18 ms·
Lead poisoning causes more death, IQ loss than thought: study
- jeffbee 3y agoThere have always been people on this site who think RoHS was a conspiracy. There are a few people who do not take the public health problems caused by lead very seriously.
- Syonyk 3y agoAnd you can't, with a straight face, tell me that lead free solder matters, while we're still using lead acid batteries with dozens of pounds of lead in every car out there (to within a rounding error, and, yes, it includes almost all EV/PHEVs). The list of exemptions is very long. Lead free solder is objectively worse as a solder for just about any metric related to longevity. So you have to weigh the risks of lead in solder against the reduced longevity of entire electronic devices from solder joint failures. Lots of BGA components have had problems related to their solder, and the usual result is that the entire device gets thrown out.
- klondike_ 3y agoLead free solder is fine. When RoHS was first implemented, a lot of manufacturers had trouble changing their processes for the new solder. The result was a plague of bad, broken solder joints. Nowadays, lead free solder is accounted for starting in the design stage. Manufacturers have had 15+ years of experience with leadfree solder and have largely worked out the issues. Lead-acid batteries are extensively recycled. Electronics are usually just dumped in the trash, making the lead issue much more important.
- pixl97 3y ago>while we're still using lead acid batteries with dozens of pounds of lead in every car out there Mostly those cars stay outside and the batteries tend to be expensive and highly recycled, electronics on the other hand, show up everywhere and have a poor history of recycling.
- jeffbee 3y agoBattery retailers will pay you $25 for the old one and even if you just dump it, desperate people will collect it and hump it down to the recycler to get the core refund. Nobody wants your old soldered electronics. That stuff is nothing but trash.
- avhon1 3y agoAll of the battery retailers around where I live (southern Indiana, USA) stopped paying for old lead-acid batteries years ago. Only the local scrap metal yard still pays for them, and they only pay $5 per battery. People only bring in their old batteries for recycling because it waives the core charge.
- jeffbee 3y agoYou just contradicted yourself. The core charge is them paying you for the old battery.
- jhallenworld 3y agoBatteries are recycled, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNGg0P7B5fI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNGg0P7B5fI
- londons_explore 3y agoIn the last year, how many tons of lead ended up in solder? And how much has gone into fuels (especially aviation fuel)?
- sokoloff 3y agoThe EPA estimate for avgas is roughly 500-600 tons of lead annually (depending on the exact estimation factors used). I found an estimate of lead from e-waste (all sources of lead, not just solder) being 58,000 tons per year, roughly 100x the avgas figure.
- the__alchemist 3y agoI have a conspiracy theory that people recommending leaded solder (And reacting hostilely to suggestions it may be dangerous) are demonstrating the effects of lead exposure. I don't buy the "just wash your hands" argument.
- sokoloff 3y agoI don't think leaded solder is dangerous to the home hobbyist, provided reasonable precautions are taken (no food, drinks, or smokes on the bench and wash your hands immediately upon getting up from the bench). If you're repairing something that used leaded solder, you pretty much have to use leaded solder. That's fewer and fewer things post-RoHS, but when you have something older, you're going to use leaded or you're going to have a bad time. With a decent iron and flux, hand soldering with lead-free solder is fine. All my new work is lead-free, but I have zero concerns having my kids work with leaded solder at the frequency and using the reasonable precautions.
- tbrownaw 3y agoLeaded solder isn't a problem to work with, it's a problem when it contaminates landfills.
- rsaxvc 3y agoAlso the supply chain: smelting and refining. Herculaneum Missouri has acres bulldozed of what used to be homes once they learned the children were born with lead poisoning. Before the dozing citizens put up warning signs telling people to take off their shoes when they got home and not to let their kids play in the contaminated public spaces.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoThey used number from a 2019 Global Burden of Disease study as one "axis", How did they prove the causality of various conditions to the study? Deviations from a normal distribution?
