[HN Gopher] Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doct...
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Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say
Author : sahin
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-09-28 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futurism.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (futurism.com)
| djoldman wrote:
| How about Chicago:
|
| > The biggest reason is that essentially Chicago and other cities
| around Illinois _required_ the use of lead service lines all the
| way until 1986, long after it was recognized that lead was
| poisonous and other cities had stopped using it. A decade after
| other cities had stopped using it Chicago and other cities in
| Illinois were not only using it but requiring the use of lead
| long after everybody else.
|
| [0] https://news.wttw.com/2021/03/24/chicago-has-more-lead-
| servi...
| t0mbstone wrote:
| Kind of makes you wonder how much of Chicago's violence and
| crime issues are exacerbated by lead poisoning of their
| citizens...
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| Interestingly enough, of all the environmental hazards caused
| by large corporations, here's a rare example of one where this
| was primarily caused by a union, which while not opposed to the
| overall removal of lead, demanded the use of pipes which
| required specialized knowledge to install, which precluded non-
| brazed copper and plastic pipes used elsewhere in the nation,
| and effectively made lead pipes the only viable option.
|
| On the surface, finally after a decade-long fight, the
| plumber's union, despite objections by its union spokespeople,
| said in 1986 it would defer to the city council after the
| matter was decided at the federal level, but in that decade,
| long after other cities had banned lead pipes, lead pipes were
| still a required part of Chicago building code.
|
| https://www.npr.org/local/309/2020/09/11/911903152/here-s-ma...
| floor2 wrote:
| This is why the "right vs left" style of thinking drives me
| crazy.
|
| Unions are constantly doing evil things, usually for the same
| greedy and power-hungry reasons as any corporate board, and
| to the same detriment of society at large, but because we
| think of unions as being on "our side" and latch onto this
| romanticized notion of the unions of the 1800s they get a
| pass.
|
| The police and prison guard unions constantly do horrible
| things to increase incarceration rates, erode civil rights
| and remove accountability. Labor unions fight against
| improvements that would make their industries pollute less if
| it makes their jobs harder or would replace union-dues-paying
| members with technology or non-union jobs. And they
| constantly create artificial monopolies and cartels far worse
| than any of the corporate behavior, which create situations
| like the pilot unions where senior pilots get huge salaries
| and cushy routes while entry-level pilots are treated like
| slaves, or where you're not allowed to plug in your laptop
| charger to a wall outlet because only a union electrician can
| touch it.
|
| I wish society was better at recognizing "this group is
| harming society for the benefit of themselves" can be applied
| everywhere- corporations, unions, branches of government, etc
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| Right to association is a fundamental American value
| something that American conservatives must value and
| something that Libertarians have always valued.
|
| There is no argument that employees should have the right
| to form an association. The problems arise when such
| associations get "special privileges" that an average
| worker does not. Both L and R talk a lot about "equality of
| law" but happily shred that principle when it comes to
| their own voter groups.
|
| Nearly all the evil (as you describe it) caused by unions
| is eventually due to the collective bargaining rights and
| other privileges.
|
| In the words of Milton Friedman, unions do not protect
| workers. The competition protects workers. Market
| competition is the biggest rival to unions and hence unions
| will go to extreme lengths to prevent this sort of
| competition to keep themselves relevant. This does immense
| harm to workers as well as society in the long term. Folks
| like me who have seen extreme violence unleashed by workers
| unions end up despising very notion of unions for the same
| reason.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's not nearly as symmetric as you're making it out to be.
|
| In terms of overall welfare, an additional dollar in the
| pocket of a typical union worker is going to be more
| welfare enhancing than that additional dollar in the pocket
| of the typical owner. This is from just basic diminishing
| marginal utility of the dollar.
|
| _Of course_ , unions can do awful, evil things - they are
| organizations of people and people are petty, self-
| centered, greedy, etc.
|
| I'm in favor of workers' ability to elect someone to
| represent them at the negotiation table (because that is
| what a union is). I'm not unaware that sometimes those
| workers can elect bad people.
|
| I'm also in favor of electoral democracy, even if I
| wouldn't personally defend every single person who has been
| elected president since the start of time.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| I think OP made a correct argument that that we quickly
| make this right vs left without dissecting the actual
| impacts of workers unions. Your comment kind of
| demonstrates that.
|
| > In terms of overall welfare
|
| What is overall welfare ? If you are talking about
| society then we already know that free market competition
| leads to the best outcomes. If you are talking about
| welfare of specific group of people (at the expense of
| others) then you are right.
|
| > I'm in favor of workers' ability to elect someone to
| represent them at the negotiation table (because that is
| what a union is).
|
| I do not think anyone is opposed to that idea. It is
| covered under our freedom to form association. But in
| many cases unions are exact opposite of this. There is
| only one union which will negotiate on your behalf
| whether you like it or not and will actively prevent you
| from selecting someone else to negotiate on your behalf.
| In such cases workers are less free than before and it is
| much easier for the employer to get their way by just
| bribing the union leaders. (This is what happens in every
| single society where unions have collective bargaining
| rights.)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _If you are talking about society then we already know
| that free market competition leads to the best outcomes._
|
| Who's "we"? I was under the impression that
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure was
| accurate.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > If you are talking about society then we already know
| that free market competition leads to the best outcomes.
|
| It's easy to find lump sum transfers that would be
| welfare enhancing over the pareto optimal outcome decided
| by the market.
|
| > There is only one union which will negotiate on your
| behalf whether you like it or not and will actively
| prevent you from selecting someone else to negotiate on
| your behalf.
|
| Well yes, you are beholden to the results of the election
| - even if the side you voted for didn't win. That is what
| worker self-determination is all about.
|
| > it is much easier for the employer to get their way by
| just bribing the union leaders
|
| Then why don't employers bring in unions more often?
| chrischen wrote:
| Doesn't have to be one bad person... a union as you say
| is still self-centered. Since they are an effective
| monopoly on workers, they can get pretty powerful and
| thus one-sided in interest seeking.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > In terms of overall welfare, an additional dollar in
| the pocket of a typical union worker is going to be more
| welfare enhancing than that additional dollar in the
| pocket of the typical owner.
|
| Maybe, but printing a dollar and giving it to a union
| worker causes worse inflation than printing a dollar and
| giving it to an owner.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Nobody said anything about printing.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You completely ignored his point. It's not about who's
| pockets the dollars wind up in. It's about not permitting
| groups to harm everyone else.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Or rather, you completely ignored the second half of my
| comment :)
|
| To reiterate, I would support voters being able to decide
| military policy, even if the alternative was a peaceful
| oligarchy.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And you double down.
|
| Your second paragraph adds nothing except detailing your
| reasoning which only serves to exemplify the behavior the
| comment you are replying to is complaining about. The
| point of the comment you are replying to is that people
| have a bad tendency to ignore groups doing evil things
| for their own gains if they otherwise align with these
| groups.
|
| Whether it's the moron on one side of the isle screeching
| about "mUh UnIoNs" or the moron on the other side of the
| isle screeching about "mUh SmAlL bUsInEsSeS" is
| irrelevant. People, you very much included, need to
| refrain from giving groups on "their side" a blank check
| to engage in evil self serving behavior at everyone
| else's expense.
|
| Of course the evil to good ratio is not the same for any
| two groups or groups of groups. His entire point was that
| that liking one group more than another is a worthless
| excuse for turning a blind eye to that group's evil. Just
| because you are able to write a second (or 3rd or 4th)
| paragraph expanding about why you feel one group deserves
| a blind eye more than another only serves to illustrate
| his point.
|
| Your behavior is exactly what he is complaining about.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Civil rhetoric really breaks down when it comes to
| politics, it seems.
|
| Nobody in this thread was "screeching" about anything,
| and I don't appreciate being not-so-subtly called a
| moron. I have done nothing of the same to you.
|
| I am perfectly capable of criticizing bad actions by
| unions, 2020 has had a number of them.
|
| But I will not use those critiques as an excuse to argue
| that the right to elect someone to negotiate on your
| behalf should be curtailed, because I believe the right
| to worker self-determination comes prior to those
| consequences - just as I don't support banning "bad"
| speech even if that speech has consequences.
|
| I'm not going to keep responding because, honestly, you
| seem to be shadow-boxing a conversational opponent who
| only exists in your own mind.
| da_chicken wrote:
| > In terms of overall welfare, an additional dollar in
| the pocket of a typical union worker is going to be more
| welfare enhancing than that additional dollar in the
| pocket of the typical owner. This is from just basic
| diminishing marginal utility of the dollar.
|
| Remarkably few people seem to truly understand what
| "marginal propensity to consume" actually means.
|
| Economically, money saved is money lost. Money invested
| is a promise of debt. Consumption is what drives the
| economy. That's why the poor and middle class are so
| important. Without them having enough money, the
| economics of scale... don't scale.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'll admit while I'm inclined to believe that it's better
| to distribute money to workers rather than investors, I
| don't understand the economic mechanics that makes this
| true.
|
| I _do_ understand that the rich aren 't gong to spend as
| much as the middle and lower classes, but I don't have a
| good answer for the predictable trickle-down rebuttal:
| the wealthy will invest rather than spend, and that
| investment funds jobs which put money in the pockets of
| the poor (but perhaps more so in the pockets of the
| rich?). You sort of touch on that: "consumption is what
| drives the economy", but I think the trickle-down
| economics folks would agree and argue that their job-
| creation-via-investment results in increased consumption?
| I have a headache.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Consumption also funds jobs which put money in the
| pockets of the poor.
|
| It has the added benefit of bidding up the price of
| things poor people need, which _yes_ is inflationary but
| also incentivizes more resources being provisioned to
| help provide the things that poor people need.
| creato wrote:
| > I'll admit while I'm inclined to believe that it's
| better to distribute money to workers rather than
| investors, I don't understand the economic mechanics that
| makes this true.
|
| It's probably more true now than during most of history,
| but it's not _always_ true.
|
| It probably was true in the Reagan era that trickle-down
| "worked", because there was a lot of opportunity for
| large scale capital investment to improve the economy and
| make things people wanted (and provide jobs in the
| process). That doesn't seem as true now. Investors
| already have an excess amount of capital they don't know
| what to do with (and so are just doing things like buying
| houses en masse).
