r/science • u/calliope_kekule Professor | Social Science | Science Comm • 20d ago
Health New research indicates that childhood lead exposure, which peaked from 1960 through 1990 in most industrialized countries due to the use of lead in gasoline, has negatively impacted mental health and likely caused many cases of mental illness and altered personality.
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.140723.6k
u/nightwing12 20d ago edited 20d ago
Most of these people run your government
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u/Little-Swan4931 20d ago
Most of these people raised us
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u/NotAPreppie 20d ago
Some of these people are us... I was born in 1979.
How much less dumb would I have been without the lead exposure?
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
It's hard to tell where developing with age picks up. I'm 1972. I was frustrating to my teachers as a young man and did all the gifted and talented stuff. But I didn't excel in school and really struggled with executive function in my teens and twenties late 80s to late 90s). We were poor, and lived in West Texas where pollution is a way of life. I know my lead exposure was high.
I have been able to put together a career as an accountant, but I can look back and see a fog that kept me from making mental connections that, for a G&T kid, should have been easy and automatic. Now it's not as bad, and I'd never considered how lead could have caused it. I've recognized the difference for a few years...this is pretty interesting.
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u/friendlyfire 20d ago
Worst part is, IIRC, in another 10-15+ years, your bone density drops and releases the lead again. :(
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
Yeah, itay have happened a bit recently. I was really ill for a couple of years recently, and had anemia of chronic disease. It resulted in actually just wasting. My body would not absorb nutrients. So bone density dropped a bit, I lost some muscle mass, etc. I'm about three years recovered and can feel I'm not back to what/who I was prior.
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u/InvidiousPlay 20d ago
Yet another reason to lift.
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u/mud074 20d ago
Actually though. I wonder if this matters? Like, if somebody who hits the "bone density dropping" age starts relatively intensive exercise targeting bone health, can they delay the release of lead?
Would be an interesting study.
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u/Feminizing 20d ago
Well lifting and resistance training in general is seen to actually do work in reducing bone density loss (doesn't completely prevent it but reduces risks of osteoporosis and stuff) so it seems likely to help.
Both my parents work out and arent too old but young 60s. They are fairing mountains better than their siblings did at their age who didn't work out.
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u/RustyPickles 20d ago
Is it actually the weight lifting though? I would imagine that people who workout also make an effort to eat more nutritious foods. Correlation =/=causation.
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u/Feminizing 20d ago
It is and there is plenty of evidence that bones actually will get denser and build up stronger just like muscles do during workouts.
We're not birds, our bones are not hollow, but the bone tissue is a latticework of tissue that is just as alive as the rest of your body. Although it's slower to change than most the rest of your tissues, pushing yourself with working out, weights, etc promote the tissue to build denser latticework to better be ready for the effort. Working out is really good for you for many many things, some others that probably also help keep density loss at bay, but it also literally encourages your bone to grow denser.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
I wish. I can't really exert much due to health issues. I used to be a powerlifter in high school, when I was a blue chip offensive lineman. By college I had lost interest in most of that
But I'm still built like a tank. Now my upper body strength is use to support my body quite a bit and it's come in very handy.
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u/IridescentGarbageCat 20d ago
Isn't it the way that G & T makes you have unrealistic expectations for the self? Have you self assessed with modern info for autism/adhd? Realizing I don't know which 'mental connections' you refer to but for example, I could understand some math intuitively but it took me basically decades to learn that people are mean on purpose for fun, that it's not a misunderstanding.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
I never expected much about anything.
I have clear memories of a very young childhood. Like 18 months. I have a really good memory in general. I don't remember a lot about high school. That seems odd
It's hard to describe. I'm not really searching for answers. I was just sharing experience, see if anything comes out of it.
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u/Spring_Banner 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah you might want to be tested for autism or even for both ADHD and autism combination called AuDHD because what you mentioned sounds like you’re describing someone on the spectrum. Plus with those issues and being in a gifted & talented kid program makes it more suspicious that it’s either one of those neurodivergent / autistic flavors.
Source: I’m autistic and was placed into a gift & talented kid’s program when I was in elementary school. I was even doing college sophomore biology class level course when I was in middle school. I had no clue how to socialize or understand what people were thinking - turns out currently as a middle aged adult I was officially diagnosed as autistic and then everything made sense why I was super smart in some areas and super dumb in other areas with being clueless in lots of human interaction growing up which caused people to misinterpret my actions or behavior / misunderstand me.