- hcrean 3y ago[flagged]
- colechristensen 3y agoJet fuel never contained lead. (re: "chemtrails") Old small piston-engined aircraft are now in the processes of validating and phasing out leaded fuel. The primary sources of lead people consume will be from industrial pollution, old paint, and old water pipes.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoI honestly don’t know enough about the theories to dismiss or validate them offhand, but the article quotes an official as saying that it seems as though the primary issue is that things like ceramic cookware and other household items had more lead in them than initially believed: > Fuller said part of this "missing piece of the puzzle" was revealed in a Pure Earth report released on Tuesday, which analyzed 5,000 samples of consumer goods and food in 25 developing countries. >It found high rates of lead contamination in metal pots and pans, ceramic cookware, paint, cosmetics and toys. >"This is why poorer countries have so much lead poisoning," Fuller said. "It's items in the kitchen that are poisoning them."
- cltby 3y agoQuestion for any IQ skeptics here (e.g. "it just measures your ability to take tests" or "it just tells you how rich your parents are"): what's your response to studies like this? Is there anything that can be said about the effect of lead on cognitive function? Why might IQ be a good measure of lead-induced stupidification, but unreliable for literally anything else?
- jiofj 3y ago[flagged]
- hedora 3y agoCritical race theory explains IQ differences between socioeconomic groups (including races) extremely well.
- klyrs 3y agoCritical Race Theory is politically incorrect, under any definition of political correctness I know
- cjbgkagh 3y agoDoes it? Most of what I’ve seen amounts to assume races are have equal inherent IQ distributions, given test results are unequal the assumption is then tests must be inherently biased (examples of recent immigrant non-English speaking Jews improving their IQ scores as they learned English) or differences are caused by socio economic factors. That logic would fall apart if the original assumption wasn’t made, but anything starting with a prior that races can have different IQ distributions is thrown out as racist. The progressive book ‘The Genetic Lottery’ kind-of makes the case for polygenic factors considered evenly distributed amongst the races as a basis for that assumption but in my view their logic has a number of holes in it. If there is a better treatment of the topic I’m genuinely interested in reading it.
- omginternets 3y agoNit: CRT certainly offers an explanation, but I don't think it's a particularly good one. Because it always appeals to "systemic injustice", it can't account for things like 1. the persistence of between group IQ differences amongst children people who have relocated to other countries/culture; 2. the disproportionate success of certain historically-marginalized groups; 3. regression to the mean; and, 4. other factors that marginally influence IQ scores (e.g. single-parent household vs dual-parent household) without engaging in circular reasoning. At best, CRT's explanation is incomplete.
- hedora 3y agoI'd like to point out that, although it is illegal to put lead in water supply lines in the US, there is a loophole that allows it in hot water lines. As a result, for certain fittings, most big-box hardware stores only sell the leaded variants, and label them "hot water heater supply line" or something similar.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoWhy is it specially allowed in hot water lines?
- tgv 3y agoI think that is allowed because we don’t drink from the hot water tap.
- raincole 3y agoBut when I googled hot water tap the first images it showed were... uh... https://www.sinks-taps.com/articles/2018/9/21/the-benefits-of-an-instant-hot-water-kitchen-tap-boiling-water-tap-kettle-tap https://www.sinks-taps.com/articles/2018/9/21/the-benefits-o...
- fsckboy 3y agohahaha ok, but that product is a hot-water heater built into your kitchen tap to do away with your hot water kettle. Presumably, that's not plumbed to your teapot with a lead boiler and faucet. (weird, "plumbed" means "leaded")
- lainga 3y ago...We don't...? Who?
- xboxnolifes 3y agoIn the past it was common knowledge not to. It's of much more uncertainty as house plumbing has changed.
- rngname22 3y agoepic water filter + nalgene 32 oz hdpe bottle is a great, lightweight filtered drinking water on-demand system filter pitchers are easy to use and a good safe guard against poor plumbing if you haven't had your home water tested
- djmips 3y agoIt is my understanding that the common filter pitchers don't filter out lead.
- gpt5 3y agoThat's not correct. It depends on the water filter. A common Brita filter doesn't filter lead. But the referenced filter (Epic) does. There are other filters that can do that, the most popular is ZeroWater, which you can check their datasheet https://www.zerowater.eu/wp-content/uploads/ZeroWater-NSF-certificaat.pdf https://www.zerowater.eu/wp-content/uploads/ZeroWater-NSF-ce...
- myth_drannon 3y agoThe problem with ZeroWater is it filters out everything. I would be always thirsty after drinking from ZeroWater, it was a weird feeling.
- whichfawkes 3y agoSo then you have to remineralize it... But how are those minerals being sourced, and does that mixture contain lead? Ugh, it never ends.