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The difference between investment and spending is whether
| you have more or less money afterwards.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Unions are distributional coalitions. They try to allocate
| more resources to their members than they would receive
| otherwise. The source for this surplus is the rest of
| society. In other words, they are cartels. It should not be
| surprising that some of them are managed by organised
| crime.
|
| Be it through negotiating salaries or restricting the
| number of doctors or enforcing very difficult admission
| procedures for lawyers.
|
| They tend to also effect other, non-zero-sum game
| advantages, or otherwise they would probably be outlawed,
| but this is the gist of it. You can still acknowledge that
| many were founded with good intentions, but people who do
| not see at least some downsides have a severe reasoning
| defect.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Unions are simply businesses that make labor available to
| companies. Any notion that they are something different
| from a business is mistaken. Attempts by unions to use
| government to make themselves legal monopolies are just as
| bad as any other business using government to do that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Let me know the next time I can vote to have my CEO
| replaced, thanks :)
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Check the agenda for your next shareholder meeting.
| You're welcome :)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Most shareholder elections don't have a yes/no vote on
| the CEO - and I work for a wholly owned subsidiary, so
| have no say in that either.
| moftz wrote:
| In an employee owned corporation, you would get some say
| in leadership. Although it's possible that in a large
| enough corporation, it would be an indirect democracy.
| You vote for board members who vote for the company
| leadership.
| lovich wrote:
| While various municipalities and nations might classify
| co-ops as corporations legal wise, I don't think the
| average person jumps to thinking of a co-op when you say
| corporation
| WalterBright wrote:
| You can vote your shares.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's a difference between unions and staffing
| agencies.
| myohmy wrote:
| As a former union leader I'd just like to say FUCK THOSE
| GUYS. Holy shit that is fucking infuriating. I did OHSA
| inspections to prevent shit like that from hurting our
| members AND THE COMMUNITY. I hope their leadership is burning
| in hell.
| cmurf wrote:
| About the closest approximation we have to a literal hell
| is prison, and that's where they belong at a minimum.
| [deleted]
| pdovy wrote:
| Not only that, but it's really difficult to get the service
| line replaced even if you're willing to pay for it.
|
| We went through the exercise a few years ago. It can be
| difficult to find a plumbing service willing to do this kind of
| work because not only do they need a special certification
| (makes sense) but the company has to put up something like a
| $5000 bond on their work with the city.
|
| On top of that replacing the portion of the line that goes from
| the shutoff to the main requires digging up the street, so it
| can only be done if your street is not currently on a
| "moratorium" because it was recently repaved. Finally, the city
| charges a significant amount in permitting fees before you even
| get to paying for the plumbing service, roadwork repair and
| landscaping.
|
| We finally gave up on that project and given the relatively low
| level leeching into our water just decided that we could live
| with using water filters specifically designed to remove lead
| for any water that our kids drink / cook with.
|
| If Chicago was really serious about tackling this they could
| start with waiving permitting fees and bond requirements and
| streamline the process for managing the part of the process
| that occurs on city property. That'd at least make replacing
| these more tractable during a remodel.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >they could start with waiving permitting fees and bond
| requirements
|
| This was my first thought as well, then I remembered Chicago.
| jahnu wrote:
| That's incredible. What sort of levels do you have to put up
| with? Is there any kind of monitor you can install to detect
| a spike?
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| The OP mentioned that this was a few years ago. Things are
| different now. Literally one month ago Illinois became the
| second state to legally require all lead pipes to be
| replaced [1]. I do believe that the Chicago city ordinance
| of last year waives all permitting fees now. I am not sure
| how it is going to be paid for: public money? homeowner
| pays?
|
| [1] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=
| 3739&...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I am not sure how it is going to be paid for: public
| money? homeowner pays?
|
| I'd suggest that the Union that voted to keep the lead as
| a requirement pay. /evilgrin
| pdovy wrote:
| IIRC the level after running the water for 5 min in the
| morning was around 1 PPB, so not high enough to freak out
| about, but not zero. I just generally assume that I should
| not give my kids water straight from the tap, because the
| level _could_ spike for various reasons like them working
| on the water main, etc.
|
| As someone else pointed out, Chicago has made some changes
| here - and they plan to eventually remove all service
| lines. That said - this is Chicago. The mayor had a goal to
| remove 650 lines this year and there was a story in the
| Chicago Tribune recently that so far that number is ... 3.
| For context there are ~400k lines to replace.
| krrrh wrote:
| It seems like the lead blood level indicator has been removed
| from this site, but a friend showed me this map of homicide
| rates vs one with lead levels from 18 years prior[0] and there
| was a pretty strong correlation.
|
| Obviously there are confounders, but Kevin Drum's decade old
| article positing that lead was a major contributor to the crime
| wave and subsequent reduction is pretty compelling. [1]
|
| EDIT: aside, but maybe one of the most depressing things I've
| ever learned is the high levels of lead in the ink used to wrap
| various Mexican candy. [2] and this 2014 article [3] on lead
| levels in Mexican kids where the mean levels exceed the upper
| acceptable level in the US.
|
| There are few things that cause me more distress than the
| failure to comprehensively tackle this issue worldwide.
|
| [0] https://chicagohealthatlas.org/indicators/lead-poisoning
|
| [1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-
| exposur...
|
| [2] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-
| xpm-2004-05-14-04051...
|
| [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459328/
|
| "Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will
| experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead
| exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is
| responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for
| lead-induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4
| years."
| tdeck wrote:
| I couldn't get your second link to work (just takes me to a
| generic homepage) but I found this study:
|
| https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.2754/
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Isn't it possible that places that are too poor to reliably
| remove potential lead exposure from their environment are
| also poor enough to attract crime in general?
|
| This makes the assumption that poorness and crime are
| correlated, which I recently learned is not a universal
| truth.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > This makes the assumption that poorness and crime are
| correlated, which I recently learned is not a universal
| truth.
|
| Two variables can be correlated, without being a universal
| truth.
| linuxguy2 wrote:
| Beware density/heat maps that mostly just match population
| maps. Of course, xkcd has been there before:
| https://xkcd.com/1138/
| natdempk wrote:
| Did you look at the referenced links?
|
| None of them suffer from this problem. Almost all of the
| charts aren't even density maps, and of the two that are,
| they are charting family income vs. soil lead level, which
| wouldn't suffer from the problem mentioned in the comic.
| eigenhombre wrote:
| A couple years ago we had a pipe in our courtyard, buried at
| about 1.5m depth, burst in the middle of a cold spell. Suddenly
| an icy river appeared in the middle of our yard. Fixing it took
| a crew of four guys several hours to manually dig a grave-sized
| pit and splice out the bad section (my hat is still off to them
| -- it was well below freezing when it happened).
|
| I still have the 7" (18cm) section of pipe they removed -- it's
| an impressively heavy, several pounds at least. There is an
| absolutely seriously huge amount of lead in just about
| everyone's yards here in Chicago, in the form of pipes.
|
| What's less clear is how much of that lead winds up in bodies,
| to what resulting health impact. People need help making
| judgements about relative risk -- sadly, the article is not
| helpful in that regard.
| beerandt wrote:
| While never "safe", lead pipes were relatively _safer_ before
| the epa started pushing chlorine alternatives.
|
| High concentration chlorine (and flouride, where used) were
| reactive to contaminants such that they were often chemically/
| electrically attracted to the lead pipes (clay soil and other
| environmental factors played a role), and the pipes leeched
| contaminants _from_ the water. Lower concentrations of chlorine
| and any concentration of most chlorine-alternatives not only
| allow water to leech _from_ the lead pipes, but it also can
| reverse the previous process, such that decades of leeched
| chemicals and contaminants deposited in /on the lead (and
| other) pipes are released back into the water, at a much higher
| rate and concentration.
|
| Washington DC went through this issue [0] in what was a huge
| public embarrassment, at least within the civil engineering
| community. It left the EPA with a black eye in what was
| supposed to be a landmark and example-setting project.
|
| Now that it's known to happen, better precautions can be taken,
| but it's absolutely still an issue, especially in places like
| Detroit, where the surviving lead pipes were largely the
| service lines on the user side of the water meter. (Remediation
| and upgrades to water distribution systems often stops at the
| meter, including design considerations.)
