dangers. The general contractors quote was "I'd be doing this the same if it was my daughter in your house". Anyway, I printed out the EPA guidelines, shouted them down when they fired up the back hoe that they were in violation of federal law. Luckily that stalled them for the day it took the city to get out to the site and shut it down. Now the GC was no idiot, but his general attitude was that we were overblowing the problem. When they resumed work, plastic was laid down, they picked up the paint chips, but none of the workers wore masks. If I didn't aggressively take action, nothing would have been done.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Anyway, I printed out the EPA guidelines, shouted them down when they fired up the back hoe that they were in violation of federal law. When in doubt, call up your city's code enforcement office. They love showing up to work sites and catching contractors violating code. And the contractors will listen, too.
- afandian 5y ago
  A someone outside of the US (and who never quite understood the state/federal divide!), I'm really curious about what state regulatory enforcement is in now. It seemed [0] that the recent Republican government aimed to make as much damage as possible to these safety nets. Are they still there and functional? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Do...
  - Wohlf 5y ago
    The states and larger cities have their own sets of regulations and enforcement agencies so it's not a simple question, but as best I can tell COVID restrictions and hiring issues have been a bigger blow to regulatory enforcement than the past administration, any changes they made would be marginal in comparison and are likely already undone by the new administration.

aaron695 5y ago

[dead]

samstave 5y ago

Remember when they burnt down that super cockroach infested home, and it turned out it had like 50 years of layers of lead paint on it and the smoke affected a bunch of people in the area I’ll find a link..

samstave 5y ago

Combine this phthalates and Teflon and the Hormonal balance of newborn and frowning young organisms, the the balance of the endocrine system is fucked. —— I have a theory about the seemingly rise in gay/trans people is related to the pesticides and the rise of this… So in the Philippines and other sea countries, pesticides are so heavily pushed to rural farmers to the point where they actually have advertising signs (think political lawn signs) that they place in the rice fields that advertise the pesticide they are spraying on the rice… The exposure to pesticides and phthalates and lead, and the robust bust still fragile chemical balance of the hormonal systems in biological organisms is whacked and results in, my personal opinion, an additive factor to all the different expressions of how humans identify… /r/unpopularopinion

gengelbro 5y ago

This might be my hobby horse, and I've commented to this effect a few times in the past, but here goes: Hobby aviation still uses leaded fuel and this is detectable near regional airports. The primary reason for this that the vast majority of the existing fleet is stuck in the 1970s essentially as new airframes and engine designs are expensive and viewed as risky.

gengelbro 5y ago
A huge amount of this, "spraying lead on your head" is not for training or any similar purpose, but for amusement.
- edrxty 5y ago
  The vast majority is flight training, fulfilling currency requirements and commercial operations (135 charter ops, survey and similar, fire fighting, etc.) Most of the pushback against lead free fuel is actually from the commercial operators that consume the vast majority of the fuel and operate higher compression engines that need the octane boost normally obtained with lead. The recreational side could have switched ages ago if not for the shared infrastructure. The recreational part 91 side is already increasingly using automotive gasoline through newer engines (rotax 91x series), increasingly common EAB airframes and mogas STCs. Given that auto gas is half the price in most areas, the cost sensitive recreational market has already been moving in that direction.
  - gengelbro 5y ago
    > The vast majority is flight training Can you substantiate that claim for me? I've never seen a breakdown, since you've claimed 'vast majority' perhaps you know better.
    - kayfox 5y ago
      https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/general_aviation/CY2018/ https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/g... These stats sorta disprove the OPs comment, but I think these stats kinda bury how a lot of personal flight time is also for currency and flight training, as a lot of pilots schedule personal trips to maintain their currency. Also to note is that a lot of General Aviation is a pipeline for airline pilots and in countries where there is not such a strong general aviation industry there are higher accident rates.