- londons_explore 3y agoBe dubious of those claims. Lead can be in hundreds of chemical compounds. I very much doubt they have tested the filter against all of them. Only reverse osmosis will do a decent job of removing lead, and even that won't be perfect.
- 3y ago
- digitcatphd 3y agoStudies like these always make me wonder what the equivalent of this today. Microplastics? Carbon? What else?
- chinathrow 3y agoTikTok?
- rabuse 3y agoSocial media has caused the largest brain drain we've ever seen.
- colordrops 3y agoPretty much anything our ecosystem hasn't had time to evolve and adapt to is likely going to have some deleterious effect on the life forms within.
- amluto 3y agoLead. It’s not gone. And maybe some PFAS? We don’t have great data, and PFAS isn’t reliably disclosed in products. (Also, surely different perfluorinated chemicals have different effects.)
- hombre_fatal 3y agoThere are lead detection q-tip swab kits but annoyingly they also test positive for copper. I didn’t realize that until after I threw out a copper tongue scraper. But I did find that one of my girlfriend’s keychain trinkets tested positive while saying “stainless steel”.
- xnx 3y agoPM2.5 particulates https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/inhalable-particulate-matter-and-health https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/inhalable-particulate-matte...
- Exuma 3y agoIts not gone... pretty much every single person that shoots guns need to be aware of this. Of course gun people don't care about their health and they think with their 45 ug/dL lead level that youre "overreacting"... D-Lead is a very good company for deleading that i use obsessively, when shooting I once called them and talked to an engineer about lead for like 1.5 hours. I think it really surprised him someone was so interested and he was happy to share.
- swayvil 3y agoIs IQ a piece of private information? Does everybody in the country get an IQ test in school? Can we just look that up in the public records? It sure would be useful if it was public and universal. For tracking the effects of lead poisoning for one. Or just factoring it into any big study. We might find something unexpected.
- raincole 3y ago[flagged]
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoIt's almost as if circumstances matter and we should be looking for ways to improve :thinking:... I don't think anyone would classify white people from the US from the 1900s as mentally handicapped but, well, at least someone else said that and it wasn't me. > Over the past 100 years, Americans' mean IQ has been on a slow but steady climb. Between 1900 and 2012, it rose nearly 30 points, which means that the average person of 2012 had a higher IQ than 95 percent of the population had in 1900.
- raincole 3y agoAnd if the public (sometimes even people in academia)'s reaction to any data they don't like is outrage, how could we look for ways to improve anything?
- yieldcrv 3y agoreminds me of those comic where the adult explains to the kid that every physical attribute was explained by genetics and then stumbles over his words trying to explain cognitive ones as inherently different was just a funny perspective I’m not trying to start a pogrom with this observation
- swayvil 3y agoIf we neutered everybody who scored under 130 IQ, what do you think society would look like in 3 generations?
- djmips 3y agoDoes anyone know the the risk is for electronics hobbyist?
- weaksauce 3y agoconsidering almost all of this is in poor countries i'd say you are low risk if you solder infrequently and always have good airflow. that said there's no safe level of lead so wear a properly fitted p100 respirator if you want to be as safe as you can be.
- Syonyk 3y agoDon't lick your boards, wash your hands before you eat, and if you're really concerned, wear gloves while handling solder wire. The smoke from soldering isn't lead - a soldering tip is (if it's not literally glowing into the yellows) far, far too cold to vaporize any lead from solder - you need to be 1500+C for it to start being a problem, and you're not soldering that high. It's rosin smoke, and if you're in doubt, leave your iron in a puddle of solder - it shouldn't smoke, it should just sit there liquid after the initial rosin has burned off. The rosin smoke isn't great, but it's not a lead toxicity issue. Your concern is lead on your hands from the wire, and then eating afterwards without a good scrubbing. I don't think it will penetrate your skin, but you could always wear a pair of gloves if you wanted. There are some shooting sports soaps that are designed to help really rip any lead off your hands, so you might use one of those if you're concerned.
- teawrecks 3y agoAlso, afaik, there's no reason for hobbyists to not always use lead-free solder. But of course that doesn't mean something you're taking apart used lead free.