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_contamination_in_Washingt
| ...
| eigenrick wrote:
| ..and about 100% of their parents have lead in their blood.
| That's progress, right?
| 40acres wrote:
| I was diagnosed w/ ADHD in 2019. When doing research and seeing
| what the causes could be -- I noticed that lead paint was among
| possible contributors. I decided to google what lead paint looked
| like, and realized the apartment I was raised in was covered in
| it.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Is there no biological mechanism in the body to help promote the
| removal of lead?
| croes wrote:
| No
| Igelau wrote:
| Heavy metals can appear in sweat. Whether this phenomenon is
| enough to have any therapeutic potential, I can't say.
| refurb wrote:
| _scientists saw observable levels of the toxic metal in about
| half_
|
| As a former analytical chemist, we can detect most metals down to
| the parts per trillion or lower.
|
| So the more sensitive our instruments get the "more kids have
| lead".
|
| With sufficiently sensitive testing you'd probably find lead in
| 100% of people.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > most of the affected kids ... didn't have enormous amounts of
| lead in their bloodstreams, and only two percent had a "high"
| level. But as the researchers note in their paper, there's no
| such thing as a safe amount of lead to have in your system.
|
| It's possible that more sensitive instruments will allow us to
| eventually conclude "this small amount X of lead is safe to
| have ...". But it makes sense to take this seriously. We know
| lead is bad and we know lots of environmental exposure to lead
| exists.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| > "this small amount X of lead is safe to have ...".
|
| wouldn't make the popular news media, but "lead in our
| blood!" does
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It's noise. Worry about teaching kids to look both ways etc
| before obsessing about this one, is my advice.
| Symmetry wrote:
| So, I'd agree that there are lead levels too low to be
| worth worrying about. But I recall a clever study a while
| back where a researcher noticed that children found to be
| in the top decile of lead exposure got lead abatement for
| their homes or apartments by the city. The researchers
| compared them to the previous second decile (now first
| decile) and found a pretty significant effect size on life
| outcomes. This was done on poor people in city centers so
| the lead levels were high compared to, say, suburbanites
| but there are lead levels many kids in the US are exposed
| to that are actually a big deal.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I taught my kids to look both ways. Now what do I do?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| etc
| EL_Loco wrote:
| I might be mistaken here, but from what I've read on lead, we
| already know relatively well what amount of lead is safe,
| according to body weight etc. We also know that our bodies
| can deal with these small amounts, by actually getting rid of
| some of it. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter
| can chime in?
| peteradio wrote:
| Total lead tells you your symptoms today. But it accrues so
| you'd need to know in advance your future lead intake to
| know if this small amount today will be a big impact
| tomorrow. Basically its unknowable so its practical to say
| that no amount is safe. There probably does exist a low
| enough level that the body can even clear it but there
| isn't any will to define it.
| lumost wrote:
| My understanding is that all detectable amounts currently
| have known negative effects when studied. The _Action_
| levels are set based on what is possible to address in an
| individual child.
|
| Lead exists in the environment. It would be impractical to
| impossible to eliminate it entirely from the blood streams
| of most people. However certain areas have extremely
| dangerous concentrations such as dirt near major roads/old
| buildings, water in certain areas, and lead paints.
|
| Lead pipes are an interesting one where it is simply
| impractical to replace all the pipes and remove lead in old
| cities. Hence as long as the calcification holds there is
| no action on the small amount of lead which leaks into the
| pipes.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Actually, you dont need to replace the pipes. They can
| actually line them in place. Of course then people might
| have concerns about the chemical makeup of the liners
| (basically plastic), but it's hard to say what other
| alternatives are out there.
| im3w1l wrote:
| That statement has the exact same problem. With
| sufficiently sensitive tests you might in theory be able
| to detect the negative effects of a single lead atom.
|
| What we really want to know is: how big of a deal is this
| really?
| lumost wrote:
| There are unlikely to be people in the US with blood
| levels less than 1 order of magnitude less than the EPA
| action threshold. Lead is in your drinking water, food,
| and if you lived near anything with leaded - your air.
|
| We used to use lead based pesticides at the dawn of the
| 20th century, if you eat any food grown in the midwest
| you are exposing yourself to reasonably large quantities
| of lead.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Does a single atom have known negative effects?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In the US at least, were it structured as an
| infrastructure project on a city by city basis, it would
| actually be extremely possible to strip out lead pipes
| and replace them with something modern.
|
| The problem is that pipe ownership in a domestic home is
| the property of the homeowner, and there's no political
| will to do that kind of massive wealth transfer from the
| public coffers to the improved infrastructure of millions
| of individual properties. But while it wouldn't be
| inexpensive, it's on par with other expenditures the
| federal government makes for federal projects.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The point is that "detectable" says more about the instrument
| than anything else.
|
| If there's no science that says "one atom of lead anywhere in
| your body is bad", then saying "detectable" is meaningless.
|
| I mean, if you said "we found a detectable number of bullets
| in half of children", now _that_ would be bad.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think the real point is that detectable levels with
| modern instruments that are used for such measurements
| (>=1.0 mg/dL)* is considered bad.
|
| *Another poster noted this level.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > If there's no science that says "one atom of lead
| anywhere in your body is bad", then saying "detectable" is
| meaningless.
|
| It would be meaningless on that case too.
|
| Also meaningless is saying that 2% of the kids have a high
| level of lead, without saying what "high" means.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > Also meaningless is saying that 2% of the kids have a
| high level of lead, without saying what "high" means.
|
| Oh, that's simple - it's defined as above the 98th
| percentile.
|
| (I kid, I hope...)
| jmalicki wrote:
| Actually, the CDC defines the 5ug/DL as high based on
| being the 97.5%ile [1] in children... so you're not
| kidding...
|
| But if only 2% of children have lead levels that were
| originally defined based on the worst 2.5%, that's a 20%
| reduction, so great news!?
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/blood-lead-
| levels.h...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Still, I'm not sure the article uses the CDC definition.
| Going on with the complaint, the article is meaningless.
|
| Did they find a problem? An improvement? Nothing? Nobody
| can tell by reading it alone.
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| Look at the actual paper for the actual numbers. Also lead is a
| problem in any concentration.
| Igelau wrote:
| > any concentration
|
| I'm curious. If there's lead in the water, the air, the soil,
| the food we eat, is zero even possible? Is there a baseline
| "side effect of living on Earth" level, even if it's very
| slight?
| sparker72678 wrote:
| This.
|
| The death rate of being human is 100%. Every five minutes
| there's some new paper or study letting us all know why we
| should be afraid of something new.
|
| I'm not saying this particular study is necessarily scare-
| mongering, but good grief is it tiring to see this stuff
| all day every day, without any scale of risk for context.
| LucaMasters wrote:
| To summarize:
|
| They defined these blood lead levels:
|
| * "detectable": >=1.0 mg/dL
|
| * "elevated": >=5.0 mg/dL
|
| They found that:
|
| * 50.5% had "detectable" levels (50.4%-50.6% for the 95% CI).
|
| * 1.9% had "elevated" levels (1.8%-1.9% for the 95% CI [wait,
| how is the reported amount the same as the upper limit of the
| CI?]).
|
| The paper does start out saying:
|
| > No safe level of exposure to lead has been identified.
|
| Which I believe to be true, though it's not the same as "no
| level of exposure to lead is safe". I would be interested in
| what levels are _known_ to be unsafe. Is 1.0 mg /dL known to
| be unsafe, or just not known to be safe?
|
| It's pretty clear we should be working to reduce lead
| exposure, especially in children, but it's also true that
| "detectable amounts" and "harmful" aren't the same thing. The
| former clearly varies with our technology and the other
| remains constant (and isn't, afaik, _known_ to be 0).
| [deleted]
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Is your implication that we can find every single element in
| the periodic table (if not compounds and other chemicals, too)
| in the human body with sufficiently sensitive testing?
| seoaeu wrote:
| The human body contains something like 10^27 atoms. It
| doesn't seem that unreasonable that all elements which are at
| least moderately common on Earth would be present...
| Jabbles wrote:
| The number of possible chemicals is vast, due to the
| exponentially large number of ways you can combine the
| elements. So although every stable element is present in the
| average human, every possible chemical (or compound) is not.
|
| Recent discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634549
| contravariant wrote:
| That's basically equivalent to just saying the human body
| contains atoms for all isotopes. And other than the unstable
| or exceedingly rare isotopes I don't see why not.
| IdoRA wrote:
| More or less. I used to run samples of water from student's
| canteens on a Thermo Scientific Element 2 (an exquisitely
| sensitive mass spectrometer) in their presence, knowing I
| would find uranium and lead in it. Not a lot, but it's there.
| The point to the students was the dose makes the poison, more
| or less.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| Not seeing how being a chemist makes you a medical expert but
| ok
| spekcular wrote:
| "Detectable" is defined as >=1.0 mg/dL in the study. This is
| hardly a negligible amount, given what we know about the health
| effects of lead.
| hallarempt wrote:
| Only half?
| cobookman wrote:
| It's shameful the EPA still hasn't banned leaded aviation fuel.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Aviation fuel is a far smaller source of lead in humans than
| just about anything else since it's mostly thinly distributed
| thousands of feet away from them (contrast with paint, handling
| of lead objects, plumbing, etc).
|
| I don't find anything disagreeable about the EPA refraining
| from spending my taxes on low impact things to appease people
| who just want to see a feel good message be sent.
| verst wrote:
| And most pilot will have touched this fuel quite a bit - for
| example when checking a single engine propeller plane during
| preflight we sump the fuel tanks. There is always some fuel
| that sprays onto my hands then.
|
| I wonder how much lead this exposes me to. (I'm working on a
| private pilot license in a Cessna 172)
| s0rce wrote:
| If you are particularly concerned (could be justified) you
| could get a small aircraft with a diesel engine, don't seem
| super common but might be increasing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Or wear gloves during your preflight.
| ericd wrote:
| And that'd have the benefit of accelerating the industry's
| transition a little, by boosting demand.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I switched to using a GATTS jar (which also helps detect
| Jet-A contamination, which is not much of a concern for a
| 172). The design of that jar is such that much less fuel
| (often zero) touches/splashes onto your hands and it's easy
| to pour the fuel back into the tank if the sample is "clean".
| myself248 wrote:
| Ask your doctor, get it checked!
