
America’s Misguided War on Childhood Lead Exposures - anarbadalov
https://undark.org/article/lead-testing-child-blood-levels/
======
dzdt
For anyone mislead by the headline, the misguided bit is the way the war on
childhood lead exposure is being _conducted_ , not the war itself.

Everyone knows where the biggest problems are. There are whole neighborhoods
of older housing with peeling lead paint. In many cases honest cost-benefit
analysis would say it is cheaper in the long run to tear out/tear
down/semipermanently seal up the hazardous buildings. The society costs in
medical, prison, and assistance over the lifetime of the poisoned children are
less than the cost to fix the root cause.

So why don't we have a giant lead paint superfund tearing down or safely
refurbishing the hazardous housing before it debilitates more kids?

I think the major issue is perceived fairness. Government paying owners to
tear down or refurbish housing would look like an unfair give-away to the
owners. Requiring all owners to abate lead hazards without payment looks like
an unfair take-away from owners.

Paying for families to live in safe housing looks like an unfair give-away to
the families. (How to make it fair for the families who would have never
considered living an unsafe place vs the ones who considered it and are now
paid to live elsewhere?)

And neither the owners of unsafe properties nor the families living there are
groups with much political clout.

I guess in a few more decades the fraction of remaining housing stock with
lead hazards may become small enough that it becomes politically feasible to
address the problem directly. Until then, more of the half-hearted effoet that
addresses problems on a case-by-case basis only after kids are permanently
impaired.

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chiaro
Another similar epidemic to lead poisoning we've been sleeping on is lithium
deficiency. Look at the quantum of improvement on suicide and all kinds of
violent crime, including rape and murder per this study[1]. Image of results
table:

[https://imgur.com/p6p886e](https://imgur.com/p6p886e)

It's hard not to conclude that it's immoral to _not_ chuck lithium in the
water supply, if the natural variance is associated with a doubling of murder.
The study has been replicated on suicide in Japan[2] and on Dementia in
Denmark[3].

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280)

[3]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28832877](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28832877)

~~~
ng12
We don't even know that lithium deficiency is definitively a thing, it's not
like there's an established RDA. There could be any number of reasons why it's
correlated with lower violent crime.

~~~
vanderZwan
Lithium is prescribed in bipolar disorder, wouldn't that imply it is
reasonably understood?

~~~
magic_beans
"Reasonably understood" is not the same as "Oh, hey, this seems to work."

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pnathan
> Owners can simply claim they’re unaware of lead paint on the property, and
> in most cases, that’s the box they check on the disclosure form because lead
> inspections occur so rarely,

This needs to change. There needs to be a duty on the seller to investigate
and declare, certified by a certified third party for lead. Same for other
contaminants. A number of other nasty environmental stingers can be non-
declared as well, unfortunately. Disgusting.

Anyway - the entirety of the lead paint housing stock needs to be remediated,
along with the ground near it. Too, the old highways and roads need to have a
remediation plan implemented.

This is one of the Great Challenges for the next 100 years. Not as sexy as
going to Mars, but we will reap dividend after dividend in public health. The
EPA and the SuperFund system need to be supercharged; we will have boons of
public health paying back year after year here.

edit: you can find information about it all over when you start looking.
Here's a fast explainer - [https://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10790534/lead-
soil](https://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10790534/lead-soil)

~~~
maxxxxx
Unfortunately the EPA is working hard on going the other way at the moment. I
don't care that much about anything else Trump does but cutting on
environmental protection is truly evil in my view and will damage the country
for a long time.

~~~
pnathan
Yes, I'm very bummed about the EPA direction. It's part and parcel of the
general GOP plan, which is to roll back the Great Society, New Deal, and
Progressive Era policies. Very bad for the country on many axes.

------
rm_-rf_slash
My grandmother delivered her first child several months early after inhaling
the fumes of a fresh coat of leaded paint. My uncle died not long after being
born. He was resuscitated, but not before the lack of oxygen to the brain
caused permanent damage, including blindness and developmental disorders. He
has lived in some very, very bad places that were supposed to be helpful to
people like him but turned out to be so nightmareish that I wouldn’t wish them
on my worst enemies. He is in a better home now. He’s over 60. I don’t think
he has ever recognized my mother, but he seems to enjoy the ice cream she
brings him when she visits.

Is the new CDC limit too low? Does it matter? All I can offer is an anecdotal
story of terrible sadness for many people. For that reason, I always take lead
exposure seriously. There is no safe limit.

~~~
steve19
That's a terrible story. I am so sorry for what your uncle has had to suffer.

I think there is a safe limit. When I did a number of shooting sports I got
myself tested. I was absolutely fine, despite almost certainly inhaling small
amounts of leads, and definitely handling lead.

I have only met one person in the shooting sports/shooting industry who was
diagnosed with lead poisoning, a young woman who worked at a gun store/range.

Many people who I shot with would have had far greater exposure than me and
also got themselves tested.

The counter argument is that lead poisoning has such a wide range of symptoms
it can be misdiagnoses.

~~~
rabboRubble
>...I think there is a safe limit.

For adults.

For children and their brain development, the safe level is zero.

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truculation
Lead, mercury, fluoride. Other cumulative neurotoxins. It seems obvious to me
that we should work to eliminate anything which damages our brains, whether or
not we can test yet for effects.

~~~
jorts
Fluoride? Please explain how that damages the human brain.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Fluoride is a foreign substance which is introduced into our precious bodily
fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any
choice.

~~~
jamiepenney
Are you making a Dr Strangelove joke or actually serious?

~~~
grzm
_" It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? ... That's the way a hard-core commie
works."_ (It's a near direct quote from the film.)