bmitc 5y ago

> “But if you don’t test for it, it’s like it doesn’t exist.” This is exactly it. During our house purchasing process, our state gives you the so-called right to know if lead exists in a house. But all a seller has to do is check on the form that they have no knowledge of lead in the house. The house could literally be filled with it on the walls, door jams, windows, but if they check "we're not sure", then both them and the state have washed their hands of the issue. So basically, you need to test for yourself. Meanwhile, the state has covered their ass by providing the requirement of the disclosure, even though the disclosure is completely worthless. The same goes for radon testing. And it's practically impossible to get an offer accepted if you do not waive your right to test for lead and radon before purchasing. It's just irritating to me that industries and the government go through all this trouble to do nothing but cover their ass and stop right before they do something that would actually help the issue in the real world. Additionally, nearly all of the stuff you do when purchasing a house protects somebody else except you as a buyer. It's amazing to me that there aren't stricter requirements, standards for testing, and regulations around testing for lead and radon, two things that are easy to test for but have seriously adverse health effects. Also, it's surprising just how much stuff still has lead in it. When I was researching ideas for a compost bin in my backyard, many suggested wire mesh (aka chicken wire, wire cloth, etc.). However, I found out that the galvanizing process leaves a fair amount of lead on the wire, which could then leach into the resulting compost, then the ground the compost is used on, and then your garden vegetables. Just touching the stuff at the store now means you have lead dust on your hands. Even researching what soldering wire to use is a pain because apparently leaded solder is just so much "better" when it comes to flowing than non-leaded. It just doesn't seem to be taken that seriously at the hobbyist level (whereas my understanding is that industrial processes already have switched to non-leaded solder). I get that it's easier to use, but what about when kids or pets are around, or you forget to wash your hands, or when disposing of it?

deleted 5y ago
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mindslight 5y ago
> But all a seller has to do is check on the form that they have no knowledge of lead in the house. The house could literally be filled with it on the walls, door jams, windows, but if they check "we're not sure", then both them and the state have washed their hands of the issue You're using moralizing language, but what else do you think could happen here? Barring government funding, by-the-book remediation costs a lot of money. So the two options are either completely remediating the lead and offer that as a selling point, or just kicking the can down the road ("I don't know but it was painted before 1978 so make your own informed guess"). If the seller checked the box for positive existence of lead, they would be doing you no favors since you'd be getting the exact same physical house, but would also have to check the known-lead box when selling the house down the line. If you only want to buy a house that has been fully remediated, you could make your offer contingent upon that. But since your offer has to be competitive with the rest of the market, that would cost a similar amount to buying the house as it is and then doing your own remediation afterwards. If you go to rent that house out and the renters have small kids, then you can no longer kick the can down the road. It makes for a painful immediate situation, but barring government funded remediation or straight up mandating that every bit of lead paint needs to be remediated before a house can be sold (despite it being fine for the majority of people), I don't see how else it could be handled.

k2enemy 5y ago

A few years ago I bought a 90 year old house and it was an eye opening experience. My state has fairly strict lead laws and a lead paint test is required if you purchase a house built before a certain date and have children below a certain age. But I only knew that because I carefully read all paperwork in the process. No realtor mentioned it, but begrudgingly agreed when asked about it. None of my friends with kids had done a lead test when they purchased homes built before the cutoff date. Many of whom have gone on to do renovations. So I get the lead test (independent lead testing company as required by state law) and many painted wooden surface had lead paint at the base layer (but not the top). The required mediation was for all lead paint to be removed from friction surfaces and windowsills, and all other surfaces needed intact paint over the lead paint. It cost $40k for the remediation and they did an absolutely horrible job. Zero common sense. It didn't fit the letter of the law or spirit of the law. The house would have been hardly safer than before mediation. Yet it passed independent inspection with no problem. I had to fight hard to get the remediation company to come back and fix the sloppy work. It took almost $60k and delayed moving in to the house for four months. I came away from the experience convinced that the lead remediation operations in my area are a racket. The inspectors don't care. The remediators don't care. And I only know one other family that even bothered to do the required testing when they bought their house. And this is in a fairly affluent area. So it does not surprise me that we have a lead poisoning problem.