|
| I just got my test results back, since I'm having some odd
| symptoms and my doctor's kinda throwing ideas at the wall. He
| asked, jokingly, if there was a chance anyone was trying to
| poison me with arsenic.
|
| I said no, but I do a lot of soldering (like a LOT), and I
| make a point not to chew on my solder or wear the iron behind
| my ear like a pencil, but who knows whether the dust is
| getting absorbed or whatever. What the heck, let's check for
| it.
|
| My level came back at "less than 1" ug/dl, which I guess is
| as far down as that particular measurement can go. So that's
| cool, seems my precautions are adequate.
| truffdog wrote:
| As of this year, the FAA has finally approved lead free avgas:
| https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/gami-awarded-long-awaite...
| sokoloff wrote:
| There is progress on the front to find a viable replacement
| fuel: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
| news/2021/july/27/ga...
|
| Without a workable (technically and legally) replacement fuel,
| banning 100LL was never going to be viable IMO.
| nradov wrote:
| The city of San Jose is forcing a local airport to close
| largely over lead concerns. However research has shown that
| children living near the airport don't actually have higher
| blood lead levels.
|
| https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-airport-lead-levels-ar...
|
| Although the absolute risk is probably small the aviation
| industry should have moved faster on this issue. Airplanes last
| longer than cars but they can't expect the status quo to be
| tolerated indefinitely. At some point airplane owners need to
| be forced to upgrade their engines, or quit flying.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The county of Santa Clara, which owns the airport, is closing
| it because it is an uneconomical waste of a huge amount of
| phenomenally valuable land, and it is only 5 miles from a
| real airport. It serves no legitimate purpose in the society
| and economy of the Bay Area.
| outworlder wrote:
| > The county of Santa Clara, which owns the airport, is
| closing it because it is an uneconomical waste of a huge
| amount of phenomenally valuable land, and it is only 5
| miles from a real airport. It serves no legitimate purpose
| in the society and economy of the Bay Area.
|
| That is false. It is a "relief" airport _precisely because
| it is close to SJC_. That allows slower traffic to land in
| RHRV instead of SJC. It is a _real airport_. Has two
| runways, air traffic control and what have you. What 's the
| threshold for a 'real airport'?
|
| There's a lot of "phenomenally valuable" land nearby with
| only dirt and maybe trees growing on it. There are parks
| and wilderness areas. Should we turn them into businesses
| and houses just because real state values are up?
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's not a real airport because 100% of its operations
| are wankers flying around in their obsolete mosquitos.
| The Bay Area has a superabundance of GA airports and RHV
| is superfluous.
| outworlder wrote:
| > At some point airplane owners need to be forced to upgrade
| their engines, or quit flying.
|
| It's not about the owners, _at all_. Airplanes already have a
| limit on how many hours their engines have, after that it
| needs to be overhauled or replaced.
|
| It's just that, for many planes, there aren't really any
| options available, as other engines are not certified for
| their planes.
|
| Even for the planes that _are_ certified and can be changed
| to use other fuels, most airports don't have them available
| (even "mogas", which is automotive gasoline with no ethanol,
| is difficult to find).
| maxerickson wrote:
| Rec fuel is prevalent, so I expect there is some demand-
| supply dynamics going on inside airport fences.
|
| (Rec fuel is a name used in Michigan at least for ethanol
| free gasoline intended for use in snowmobiles and boats and
| such)
| croes wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
| roland35 wrote:
| My wife and I are particularly concerned about lead, especially
| since there is no way to really cure lead poisoning. Any house
| built before the 1980s could have lead in it, with varying
| degrees of concern for children. Around the home here is what we
| found are sources of lead to worry about (or not):
|
| - Paint: lead was banned in paint in 1979, but lead was used less
| and less even before the cutoff date. Paint is especially a
| problem when it is chipping or wearing off, like on windows or
| doors.
|
| - Plumbing. Very old homes may have lead pipes which should be
| removed. Lead solder was used with copper pipes until ~1984, but
| this is somewhat less of a concern, depending on your water
| source (cities can change the water to leach less lead from
| pipes).
|
| - Plumbing fixtures: this is actually a pretty major source of
| lead in water, and luckily it is easy to change old faucets. You
| can run water for a minute to mitigate risk with old faucets.
|
| - Flooring: Lead can be in any ceramic tiles, but generally not
| too much. It is only a problem if you are removing tiles and are
| creating lots of dust.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/lead
| calibas wrote:
| For plumbing, they switched to "lead-free" pipes, which is
| rather misleading as "lead-free" means up to 8% lead. It wasn't
| until 2011 that they redefined "lead-free" as being no more
| than 0.25% lead.
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/01/2020-16...
| magicalhippo wrote:
| That's straight out of Monty Python's rat tart skit[1]...
|
| "We got Acme's new Lead-free plumbing!"
|
| "Lead-free plumbing? As in no lead?"
|
| "Well 8 percent... rather a lot really..."
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/bAs1_FxTyFs?t=198
| mLuby wrote:
| That's absurd. How did they not run afoul of false
| advertising laws? (Oh, that federalregister.gov link says
| "The RLDWA revised the definition of lead free.")
|
| My layperson expectations:
|
| * "low-X": < 1/3 is X.
|
| * "trace amounts of X": <1% is X.
|
| * "X-free": no reasonably detectable amount is X. Obviously
| there's some wiggle room for how sensitive the detectors are,
| but it should be less that "trace amounts," i.e. 0%.
|
| This reminds me of "waterproof" which generally just means it
| can survive being splashed or rained on for a few minutes,
| but not submerged.
| lsllc wrote:
| Other hazards in flooring include asbestos. In general,
| flooring tiles installed between 1920 and 1980 (in the US at
| least) can contain asbestos, in particular (but not limited to
| 9x9 tiles).
|
| https://www.bobvila.com/articles/asbestos-floor-tiles/
| WalterBright wrote:
| You can also get lead from crystal glassware. I don't use mine
| anymore, they're just a decoration.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| "fancy" liquor decanters are often some of the worst
| offenders, because the alcohol increases the leaching speed
| of the lead from the glass.
|
| https://scotchaddict.com/are-leaded-crystal-decanters-
| danger...
| neaden wrote:
| Don't forget the soil in your yard, even if the house was built
| yesterday the soil could still have lead contamination from
| leaded gasoline.
| ljf wrote:
| UK suburban soil can also be bad as people used to throw
| fireplace ashes in their gardens, which can concentrate
| contaminants. I ate from my home allotment for years until a
| neighbour told me he had recently tested his soil and found
| it heavy with lead and other rubbish.
| agumonkey wrote:
| did he find a way to de-pollute ?
| mythrwy wrote:
| Soaking the soil with EDTA solution might do it.
|
| (EDTA is also used medically for heavy metal poisoning).
| Alex3917 wrote:
| You can bioremediate lead using sunflowers.
| huwnang wrote:
| I grew up on a farm where the property has since been divided
| up and houses built. I remember how my parents were about
| gasoline for washing paint brushes and old motor oil for
| painting fences and burning plastics and electronics in the
| burn barrel. Who knows what happened to pesticide containers.
| There was a stack of lead pipes I played with occasionally.
| No idea what pipes were in the house, but it was old, so.
|
| And I totally wonder whether people are growing food there,
| soaking all of that up.
| patja wrote:
| And decades of paint chips from previous exterior paint prep
| that may not have been well-contained.
| xxpor wrote:
| In South King County and Pierce County, WA (south of
| Seattle), the basic advice is to not grow any food directly
| in the ground without having your soil tested first for
| arsenic. There was a copper smelter in Tacoma for decades,
| and now everything basically within a 20 mile radius is
| contaminated.
|
| https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-
| cleanup/...
|
| https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/dirtalert/?lat=47.349229&lon=-12.
| .. (not exactly a circle due to the topography and wind
| patterns of the area)
|
| The point is, there was a lot of nasty industrial activity in
| this country pre Clean Air Act. Everyone should be concerned
| and get their property tested IMO, especially if you have
| kids. I'm not trying to be alarmist; it doesn't affect my day
| to day life, it's just something to know. I still grow
| veggies in my garden, I just use raised beds and dirt from
| bags from Home Depot.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| This place is somewhat near us:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory
|
| Among other things (including a nuclear meltdown):
|
| > On 11 December 2002, a Department of Energy (DOE)
| official, Mike Lopez, described typical clean-up procedures
| executed by Field Lab employees in the past. Workers would
| dispose of barrels filled with highly toxic waste by
| shooting the barrels with rifles so that they would explode
| and release their contents into the air. It is unclear when
| this process ended, but for certain did end prior to the
| 1990s.[29]
|
| Trying to get it cleaned up has been a shitshow.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You can treat it with chelation or EDTA. The drugs bind to lead
| and your body clears it out via the kidneys. Works well if you
| catch it early.
|
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisonin...
| utexaspunk wrote:
| Does that reverse the brain damage?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No, obviously not it just strips lead out of you
| bloodstream and cells.
| graeme wrote:
| If you only find out later, is it any use at all?
|
| I found out my drinking water had low levels of lead, for
| about ten years.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| How did you find out. What test?
| nickff wrote:
| Not a doctor, but my understanding is that low levels of
| lead are most impactful on children. Using chelation on
| adults with low levels of lead may create more problems
| than it solves.
| amelius wrote:
| Is there a similar treatment for mercury?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| DMPS (2,3 Dimercapto-1-Propanesulfonate)
| kasey_junk wrote:
| For plumbing specifically you _also_ have to worry about every
| link in the chain from your house to the water source. Perhaps
| non-intuitively just knowing if there are lead pipes because
| they can develop a protective sediment layer that prevents the
| lead from touching the water.