- sokoloff 3y agoRepairing an old device that used leaded solder is a reason to use leaded solder (even new leaded solder during the repair). I don't even use the same tips across leaded and lead-free solder.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scythe 3y agoItalics mine: >The study, described as "a wake-up call", also estimated that exposure to the toxic metal causes young children in developing countries to lose an average of nearly six IQ points each. >Their model estimates that 5.5 million adults died from heart disease in 2019 because of lead exposure, 90 percent of them in low- and middle-income countries. >The research also estimated that children under five lost a cumulative 765 million IQ points due to lead poisoning globally in 2019, with 95 percent of those losses coming in developing countries. In the article, the 1 IQ point loss level is shown at about 0.25 ug/dL. I don't think this is likely in the US from brass pipe fittings containing 0.5% lead or whatever. I'm not saying that tight lead regulations are/would be bad, but this study seems to focus on the far higher disease and death burden of lead in less developed countries. Dealing with lead exposure in developing countries would likely have large returns for the global economy, and since plenty of lead pipes were probably laid by colonial powers, has the ring of a moral imperative. But how?
- TheBlight 3y agoThis is why I stopped eating paint chips.
- clumsysmurf 3y agoSome of my bloodwork revealed subclinical lead poisoning. Part of the investigation was to take the dirty A/C filter in for lab analysis of the dust. I had lead in that filter, so I moved out. No idea where it came from. EDIT: It was an apartment. FWIW, even new apartments can have other issues, like a brand new place my friend was working on had rampant mold issues (built & exposed throughout monsoon season). So you really have to be careful.
- giantg2 3y agoWho bought the place after disclosing airbourne lead dust in the house?
- brianwawok 3y agoif you are renting (in most / all? of the US), no way the next person would know.
- acuozzo 3y agoPerhaps OP had a rental with an in-unit AC unit which is pretty common here in the US.
- sokoloff 3y agoIf it was a rental, GP would never know who moved in next. (I would describe leaving a rental as "moved out" and leaving a house I owned as "sold it". Given they used "moved out", I'd wager even-money it was a rental.)
- clumsysmurf 3y agoIt was an apartment with central cooling.
- pixl97 3y ago
- teawrecks 3y agowhat I'm hearing is that if I already have 5μg/dL, then I might as well get all 20.
- jopsen 3y agoWhile a lot of this appears to be estimates... it's pretty wild of 30% of deaths from cardiovascular are caused by lead. Mostly in low/middle income countries. > It's items in the kitchen that are poisoning them On a positive note: This is something that can be fixed.
- highwaylights 3y agoI'd be interested to know how someone can be sure that the cookware/tableware/cutlery in their home is safe. Is this a result of far lower standards in other places or just a result of that being the region that was tested for the report (the post doesn't say, it just mentions that samples were collected from developing countries). This could very easily be a massive problem in the developed world too and you wouldn't know from the report here.
- mrob 3y agoHere's a study showing various levels of lead leaching into drinks from ceramic mugs found in the US: https://foodsafetyandrisk.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40550-017-0049-7 https://foodsafetyandrisk.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186... Important quote: "The estimated daily dose of lead exceeded the California Maximum Allowable Dose Level of 0.5 μg per day for one of the five mugs tested." Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29606600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29606600
- narrator 3y agoDMSA, which is the treatment for lead poisoning, is cheap, can be taken orally and has a good safety profile. Shame that doctors are not more familiar with it.
- giantg2 3y ago"For example, the relationship between lead in blood and heart disease is based on a survey" What, just a survey? What is the mechanism that causes this? Heart disease is a major killer, but I assume most of it is due to lack of exercise and terrible diet.
- CodeWriter23 3y agoJust a data point here, an acquaintance of mine gave himself lead poisoning by visiting the shooting range too often for target practice. I think he wears a breather when he goes now.
- 98codes 3y agoWow -- how often for how long were/are they going?
- CodeWriter23 3y agoI don’t know how much their exposure was but I’d estimate they are closer to the skinny edge of the bell curve.
- mrguyorama 3y agoMaybe they had especially bad practices, like never washed their hands, exclusively eats finger food after picking through their spent bullets and licks their fingers?
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoLead dust settles everywhere, gets into your lungs, especially if it's an indoor range.
- bloaf 3y agoThere was a recent study which found child blood lead levels were higher in areas with high gun ownership after controlling for socioeconomics. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-firearm-licensure-linked-with-higher-blood-lead-levels-in-children/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-f...