sokoloff 5y ago
There's a reason people avoid the testing. It's because the remediation companies are a racket and the fact of learning you have lead in the house is value destructive way beyond the value gained from the knowledge. My house was built in 1926. I'm sure it had lead paint. The windows have all been replaced with (crappy) vinyl windows. If that wasn't the case, we'd have done it, but otherwise, I had no intention to perform any testing for lead paint.
nate_meurer 5y ago
Sloppy remediation can make the problem worse. Can you talk more about the work they did on your house?

denimnerd42 5y ago

I live in a 1920s home. No asbestos that I know of thankfully but it does have lead paint that's been covered by 20+ layers of paint. The windows are the biggest concern since they are original and in relatively poor condition. They are painted shut so no issues of paint chipping off during opening. Unfortunately single pane windows are just prone to condense water which leads the paint to chip so annual re-painting is what I do. My young toddler loves playing on the windows and there's not much one can do to stop him. I just try to wash his hands before meals. Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. I am going to switch doctors and try to push harder at the next checkup. I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. I'm sure the neighborhood has lead all over in the soil so it'd be nice to keep an eye on the levels. There's also some more modern concerns like the shredded tires used in one playground or the crumb rubber used in another.

cure 5y ago
> Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. I am going to switch doctors and try to push harder at the next checkup. I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. Huh, yeah, sounds like you need a better pediatrician. That's not cool. Several states in the Northeast also have mandatory testing for lead levels for young children.
howdydoo 5y ago
>I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary Ask to get that refusal in writing. I bet they'll change their mind.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Also it's frustrating because I asked my pediatrician for blood lead test and they wouldn't do it as they said it's unnecessary. It's certainly not part of the usual screening tests but it would make sense for certain populations. Lead exposure seems to be more common in the USA, the CDC even recommends testing. In my country lead exposure is most common in certain jobs and those workers are certainly tested every 6 months or so. > I've heard there is a finger prick test that's not very good and then a blood draw that's actually fairly good but of course more invasive. The finger prick test is more sensitive. It has a higher rate of false positives. A negative result is good but a positive result must be followed up with a proper blood test.

newbamboo 5y ago

This is why the romans couldn’t accomplish much. They would go to watch Christians being fed to the lions. Not at all unlike contemporary American culture. I hate lead so much.

exact_string 5y ago

In some European countries there is a New Year tradition of melting lead and pouring it into water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdomancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdomancy). The sale of these kits was only banned in 2018.

jakub_g 5y ago
TIL! There's similar thing in Poland but with wax and on 29th November (St. Andrew's). Arguably, less harmful than using lead :)

dionidium 5y ago

I always come away from these articles about lead more confused than before. I grew up in a house that almost certainly had lead paint. We currently live in a house (in Rhode Island) that almost certainly has lead paint (an initial test was inconclusive, but it's very likely). Millions and millions of households have lead paint. So why was the kid in this article found to have levels many, many times higher than the average kid living in houses with lead paint? What are the practical concerns for a parent living in such a house? What happened here? It's not even remotely clear.

ghaff 5y ago
Presumably living in a house with a lot of old flaking paint with paint chips all over the place. Which is the reason it's generally a class/income problem; houses of poorer people are often less well-maintained--especially if they're rented. In general, the houses with lead paint owned by people who are better off have the lead fairly well covered with newer paint. And/or lead pipes which haven't been updated.