|
| Anecdotally, we had a major city water line project in our
| neighborhood that _raised_ our lead levels because it disturbed
| that sediment protection.
|
| The only real solution is testing and filtering at point of
| use. But even filtering is hard because most water filters sold
| are for flavor not for lead.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I'm specious that any sediment/crust that formed in an old
| water system may contain very high levels of lead. I think
| that may be what happened in Flint MI. Changed the PH of the
| water and all that lead started leaching back into the water.
| willis936 wrote:
| The right solution is installing a reverse osmosis filter
| system (which includes mechanical and charcoal filters) at
| the house or tap level. Water's not one of those things
| people should cheap out on. We, as a society, can afford to
| not have this be an issue. We're not quite to that
| realization yet.
|
| To be clear: I'm not saying the burden of cost should be
| solely put on renters/homeowners.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Can you go into this in a bit of detail? I thought reverse
| osmosis water wasn't great to drink, because it's
| essentially de-ionized water. So, the water has no choice
| but to rip ions out of your cells. But, I've never looked
| into biology enough to understand.
|
| I did work in a lab back in the day where one of the
| students was filling his water bottle from the DI tap,
| because he preferred the taste. He didn't drop dead or
| anything.
|
| I clearly have just enough of the details to not
| understand.
| cryptoquick wrote:
| Some RO systems include an alkalinization / re-
| mineralization stage. I use this one:
| https://www.expresswater.com/pages/ro-alkaline-uv
| tguvot wrote:
| RO systems usually do not include DI filter.
| zz865 wrote:
| > Any house built before the 1980s could have lead in it,
|
| Which essentially means its normal for everyone except some
| people born in the last 20-30 years.
| flurie wrote:
| I have another surprising addition to that list: Christmas
| lights.
| jeffbee wrote:
| All high-temperature wire insulation contains lead. But are
| these significant sources of available environmental lead?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| No, a lot of PVC wire insulation contains no lead. For
| example, all wire meant to be sold in the EU must be ROHS
| complaint, and thus contain no lead. Many US manufacturers
| are also compliant, and the number is growing. Many
| manufacturers state this explicitly on their websites (e.g.
| Tripp Lite and Southwire, to take two random examples).
| Many others can be identified by either an RoHS designation
| or lack of CA Prop 65 warning for lead.
|
| The answer to your second question is yes, handling cords
| with heavily leaded insulation can cause significant
| amounts of lead to rub off on your hands. This is easily
| seen with a Lead-Check swab, which will turn red when wiped
| either on the cord, or even on your fingers after you've
| spent some time handling the cord.
| caeril wrote:
| > all wire meant to be sold in the EU must be ROHS
| complaint
|
| Just an aside, this is a personal gripe. I grew up on
| lead solder, making Heathkit projects with my dad.
|
| I tried re-engaging with the electronics hobby as an
| adult, decades later, in a world filled with ROHS solder,
| and I have to say it is a huge pain in the ass to work
| with. Adhesion, balling issues, etc, regardless of core
| type, flux, etc, even on nice controlled-temp Hakko
| stations, versus the Weller crap irons of my youth.
|
| Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, or maybe my memories are
| covered with rose glasses. But electronics _seemed_ be
| more enjoyable in the lead era. And to my knowledge, my
| IQ did not suffer.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Nothing about RoHS is preventing you from poisoning
| yourself and your family in the privacy of your home.
| Leaded solder is still widely available.
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/kester-
| solder/24-...
|
| Here's half a kilo of lead in a solid metal bar, if you
| want to just poison a whole city or small country:
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/kester-
| solder/44-...
| nvarsj wrote:
| You can't get lead poisoning from using lead solder. The
| melting point is not high enough to turn the lead into a
| gas. In fact, lead free solders are generally more
| harmful - due to higher melting points they tend to
| produce a lot more flux fumes. ROHS solder was introduced
| so when you junk your mass produced electrical appliance,
| you're not adding more lead to the environment. For
| hobbyists it makes no sense.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > "And to my knowledge, my IQ did not suffer."
|
| I suspect the opposite. I grew up eating off of lead-
| contaminated Lenox dishes, playing with fishing weights
| and mercury from broken thermostats, and other
| stimulating but toxic activities. I strongly suspect
| these things account for at least some of the attention
| deficit and impulse control issues I now struggle with as
| an adult.
|
| I'm sure your IQ is more than adequate, but you have no
| way of knowing what it would be if your brain was kept
| cleaner in your youth. For my part, I'd love to be
| smarter.
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| Worth adding that lead test kits are pretty cheap at any big
| box store and easy to use:
|
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-LeadCheck-Instant-Lead-Test-S...
| (this actually seems expensive, I'm used to closer to $2-3 per
| stick)
|
| We have an early 20th century house and run them over anything
| we're about to demo. So far we've been lucky, so likely a later
| renovation removed most of the lead that would have been there.
| jcrben wrote:
| Sources outside the home include avgas which is the largest
| source for lead in the atmosphere
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
| outworlder wrote:
| > Sources outside the home include avgas which is the largest
| source for lead in the atmosphere
|
| In the atmosphere, sure (as it is not naturally occurring in
| the air). But how large is this source? And what harm does it
| actually cause?
|
| There are indications that the levels of lead around airports
| are very low - even the article linked said that ~2.5% of
| children around the airport had "detectable" levels of lead.
| But it doesn't provide enough data to tell if the
| contamination came from the air. If this was significant,
| wouldn't many more children around the airport have high (not
| only detectable) levels of lead? Everyone has to breathe, but
| not everyone has the same contamination sources.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > Final results from EPA's lead modeling study at the Santa
| Monica Airport shows off-airport levels below current 150
| ng/m3 and possible future 20 ng/m3 levels.[108] Fifteen of 17
| airports monitored during a year-long study in the US by the
| EPA have lead emissions well below the current National
| Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for lead.[109]
|
| To be safe, obviously we want to reduce all exposure to zero.
|
| Avgas was changed in formulation to reduce lead.
|
| There are alternatives to avgas - in Europe, avgas is already
| hard to find. Automotive gasoline conversions are available
| for some widely used engines. The problem is that you can't
| just take it to a shop and covert it - the airplane was
| originally certified with one engine type. If it is changed,
| it is no longer certified. No company is willing to eat the
| costs to re-certify - for the planes that are still in
| production. Let alone planes made by companies that no longer
| exist.
|
| In the 'experimental' category, there are many types of
| engines that can directly burn either avgas or "mogas".
|
| Some manufacturers, like Diamond, can use "jet fuel"
| (essentially, diesel) in their piston engines (as they have
| their own engines, based on diesel car engines). But even
| they will have avgas-burning versions (with Lycoming engines)
| for the US market.
|
| Then you have competing agencies dragging their feet. There's
| the EPA, which should be issuing regulations. Then there's
| the FAA that needs to come up with a solution with the
| certification issue - they are pretty underfunded so it's
| unlikely they will. One agency points the finger to the
| other, none take action. I'm probably missing other agencies.
| There are alternatives in development - without a full
| government push, progress is slow.
|
| Meanwhile, planes (and many helicopters) in the US keep
| spewing lead. Many of which provide important services.
| jcrben wrote:
| Well, this is an another estimate:
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.6b02910
|
| IQ damage of any amount is extremely significant and has
| subtle effects on society which are difficult to
| economically quantify, and given that many avgas burners
| basically do it for fun, seems mostly unjustifiable.
| prepend wrote:
| The important question is how many kids have 5 micrograms of lead
| per decaliter of blood [0]. This is the reference blood lead
| level and much more useful for tracking progress (or decline).
|
| I'm surprised that the article sticks with the "no lead is good"
| rather than the public health level.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/blood-lead-
| levels.h...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| more than half of all humans, but yes, that includes kids;
| keywords "body burden chemicals" or more recently "forever
| chemicals"
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| Wait till you learn that hobby aircraft still use leaded fuel
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| well I mean.. where else are red states going to get their
| voters?
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| The problem with looking at things this way is that there is no
| discussion of amounts and dose-dependent effects. The article
| just says "For lead there's no 'too low'". and "we want zero."
| Fine enough, but as we are very good at measuring ever-smaller
| quantities of things we will find all manner of out-of-place
| chemicals that we have been tolerating just fine. I'm sure I have
| measurable amounts of arsenic, lead, aluminum, chlorine,
| radioactivity, etc in my body right now, in levels that do not
| have a meaningful impact on my health.
|
| The real question we should ask is whether there is substantial
| evidence of a negative health impact from the levels of lead that
| are measured.
|
| We should want to know exactly what levels were measured in these
| kids and be able to plot it out. We should have some idea of the
| health impacts of various doses. With that we could come to more
| meaningful conclusions.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Exactly. There's no scale of risk/impact in these
| conversations, it's always binary.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| My kid took a routine test and was found to have 5.0 mg/dL, which
| is elevated but not alarming. The source is most likely paint
| chips or dust. I'm in an old building which has lead paint that
| was painted over. It's totally legal to just paint over the lead
| paint, but since the building is settling the paint on the door
| frames often chips off.
|
| My landlord has been good about offering to strip in repaint the
| frames, but I would rather not because I feel like all of the
| scraping would place even more lead chips and dust in the
| environment. I'd rather be diligent about cleaning and have them
| do that strip it after we move.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Sorry, but 5.0 mg/dL is actually pretty bad. This is the new
| threshold at which the CDC recommends intervention; it was
| dropped from 10 relatively recently.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wonder if it's preferable to just replace the door frames in
| that situation. It's not particularly difficult or time-
| consuming in most cases.