- conception 3y agoThis is definitely one of the reasons Republicans have blocked funding for gun research.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoSo is IQ a "largely pseudoscientific swindle" to quote a popular article from a few years ago, or is it not? Because if the consensus is that it doesn't matter, then why bother using it as a metric here?
- paulpauper 3y agotaleb's argument has changed to IQ only matters for downside, not upside.
- astrange 3y agoNot changed, that's always what the article he was referring to said.
- emodendroket 3y agoDo you have another suggestion? Many of the criticisms of IQ seem less relevant in this context.
- dralley 3y agoIt's complicated. Firstly because there are a lot of "IQ studies" that cited in places such as The Bell Curve that had utterly horrendous methodology. Second because there is a lot of cultural baggage around the very concept of IQ, as if it were a measure of someone's intrinsic intelligence rather than just measuring the result of the combination of intrinsic and environmental factors.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoI think it depends on the scope of what's being addressed as "IQ". As far as I know, there are some fairly robust methods and results around IQ, but it's usually hard to make the leap from those to a sales pitch for any particular product/service/policy/program in a similarly robust way. So any given invocation of IQ in the wider world has a high likelihood of being somewhere between scientifically sketchy and outright nonsensical. It's reminiscent of quantum mechanics and epigenetics in that sense.
- bluGill 3y ago
- jmount 3y agoAnd lead is still allowed in aviation fuel. The planes (only piston?) are spraying it all over you every day.
- seventytwo 3y agoIs this actually true? I think that’s changed. Also - how much of a problem is it? What kind of lead exposure do I receive from a small airplane flying over me one day? What does this risk compare to, say, smoking? Or not wearing my seat belt? Simply stating that a bad thing exists is not enough.
- tjohns 3y agoIt's true, but that's because there was no legally approved alternative until about a year ago. Now that there's an approved unleaded replacement for 100 Octane avgas (G100UL), I expect leaded fuel will disappear quickly. Airports are currently in the process of installing the new tanks to dispense it. Many of the bay area airports already started offering unleaded 94 Octane (UL94) at the pump as of earlier this year. (Pilots don't like leaded fuel any more than anyone else. It's way too easy to get on your skin during a preflight check. We really want it gone.)
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah I always used to get it on my skin doing the drip check with those shot glasses with a pin in it. Yuck. Does it get absorbed through the skin?? I never knew and I usually didn't wash my hands because there was no toilet nearby, airside.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoThe TEL in liquid form is probably much more toxic than metallic or inorganic lead you find in stuff like paints or bullets due to it being more lipophilic and bioavailable. Be very careful with leaded fuel.
- seventytwo 3y agoAhhh, ok, that must be what I remember reading, thanks.
- hinkley 3y agoRecently read that sweat concentrations of heavy metals can be about 7-8 times higher than blood serum levels. So you can sweat out heavy metals, but just barely. My guess is you lose more in skin flakes and hair.
- Willish42 3y agoThis feels like a good time to bring up the lead-crime hypothesis (flaws and all). For those who don't know, there's a strong (if faulty) correlation between lead levels in preschool children and crime rates: https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/17991876/crime-drop-murder-lead-exposure-gasoline-environment https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/17991876/crime-drop-murder-lea... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis Regardless of what you think about the hypothesis, the growth and crunch in lead levels during the last many decades is astounding and probably still has many bad effects on IQ and related factors, at least in the US
- jeffbee 3y agoThe subsequent evidence is so strong that I don't think it's appropriate to call it faulty. In the paper "Life After Lead" they study a boundary effect of children who were just above and just below treatment thresholds for blood lead levels and the outcomes in terms of crime, school success, etc are stark. Figure 4(F) particularly. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20160056 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20160056
- harles 3y agoI haven’t read the paper, but I wonder how well they control for economic status. I’d expect the better off a family is the less lead they have in their life - and I’d expect economic status to actually be a cause of better education, health, incarceration, etc.
- waster 3y agoThey said “we compare outcomes for children who are similar across observable characteristics but differ in eligibility for intervention due to blood lead test results.” Economic status is observable, so ide guess it’s I caused; but I only read the abstract.