jquast 5y ago

Just bought a 1985 home in rural Michigan with well water, testing for lead was never required by any part of the process. Post-sale I paid for a detailed water analysis, about $200, which found 4PPB of Lead. I called a few plumbers and they weren’t willing to do any inspection or make any recommendations. It cost about $6k in total to install a (Kinetico) water softener & RO system to remove it from my drinking water. I previously lived in Flint during the early few years of the changes that introduced high lead levels in the city drinking water. I tell this to doctors but they suggest there isn’t any tests they can do, as it is deposited into tissues and bones and not really found in blood tests, that such tests are typically for children. I guess I’m just saying there is no doubt I’ve had a great deal of lead in my drinking water throughout my life so I think a lot about how it shaped me and the communities I’ve lived in, how it shaped my experience with school and work. How many people are being treated for anxiety, anger, or depression in a seemingly incurable medicated loop, all the while unknowingly exposed to lead? Anyway as a PSA, I suggest that you should only believe that your water is lead-free when it has been tested directly from the tap and you have a report of 0PPB. Landlords and home sellers have a financial incentive to ensure that such testing is never done, and if lead is found, I don’t know what can be done other than pulling out your wallet one way or another

nfw2 5y ago

In 2014 I consulted my father, a lawyer, in writing an amicus brief to a lawsuit relating to lead exposure in baby food. Basically, lead exposure testing in food can have highly-variable results because of how the particles adhere to the food substrate, variability between food batches, and the way the exposure tests work. Because of this, lead exposure testing generally involves testing several samples and taking the mean to estimate the real level of exposure. Despite several samples showing high levels of lead, the defense got off by claiming that the geometric mean was the correct average to use to infer the total exposure. This is obviously incorrect because the geometric mean is a multiplicative mean. With a geometric mean, all you need is one sample with lead exposure close to 0 to get a mean that's close to 0, even if all the other samples tested positive for extreme levels of lead exposure. Just as a sanity check, we checked official literature on food toxicology, and every resource we could find stated that using arithmetic mean was the correct methodology, and not one mentioned geometric means. The defense ended up winning the case, which is absolutely horrifying because 1.) baby food is the most dangerous product imaginable to contain lead and 2.) now there is a legal precedent to defend yourself against lead exposure claims using total BS statistics. Edit: thankfully, it looks like the FDA is getting involved now https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/10/01/baby-foods-containing-heavy-metal-werent-recalled-report-finds/5933175001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/10/01/baby-foods-co...

BeetleB 5y ago
> With a geometric mean, all you need is one sample with lead exposure close to 0 to get a mean that's close to 0, even if all the other samples tested positive for extreme levels of lead exposure. Not going to comment on whether arithmetic or geometric mean is more appropriate, but your comment is incorrect. Yes, a number close to 0 brings everything down. But then you take the nth-root, which brings it back up again. Some examples - assume one of the numbers is 0.01 (close to 0). 2 samples means square root - that becomes 0.1 3 samples means cube root - that becomes 0.215 10 samples means 10th root - that becomes 0.63 20 samples means 20th root - that becomes 0.794 The more samples, the less impact an outlier like a number close to 0 will have. Put another way, the arithmetic mean has the same problem. Extreme outliers can greatly influence the sum. But if you have enough samples, each extreme outlier is tempered a bit by dividing by n.

jhallenworld 5y ago

The tap water pH in my town is 9.3. This seems extreme until you realize the lead risk with anything lower. https://www.belmont-ma.gov/dpw-water-division/faq/what-is-the-ph-of-belmont%E2%80%99s-drinking-water https://www.belmont-ma.gov/dpw-water-division/faq/what-is-th...

trezemanero 5y ago

teehee amongus sus

theptip 5y ago

I suspect that if we did an ROI calculation on government funding to remove lead from buildings, we’d find a very good return vs. other spending in the infrastructure bills. This could serve as a solid backlog of Keynesian stimulus to inject money & jobs into the economy in recessions. I recall in 2008 the recovery act included funds for broadband build-out, which took years to actually get through planning, and so did not serve the stated goal of getting people back to work; seems like you could do many of these smaller lead removal projects on a much shorter timeframe (especially during a recession when construction resources would tend to be underutilized as investment dries up).