| kenjackson wrote:
| They should be able to measure the amount of lead in the air
| after stripping to ensure it is not detectable. At least you
| should inquire into this.
| ubercore wrote:
| If done right the stripping will absolutely be the right move.
| Cleaning will only get you so far. Your state should have
| licensed lead remediation contractors
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Nobody wants to pay to do it right though. So they often just
| throw on a 3M mask, put up some air filters, and call it good
| enough. To do it the EPA-approved way can easily cost $10K
| with an unlimited ceiling.
|
| I'm of the maybe controversial opinion that there should be a
| program to help residential users with the costs, because the
| reality is that when the costs are too high (even if for good
| reason) many just do it wrong, and make the contamination
| worse.
| xxpor wrote:
| There's absolutely funding to do this in some areas.
| Cleveland's had a major remediation going on for years now
| because approximately everyone who lives in the city is too
| poor to pay for it. At the same time, most houses are much
| older than 1979, so nearly every house has some.
|
| https://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/2020/08/cleveland-city-
| co...
| throaway46546 wrote:
| Have you ever met a landlord that wants to pay to do things
| right?
| jeffbee wrote:
| 5 mg/dL is very alarming. It is associated with an order of
| magnitude higher criminal behavior in later life, much higher
| odds of repeating a grade in school, and significantly worse
| 3rd and 5th grade reading and math performance. Children with
| this blood lead level have worse later-life outcomes than
| children who test with 10 mg/dL and get treatment for it.
|
| https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/app.20160056
| mythrwy wrote:
| Lead does have horrible effects but I have to wonder if
| poverty might be a confounding variable.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I have to wonder if not reading the PDF was a confounding
| variable in your reply.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| They inject heavy metals into children more than ever. It is
| called "vaccination" and it is barbaric.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Now imagine what children in China have in their blood.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| There's a study tying drop in crime rates correlate with end of
| leaded gasoline usage.
| spiderice wrote:
| The reason for the correlation being what?
| myself248 wrote:
| Lead causes mood disorders.
| graeme wrote:
| How big a concern is lead in adults, and is there anything that
| can be done about long run exposure to lower levels?
|
| I live in Montreal, and found out the city pipes in my area had
| lead. So I've been drinking it about ten years; have bottled
| water now.
|
| My understanding is that chelation is good for acute exposure but
| wasn't sure it's recommended for lower levels. Now do I know if
| this is actually something to be concerned about, at low levels
| in an adult.
|
| I had the city worker do a measure without flushing: 16 ug/L
|
| (I drink bottled water now so there's no ongoing exposure. I also
| can't be sure my old places had it, so it could have just been
| for two years that I was exposed, but likely was for ten)
| xyst wrote:
| Bottled water often comes from the same sources as your tap, so
| the "no ongoing exposure" is not always guaranteed.
| Additionally, bottled water companies (at least in the states)
| is not regulated by the same laws as municipal/city water
| companies.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This article is pretty bad, for all the usual clickbaity reasons.
| It's worth at least scanning the study they're citing, which is
| (even as a layman) pretty easy to read.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
| amelius wrote:
| As a kid I did a lot of lead-based soldering. Could this be an
| issue?
| zz865 wrote:
| Anyone know what is normal in other countries? I grew up grinding
| and sanding our old lead-painted house. I think its probably
| common.
| kzrdude wrote:
| This site seems to give "normal values" for swedish kids
| https://www.internetmedicin.se/behandlingsoversikter/arbets-...
|
| > Genomsnittshalten hos svenska barn ar cirka 0,05 umol/L.
| Halten har sjunkit sedan Sverige forbjod blyad bensin.
|
| For kids average is 0.05 moles/L which should be 10 mg/L. (Note
| it's given per liter, not dL).
| giantg2 wrote:
| It would be nice if they had some more data in here. Instead of
| statements like, "For lead there's no too low. We want zero.".
|
| Like what is the sensitivity of the test? If we get more
| sensitive tests, does that mean out target changes? Where are the
| limits that we see issues?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Topics like this bring modern attitudes about identity to a
| tricky spot. A common view is that you aren't defined by XYZ, you
| can choose your identity and who you are or what you do. In
| reality, things like lead poisoning have a very powerful and
| undeniable impact on who you are and what you can do, e.g.
|
| > Slow development of normal childhood behaviors, such as talking
| and use of words, and permanent intellectual disability are both
| commonly seen.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Effects_on_chil...
|
| If lead is really a widespread problem, and especially if it
| continues worsening, then we'll eventually reach a point where we
| need to identify individuals who have been impacted by lead and
| ideally take pre-emptive measures to help them with the
| consequences of it.
|
| This makes me wonder how people with more woke attitudes approach
| other group-specific issues like sickle cell anemia in black
| people or myopia in Asian and Jewish people. In these cases,
| being XYZ does define you and the things you're at risk for.
| Pyramus wrote:
| > Topics like this bring modern attitudes about identity to a
| tricky spot.
|
| Not only identity but if you follow this train of thought also
| criminal responsibility. If I'm not mistaken there is a well
| known correlation between (childhood) head trauma and serial
| killers. I remember a case where a guy suffered brain damage in
| a car accident as an adult, underwent a complete change of
| character and committed a murder thereafter (can't remember the
| name though).
|
| These examples are extreme cases for sure, but the effect is
| much more subtle. There are studies showing that nutritious
| prison food leads to lower levels of violence etc.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I can't speak for the "woke" in general, but regarding medical
| conditions and their prevalence depending on racial origin:
| there's worlds of difference between defining what credit risk
| somebody is based on their skin color and informing people that
| skin color may be a correlative indicator that the resources
| should be invested to test their genetics for known maladies.
| The first is a crime in the United States, and the second is
| just good medicine.
| Igelau wrote:
| > that skin color may be a correlative indicator that the
| resources should be invested to test their genetics for known
| maladies
|
| You're right, but people are still starting to call this
| racism. I've been in the meetings where HR hammered home the
| point, and I quote "race is a social construct with no
| biological meaning". And some our software is supposed to
| support medical fields :(
| fighterpilot wrote:
| You would hope that such good medicine is possible, but
| thanks to woke insanity it's becoming untenable. Read the
| experiences of medical practitioners that show how bad it is
| getting:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/ov8ew6/article_ci.
| ..
| silicon2401 wrote:
| This is actually a great example of what I mean. It's not
| hard to see the conflict. Let's say the group most affected
| by lead in the US is green people, and that most green people
| have some level of significant lead poisoning. That would
| mean that it's very likely that green people in the US have
| negative impacts to their cognitive development because of
| this lead poisoning. So to address the issue green people are
| having would also mean acknowledging that as a group, green
| people are more likely to have developmental issues, which
| would then create fuel for discrimination against green
| people. That's what I mean, I'm curious to see how that kind
| of situation gets handled.
| coopierez wrote:
| > people with more woke attitudes
|
| This is extremely broad and it feels like a bit of a strawman -
| a classic feminist issue I've heard is how office chairs are
| often designed more for the average height of a man, therefore
| subtly excluding women from the workspace.
|
| "people with more woke attitudes" would absolutely be on board
| with measures such as ensuring Asian people get the eye care
| they need (I suspect).
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| I will say that, at least in the "woke" circles I notice, there
| is plenty of discussion about how medical knowledge is too
| centered around the white male. Finding studies that dig into
| the way race-specific biology should change medical treatment
| and risk factors is hard, and finding doctors who acknowledge
| those studies in how they think about patients is even harder.
| Wohlf wrote:
| In my experience it's even worse than being too centered
| around the white male, it's too centered on a fictional
| 'average' person and if you fall outside that you have to
| research and advocate for yourself. If I have to do that as a
| mildly neuro-divergent white male then people less privileged
| than I am must be in real trouble.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Money is an issue though. If you want to study how every
| disease affects neuro-divergent middle-child women of
| native american descent then the cost of doing research
| will sky rocket. Nothing would ever get done.
| goatlover wrote:
| Scientifically speaking, there is no "race-specific biology".
| Race is a social construct. But there are ethnicities which
| get grouped into racial categories.
| spicymaki wrote:
| I agree with that in general, but there are issues that
| affect people who are more closely related along ethnic
| lines. The problem is the existing course racial groupings
| with arbitrary selections based on culture with no
| scientific basis.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| You're going to have to elaborate for me. Given that
| certain races are genetically predisposed to certain
| diseases and conditions more than other races, how am I to
| make sense of your comment?
| kenjackson wrote:
| People with "woke attitudes" aren't against group-specific
| issues. They're against using group-specific characteristics as
| a way to negatively discriminate against groups or individuals
| in that group.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| ==If lead is really a widespread problem, and especially if it
| continues worsening, then we'll eventually reach a point where
| we need to identify individuals who have been impacted by lead
| and ideally take pre-emptive measures to help them with the
| consequences of it.==
|
| We can barely get the funding today to replace lead pipes, the
| bare minimum to try and limit exposure, I doubt we'll be
| tracking down individuals any time soon.
|
| * https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-push-to-replace-
| americas-...
|
| ==how people with more woke attitudes approach other group-
| specific issues==
|
| I think in this case "woke" people would try to understand and
| empathize with those "group-specific issues" and help develop
| and implement plans to solve those issues. I think we see this
| in the "woke" political parties leading the charge on "group-
| specific issues" like voting rights, indigenous rights,
| immigrant rights, women's reproductive rights, healthcare as a
| right, etc. Just look at the typical political affiliations of
| the three "groups" you mentioned. It might answer your
| question.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My dad was a civil engineer on the clean water side of public
| health. In the late 1970s, when my parents moved into the house I
| grew up in, he replaced the supply line to the street and most of
| the plumbing. We never talked to him about it, but lead seems
| like a good guess (a side benefit, the water pressure from a
| slightly larger meter and clean pipes is a wonderful thing).