- npunt 3y agoI like this roundup [1] as it hammers the point home with tons of observations across cultures, times, contexts, and methods of analysis. For instance, different cultures phased out lead gas at different times, and their subsequent crime charts were offset by the equivalent years. [1]: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
- adasdasdas 3y agoAnyone worried about lead should take calcium pills with vitamin D which helps absorption. Calcium should always be taken with food otherwise your body just ignores it. It works because your body interprets lead as calcium.
- m00x 3y agoYou mean calcium reduces lead absorption? Edit: Ah, vitamin D helps calcium absorption, which then reduces lead absorption.
- myshpa 3y agoEven american eagles are increasingly dying of lead poisoning. https://gasanature.org/bald-eagles-across-the-us-are-being-found-dead-from-led-poisoning/ https://gasanature.org/bald-eagles-across-the-us-are-being-f... Lead found in the bullets of hunters, who tend to hunt larger game like deer, poison the meat of the deer. Once the lead enters the gastrointestinal tract, it becomes toxic. If the deer runs and can’t be recovered by the hunter, it typically will die and be consumed by scavengers – like the bald eagle.
- scotty79 3y agoExistence of Karens might be just a symptom of lead induced brain damage in the entire generation or two.
- frankus 3y agoOnly loosely related, but are there any affordable non-invasive tests for past lead exposure? I have a cluster of symptoms that are consistent with lead exposure[1], along with a lot of past activities involving lead (stained glass, old-school electric cars, soldering with lead-based solder, stripping lead-based paint), but my current blood lead levels are normal. My neurological symptoms also flared up when I was supplementing with kind of a lot of Calcium and Vitamin D. [1]mostly high blood pressure, somewhat high cholesterol (despite having normal BMI, sleeping reasonably well, exercising regularly) and demyelinating lesions visible on MRI (but no oligoclonal bands, negative AQP4).
- thenickdude 3y agoDepends how long ago, but your hair can be tested for lead exposure. Hair grows at about 6 inches per year. If your hair was 3 ft long you could test back as far as 6 years ago with that method.
- keepamovin 3y agoAlso, it makes people irritable and more hostile. so if you noticed your city becoming more rude and less polite, it may be that a lot of the people are getting borderline psychotic or personality disorder because of unenforced lead regulation violations.
- hammock 3y agoThere were a lot of irritable and hostile people during the Flint water crisis. Many of them stormed the capitol: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/protesters-storm-michigan-state-capitol-protest-flint-water-54423040 https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/protesters-storm-michigan-st...
- keepamovin 3y agoI guess that's, ah, circumstantial evidence? But yeah it's a tragedy to see these EPA violations occurring in more rural parts of the USA. What is going on with that?
- refurb 3y agoI count five uses of the word "estimate" in the method section and I didn't even copy the entire thing. In this modelling study, we used country blood lead level estimates from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019. We estimated IQ loss (presented as estimated loss in IQ points with 95% CIs) in the global population of children younger than 5 years using the blood lead level–IQ loss function from an international pooled analysis. We estimated the cost of IQ loss, which was calculated only for the proportion of children expected to enter the labour force, as the present value of loss in lifetime income from the IQ loss (presented as cost in US dollars and percentage of gross domestic product with a range). We estimated cardiovascular deaths (with 95% CIs) due to lead exposure among people aged 25 years or older using a health impact model that captures the effect of lead exposure on cardiovascular disease mortality that is mediated through mechanisms other than hypertension. Finally, we used values of statistical life to estimate the welfare cost of premature mortality (presented as cost in US dollars and percentage of GDP).
- oakhaven 3y agoIs it possible to measure amount of lead in water somehow at home?
- defrost 3y agoYes. The easiest method is "at home" strip tests that react to various concentrations. eg: (in Australia) https://www.alloratestkits.com.au/shop/lead-water-test-kit/ https://www.alloratestkits.com.au/shop/lead-water-test-kit/ Available from a number of companies | countries | international order. From there it's a matter of chemistry and what kind of equipment you might have or be able to access via a local school or friend from the test tube crowd. Or bottling a small sample of your water and sending it to a local | state lab for testing.
- jamescrowley 3y agoSome of you might be interested in https://leadelimination.org/ https://leadelimination.org/. Currently 100+ countries have no lead paint legislation. LEEP work to ensure effective policies and eliminate lead poisoning globally. (I have no affiliation beyond having chosen to donate)