citrin_ru 5y ago
I suspect ROI will be negative (especially given sky-high cost of US infrastructure projects) - lead is safe if not consumed inside. And AFAIK it happens mostly in two situations - old chipping paint and lead pipes. Even chipping paint should be a problem either when paint dust is everywhere or when children are playing with paint chips. Lead pipes are more dangerous and should be replaced but even lead pipes leak significant lead amounts only if pH is high (or water flow is high). In comments to this thread I see what looks to me like a moral panic - people leaving in safe conditions are full of fear (and who are really unsafe are not represented on HN). Lead is not something which can kill you at a distance, or if you consume 1 μg of it.

questiondev 5y ago

i worked construction for a bit, and you wouldn’t believe the exceptions we made for certain “historic” buildings. i remember discussing this with my foreman, we were in an impoverished area of the city that just so happened to be “historical” by the cities standards. i am a-ok with preserving the past but these engineers told us that when we pull out the old lead piping, we gotta replace it with another lead pipe to “preserve the historical value” of the property. this was the lateral going into the housing from the water main. do you realize how ridiculous that is? their excuse was that lead pipes deal with expansion and contraction better than pvc, or some other type of piping. and they said that the inside of the pipes are now coated with some type of sealant that keeps the lead from seeping into the residence water supply. so next time you buy a city property make sure you check the water laterals, you can get this information from the city engineering office. i think the records are found in the same building as where you get your construction permits but you’ll have to double check.

thehappypm 5y ago

Huge amount of misconceptions in the comments. I bought a house and my realtor never suggested a lead test. Basically it’s on the homeowner or the buyer to request it, because lead is such a low risk to adults, it’s better to be willingly ignorant. This is especially true in urban environments where it’s far less likely that a kid will ever live there. At the same time, you can 100% test for lead as part of an inspection. It’s just that there’s not a lot you can do with the information. If it’s lead free that’s awesome. Likely it’s not though, if it’s old. Sellers won’t really lower the price because older homes are basically guaranteed to have lead, so the test just clarified what should be assumed. Now, I had a test done and there was a lot of lead. I had it mitigated. Lead paint was stripped to bare wood in tons of places, but it’s actually safe to have lead paint in places like intact walls. Walls don’t chip. Windowsills, door jambs, they chip. Even a very strict town in a strict state like Massachusetts won’t make you fully 100% de-lead, you have to remove anything with a risk of a kid eating it, or it sloughing off (like a door or window rubbing). All in all it cost me a few thousand dollars but I feel much better about the place.

forix 5y ago

As a kid (~10-11yo) growing up in Eastern Europe my friends and I would look for old car batteries left by dumpsters. We'd break them, take the lead grids out and clean them up, build a small fire, melt the lead, and then pour it into molds we'd make of wood, usually in the shape of ninja stars to play with. Fun times!

leemcd56 5y ago

My wife and I, along with our two girls, recently moved out of my MIL’s and into a building that serves as our home and my business (we do computer repair). During a wellness checkup, my youngest had to do a lead test because of the age of our new home (built in 1931), and they discovered she had lead in her system. At the time it was at level 14, so they recommended we do some tests, and try to do our best to keep her away from any chipped paint. It was another four months until she was checked again, and we thought we had done so much better, but her level was up to 22. The health department had to come investigate. Needless to say, our new home is covered in lead, and given our financial situation, this being my source of income and our home, we’re in a peculiar situation. We’ve got a lot of surfaces to treat, and her levels will take some time to go down. The building owner never informed us, and by law they’re not responsible for fixing any of it, but even so we’re not holding it against them.

gh0std3v 5y ago

> "The lead epidemic is the longest-running epidemic in our country" This is probably one of the most depressing lines I read in this article. I've watched some of John Oliver's videos on PFAs and Lead (regardless of what you think about his other political views, I would say his videos on subject matter like this is quite informative). It's astonishing to think that organizations like the EPA were formed in the latter half of the twentieth century to remedy the negligence in making chemically and biologically safe products for human beings to use. Seriously, up until the 50s we were making "radioactive toothpaste" and advertising it to the general population as being safe and effective: https://awesci.com/radioactive-toothpaste-shocking-ad-50s/ https://awesci.com/radioactive-toothpaste-shocking-ad-50s/