| fullstop wrote:
| My house was built in the 70s and I've tested surfaces over the
| years and have not found any lead paint yet. Another source of
| lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I stripped some woodwork in an 18th century house that had been
| painted over numerous times. I didn't bother to test, I just
| assumed that at least some of those layers were lead. The
| options for removal and disposal are limited and nasty.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Even though lead was removed from petrol, there is a lot in
| soil and dust in cities, and that is still agitated out into
| the air.
|
| This article shows how there is lead in Londons air despite it
| being removed in the 90s from fuel:
|
| https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224474/lead-from-leaded-petr...
| fokinsean wrote:
| Same thing with asbestos, there is a non-zero background
| level in the air because it was used in so many products for
| a long time.
| foobarian wrote:
| Remember that avgas still uses leaded fuel (though that will
| hopefully improve soon).
| floren wrote:
| Leaded avgas is only used in small, propeller-driven
| aircraft like Cessnas. Jet fuel does not contain lead.
| foobarian wrote:
| Exactly. And to think it used to be in all passenger car
| gasoline!
| wallawe wrote:
| > Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys.
|
| Yeah this was going to be my question, is where is the lead
| coming from? Water, toys, what else?
|
| Having a 4 week old, seeing this concerns me so I'd love to do
| what I can to avoid it.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Lead paint is still occasionally found on toys imported from
| China. But after a previous recall incident the major US toy
| brands now have better control over their supply chains so
| the risk should be low.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697.
| ..
| clircle wrote:
| Soil, water, lead pipes.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Radiolab just had an interesting episode on how we used to
| use leaded gasoline and how it resulted in lead being
| _everywhere_.
|
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/heavy.
| ..
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Watch out for dishes, especially older ones. The older Lenox
| dishes my family used for 40 years turned out to have heavily
| leaded glaze on the surface. By the time I was using them for
| my own kids, the glaze could turn a lead-check swab bright
| red, which means we were eating that lead.
|
| After I discovered this I replaced all of our dishes with
| plain white Corelle. Corelle currently uses lead-free glaze;
| the plain white is just me being an absolutist.
|
| Note that vintage Corelle and almost all other vintage
| cookware contains some amount of lead in the decorative
| glaze.
|
| Here's a good resource for lead content in the household
| items your kids are likely to encounter:
|
| https://tamararubin.com/
| zoomablemind wrote:
| In the course of regular pediatric visits the doctor should
| at some point check the blood for lead early on. Not on every
| visit, of course, they have a schedule for the blood work.
|
| As for the concerns, if there're reasons, doctor recommened
| us to check the water first. There may also be free test kits
| from the city.
|
| Also, out of caution, we were running the water off for some
| time before filling pots and doing washes, esp. in the
| morning.
|
| Dust wise, there's no easy solution. The wet cleaning,
| mopping the floors regularly and maintaining reasonable
| humidity indoors would help keep dust down... but babies love
| to crawl.
|
| Perhaps being outdoors more may be an option, unless it's
| even more polluted.
|
| If breastfed, mama's health is equally cruicial!
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's in the solder used to join pipes together.
|
| Even after "lead pipes" were banned in the US, it was still
| used to join copper pipe together.
|
| It's also in solder used in electronics, although I doubt
| that half of American children have a parent who regularly
| solders at home.
| tdeck wrote:
| Modern mass-market electronics have been made with lead-
| free solder for a long time because of RoHS regulations (I
| believe this is an EU thing but most manufacturers have
| retooled everything to be lead-free). I'd argue that
| electronics solder is a lot less of a concern anyway since
| it's usually only in hard-to-reach places. It's a major
| concern for disposal, however.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Paints and "metallic" jewelries for kids, it often makes the
| news.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Avoid anything over 50 years old.
|
| Old stuff has lead, but also has a bunch of other things that
| are of dubious health effects.
|
| But new stuff contains more volatiles, more fluorinated
| plastics, and a far wider array of newish chemicals we don't
| yet have good data on (nanoparticles etc.)
|
| Overall, I'd say that unless you have a lifetime to test and
| research everything, it probably isn't worth making any
| lifestyle choices to avoid unhealthy materials, because in
| doing so there's a good chance you'll just switch to another.
| But you should ask your government to put more money into
| population wide health initiatives, like research into health
| effects of chemicals.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Or avoid anything that wasn't made the same way 400 years
| ago. ;-)
|
| Except pewter. Avoid that.
|
| But like -- wood, cast iron, earthenware, unleaded glass,
| natural fibers (cotton, linen, hemp), vegetable dyes: I
| don't see how you go wrong with those.
| kords wrote:
| I got a bathtub stopper and I saw on the box a Prop65
| warning. Not sure if it's because of the lead.
| JCBird1012 wrote:
| Smaller general aviation aircraft still use 100LL gasoline
| (the LL stands for low lead) - and even though there's lead-
| free replacement candidates (still going through regulatory
| approval, at least in the US), it's been known that areas
| around airports with frequent GA traffic have higher levels
| of lead in the air, and children living near said airports
| may have elevated levels of lead in their blood
| (https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/08/06/new-study-
| finds-l...)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >and children living near said airports may have elevated
| levels of lead in their blood
|
| Or is that because the upper middle class types avoid
| airport noise like the plague leaving the housing stock
| around airports cheaper, older and more leaded?
|
| The correlation between low income and lead (all known bad
| chemicals highly used in the past really) exposure is well
| studied rather than speculative.
| verst wrote:
| What about the pilots? I always get this fuel on my hands
| during preflight when sumping the fuel tanks.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Lead doesn't absorb through the skin. You have to breathe
| or eat it. As long as you thoroughly wash your hands
| after preflight, the only exposure should be the fumes
| and exhaust in the air.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| No, tetraethyl lead, which is the form of lead found in
| fuel, is easily absorbed through the skin.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Maybe pilots should be required to lick a block of lead
| before each flight, so they have some incentive to stop
| using leaded fuel.
| lutorm wrote:
| With almost no exceptions, pilots have exactly zero say
| in what fuel to use. Airplanes are certified to use
| certain fuels and that's what you have to use. At this
| point there is no generally approved unleaded replacement
| for 100-octane avgas (although several are in testing.)
|
| A few engines, mostly low performance ones, have the
| option to use automobile gas, but even in those cases
| it's rarely available at airports so it's not really an
| option either.
| jcrben wrote:
| Many of these pilots are basically just rich people
| flying for fun.
| coryrc wrote:
| They own the plane. They choose the engine. They choose
| to fly. They choose to lobby against engine upgrades.
|
| They choose to poison us.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Without a legal replacement fuel (which is now in the
| works, but still not generally available nor legally
| approved for most aircraft), incentive isn't enough.
| Lammy wrote:
| I wonder what percentage have detectable levels of PFTE/PET/etc?
| At least we know the long-term effects of lead:
| https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/article...
|
| "Although these combined studies highlight the possibility of
| uptake and translocation of micro- and nanoplastics into the
| human body following oral and inhalation exposure, there is an
| overall scarcity of studies that conscientiously and
| systematically investigated the extent of particle translocation
| to different organs in relation to particle dose and particle
| size. Moreover, the potential health risks resulting from micro-
| and nanoplastics exposure, uptake and translocation is poorly
| investigated and is an important matter of ongoing debate."
| nate_meurer wrote:
| A lady named Tamara Rubin has spent years testing household
| products and other commonly handled objects for lead. She uses an
| XRF tester, which is the gold standard for high accuracy lead
| testing. She has thousands of items listed, from dishes to door
| hardware to childrens toys, and a lot of these will put a family
| at high risk of lead poisoning. There's some woo-y stuff on her
| website, but her XRF data is a gold mine:
|
| https://tamararubin.com/
|
| I personally have used both XRF and swabs on various objects
| around by home, and I found some really scary shit. The scariest
| were the older Lenox dishes we used for years; the decorative
| glaze on the eating surface tested high in lead via XRF, and the
| swab lit up bright red which means that lead was also coming off
| in our food.
|
| I threw away all our dishes and bought new Corelle.
|
| Other problems I found include old electrical cords and things
| made out of brass, including all plumbing fittings made before
| about 2012. These will also turn a swab red, especially if
| there's any corrosion, which means the lead is mobile.
| comboy wrote:
| Can anybody explain to me or give me some materials to read?
| Say toy has 5000ppm Pb, how does that translate to it being
| dangerous? Child only touches it. Assuming soil have a ballpark
| of 100ppm Pb and we all love fresh vegetables.. how is this toy
| or even a dish doing any damage?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Not sure what you're asking. You want an explanation of how
| lead pigments chalking off the surface of an old dish get in
| your mouth? Or how lead paint on a toy gets into a baby's
| mouth?
| comboy wrote:
| You don't give your kids toys which fall apart and your
| dish is not losing 1% of its mass with your every meal. So
| I'm asking how much is it losing? How many grams of your
| dish may stay on your food? From a quick look carrot has
| like 0.1mg/kg with up to 10mg/kg of lead [1][2]. We just
| eat it and give it to babies so they're healthy.
|
| So how much mass does a toy or a dish lose and how much of
| it ends up in somebody's mouth?
|
| Based on the data above if you ate 10g of your 5000ppm dish
| that seems equivalent to 5kg of carrots. And I do love to
| make a carrot juice, that's like a few servings. 10g of
| dish seems like a lot to swallow.
|
| I'm just trying to explain my lack of understanding here. I
| have just learned about these measurements and I'm clueless
| about the topic.
|
| 1. https://www.scielo.br/j/hb/a/PSXVNhx63TkLq9rFKVFNfjr/?la
| ng=e...
|
| 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/01
| 6788...
| nate_meurer wrote:
| It sounds like you're overthinking this a bit.
|
| Kids chew on and swallow all kinds of weird shit. I've
| seen young kids chew the paint off whole sets of pencils.
| Babies put literally everything they can in their mouth.
| I've watched children _lick_ window sills for fucks sake.
|
| If there's lead glaze on the eating surface of a plate or
| bowl, and if you know it's mobile, as it was on my
| dishes, then it's a safe assumption that it's mostly
| going in your food.
|
| Someone could spend a ton of time and money studying and
| quantifying the transfer of lead in all kinds of
| different scenarios, but what would the purpose be, when
| it's a relatively simple matter to abate or remove the
| hazard completely?
|
| Food is a different matter, and I believe tested
| regulation of heavy metals in foods is sorrowfully
| lacking.
| comboy wrote:
| I have kids, and I also definitely agree that it's better
| if lead is not in there at all. The whole lead in
| gasoline story is ridiculous and traumatizing.
|
| I'm just not sold on the idea of testing/researching
| products and getting rid of them based on what I've
| learned these last 10 minutes. It seems to me that it
| would be multiple orders of magnitude more important to
| test your vegetables if you are a lead-minimizer?
|
| And what about soil? E.g. in context of playgrounds. Soil
| is 15-40ppm Pb. Really bad toy from 90s is 5000ppm.
| Exposure surface * time * ppm. I just don't see why would
| you focus on toys dishes etc. unless you eat leaded-paint
| walls for breakfast.
|
| Assuming your lead-heavy dish completely disappears after
| 10 years of every day usage just ponder how much of it
| ended up in your belly compared to dishwasher cycles.
|
| I have no idea why I'm defending leaded dishware here, I
| do not recommend anybody keep their leaded anything based
| on erroneous math from some random HN comment. I would
| just like to learn if there is something I'm missing that
| would change my understanding of the problem.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it can depend on other factors too. For example, lead
| crystal drinkwater is considered safe as long as you aren't
| leaving the liquid in there for long periods of time. It's
| possible that's similar to the dishes.
|
| Stuff like leaded fuel exhaust or paint flakes are more likely
| to be ingested/absorbed.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| This is why the swabs are an important tool in addition to
| the XRF. If the swab turns red, then by definition it's
| wiping mobile lead from the surface of the object you're
| testing.
|
| Using electrical cords as an example, years ago I went
| through my house and swabbed all of the cords. If I found a
| cord that turned a swab red, I either threw the thing away if
| it was cheap, like an old coffee grinder, or I replaced the
| cord if I didn't want to replace the whole machine, like the
| cords on all of our Oreck vacuum cleaners.
|
| A lot of newer cords have lead in the insulation as indicated
| by XRF, but won't turn a swab pink. These I don't worry about
| too much, but I still tell the kids to wash their hand after
| handling them.
|
| EDIT:
|
| The LeadCheck swabs are pretty expensive, and using a whole
| swab for just one or two objects is ridiculously wasteful,
| but I have a trick that makes them cheap. I cut the cotton
| head off of a Q-tip cosmetic swab so that it's just a rolled
| paper rod. I activate the LeadCheck swab and squeeze out a
| drop of the liquid onto the upright surface of the swab. I
| dab the end of the decapitated Q-tip in the liquid, and I use
| that to swab the surface of whatever I'm testing. If
| something turns the paper red, I clip the end of the shaft
| off with nail clippers to get a fresh end, and continue to
| the next object.
|
| I can get dozens of tests out of a single swab this way. I
| make a list of things to test in one afternoon, and I can get
| the whole pile done for the cost of a single swab, instead of
| spending hundreds of dollars it would take to use a new
| LeadCheck swab for each object.
|
| Plus, the hard paper Q-tip shaft works better for
| aggressively rubbing on surfaces.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| You can also make your own with sodium rhodonizate (which
| you can get at many chemical supply companies)
| nate_meurer wrote:
| The LeadCheck swabs are super nice because they package
| the reagent in binary form in separate sealed glass
| capsules. As far as I know, this gives the product an
| indefinite shelf life. I'm still using a batch of
| LeadChecks that bought from Ebay fifteen years ago.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Its in so many older city water pipes that you cannot see, only
| to be let out when the water chemistry changes a bit.
| sayhar wrote:
| So I went into a big rabbithole of writing up a long email to
| my family warning them about specific plates and so on. Then I
| paused -- was any of this real?
|
| I looked up on Snopes -- they didn't seem to be too convinced
| that she's legit[0]. Some more googling didn't seem to show any
| reputable site repeating her claims.
|
| It's hard to tell if any of this is true or not. (Especially
| since there's a difference between a _cracked_ or chipped plate
| vs a normal one)
|
| [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vintage-pyrex-contains-
| uns...
| colpabar wrote:
| If you're worried about misinformation online, snopes should
| absolutely not be the first place you look.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28169681
| nate_meurer wrote:
| That snopes article is one of the worst ones I've ever read.
| Snopes does some good work, but they also do some really
| terrible work, and this is a good example. The writer, Kim
| LaCapria, is clearly way out of her depth on technical
| topics.
|
| Notice that the article doesn't provide one single piece of
| evidence of its own. Kim offers only a contorted narrative
| about FDA regulations and manufacturer denials, and complains
| about being unable to find "alternative sources". But the
| widespread use of lead pigments in ceramic glazes and paints
| is so well known, and so easily verified, that this is a bit
| like complaining about alternative sources for the color of
| the sky.
|
| Tamara's XRF results can be easily verified by anyone with
| access to an XRF machine. You can take your dishes to any
| county health department and have them tested by XRF, and
| you'll see similar numbers. This is what I did with my old
| Lenox dishes, and the XRF revealed over 5000 ppm lead in the
| surface glaze. I've had dozens of pieces tested this way,
| including pyrex, corningware, radom kids cups, etc, and the
| numbers I get match Tamara's. And of course they do. It would
| be stupid for anyone to fabrinate this data, because it's so
| easy to verify.
|
| Anyone can buy a LeadCheck swab for a buck or two and test
| for mobile lead at the surface. This is mostly how I test the
| stuff in my house, and it's how I know that my contaminated
| dishes were an actual poisoning hazard. If the lead comes off
| on a swab, then it will come off on your hands, in your food,
| and in your baby's mouth.
|
| It's a similar story with cords and brass plumbing fittings.
| The facts of lead-based heat stabilizers used in PVC cable
| jackets, and the high lead content of traditional water works
| brass, are as incontrovertable as the sky is blue.
|
| Kim LaCapria at Snopes doesn't seem to understand any of
| this. There's no indication that she even knows what XRF is,
| or how widely available these devices are.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| If I want to test things in my household should I even
| bother with XRF testing or do you think LeadCheck is
| sufficient?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| I rely almost entirely on the swabs for testing things
| around the house, because they're what I have, and they
| tell you whether lead is _actually_ transferable from a
| surface, versus being merely present in the material.
|
| But if I had an XRF tester I would use it all the time.
| The swabs are relatively slow, especially the way I use
| them, and they don't work at all for some things. For
| example, a swab won't tell you if there's lead paint
| under a layer of safe paint. This is important because
| that lead paint is just as much of a hazard when it chips
| or when you do any remodelling. You can scrape away paint
| a layer at a time to swab it, but you'll never get a
| whole tested this way, whereas an XRF could do that in an
| hour or two.
|
| Every so often I gather up some particular things and
| take them to the tri-county health department here in
| south Denver for XRF testing. The last batch I took
| included some old red-painted hand tools, a chip of red
| paint from a yard decoration, a set of chinese-made
| pastel crayons that my kids got for christmas, and a bag
| of dust I collected from the HVAC in our house. These
| things aren't testable with swabs; the dust isn't
| swabable, and the red tools and pastels colored the swab
| regardless of lead content.
|
| The people there are friendly and eager to help. I made
| an appointment, and the lady actually drove in for it
| from a different department. She tested all my stuff in
| about 15 minutes, and everything came back negative
| except for one of the red tools. Even the chinese-made
| pastels were completely clean, which surprised me.
|
| Fun bonus: she told me a story about how the county
| health department updated their standard household lead
| testing protocol twelve years ago after some guy brought
| in a bunch of dishes that tested shockingly high. Guess
| who that guy was? :)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yes, great callout. Relevant to many of us, is that many
| ceramic coffee and tea mugs also leech lead, especially if they
| have the colored glaze. I'm using specifically lead-free glass
| now.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "lead-free glass"
|
| I assume glass is just lead-free by default and I don't need
| to go out looking for a special lead-free version of
| glassware, right?
| edwcross wrote:
| Crystal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass) does
| contain lead, but apparently "crystal glass" does not.
|
| So, by default, "glass" is indeed lead-free, unless you're
| talking about some fancy older glassware.
| pitspotter2 wrote:
| Roofers weld lead and breathe in some of the fumes here in UK. I
| thought perhaps they ought to carry portable fans to improve
| ventilation on calm days.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Toys are regularly a source of lead as well. Paints and materials
| usually end up in the mouths of young kids.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| If you are interested in lead exposure as a global problem, I
| recommend the "There's Lead in your Turmeric" episode of The
| Weeds podcast. Some of the largest sources of lead are
| adulterated turmeric, improperly fired pottery, and others that I
| never would have expected.
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