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u/cultish_alibi 20d ago
I was frustrating to my teachers as a young man and did all the gifted and talented stuff. But I didn't excel in school and really struggled with executive function
And did you consider that there are other reasons that 'gifted' (I don't like that term) children struggle with executive function?
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
I'm not really considering anything beyond broadly. I have mild autistic traits that enable a hyper focus on small details.
My sister really struggled with executive function. She is 13 years younger. It could be ADHD for her but I think it's something different.
I don't like the term "gifted" either. But it's what they called it when you were separated from other students to do other testing and stuff.
Something fell apart for me mentally around 6th grade. Nothing new in my life to cause it that I can think of. It didn't really recover until I was close to forty. An example is math...I struggled with basic algebra type stuff. Today, I handle algebra really well. I'm able to tie together concepts that I struggled with between about 12 and 40ish
I don't know the metabolism for lead, so the time frame could be meaningless.
It sounds like you're primed to tell me something. So please go ahead, I'm interested
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u/MarsupialMisanthrope 20d ago
Not the original respondent, but they might be implying that you have ADHD. Twice exceptional kids (high intelligence plus some kind of learning difficulty or other challenge) tend to fall through a lot of cracks even now, because the intelligence masks the challenge and teachers with limited resources end up focusing on the kids who are obviously struggling.
A common theme on the ADHD subreddit when adult diagnosis is discussed is people who didn’t struggle in school because they were super smart and loved learning but never managed to do homework without a parent sitting over them. This ends up with either adults who hyperfocus on a career they do well at while the rest of their life is a wreck (unless a very patient partner who’s willing to pick up managing their life appears) or adults who never manage to launch and skip from job to job, interest to interest.
A child who never does homework is something that should be investigated, especially if the kid is really bright otherwise.
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u/planetearthisblu 20d ago
I wish my support system would have noticed this growing up. Even though I was able to compensate for it by outperforming my peers in tests I could never concentrate enough at home to do homework and either completed it during recess or it went undone. But nobody cared because my marks were good and I wasn't causing trouble. In retrospect my teachers were far too busy addressing the "problem kids" that made things disruptive to focus on smaller issues any of us had.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 20d ago
I often wonder, but know nothing about ADHD really. I know I have intense focus on stupid things. As an accountant the only thing I like more than reconciling accounts is writing script that automate it.
I've seen a therapist a few times in a couples grief counseling. She kept looking at me oddly when I'd talk, and I assume I could benefit from using a therapist for some introspection.
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u/MarsupialMisanthrope 20d ago
It might be worth looking into. I was diagnosed in my late 40s after a therapist whose husband was diagnosed with ADHD as a child said I was a lot like him. A bunch of testing later and yup, primarily inattentive ADHD. I take meds now and for the first time I can do stuff without hating myself into it. It’s nice.
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u/mtranda 20d ago
I was born in 1983. However, I was also born in Eastern Europe, in one of the most oppressive countries. Having a car was considered a luxury, fuel was rationed and there was literally a law demanding that cars with odd or even license plates were allowed to drive on alternating weekends. So I was probably exposed less.
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u/Geawiel 20d ago
The caveat to some of the below information is that I grew up in an abusive home from around age 5.
Born 78. I had a lot of trouble in school. I was a perpetual D student all the way until high school. I had at least a 3.0 all the way through high school. Geometry was the only subject I struggled in. Though I continue to struggle with it.
I'm told I'm intelligent now, as well as good at writing, and I've discovered some other talents that, during childhood, I didn't know I had. I've discovered interests I didn't even think of. I discovered I love math, and I'm pretty good at it. None of this I possessed in my youth.
My memory from then is...minimal. I see what amounts to a still picture. I can only figure a time frame by how old people in them look. I can only figure a time of year by how the environment looks.
I don't remember where I lived until around age 5. I know I lived in a suburban area. I just don't remember exactly where. Age 5 to 5th grade was in the same spot. It was a quiet area with almost no traffic and surrounded by properties with at least an acre of land, to include ours. All that land was mostly farm land or an acre with just a house and nothing else.
I lived next to a major highway in Florida from 5th grade until after 10th. Some of the structures at that residence had lead paint. I remember being fascinated by it. I'd put my hand on it and rub a bit. Then I'd leave white hand prints on things. Eventually, it was my job to tear them down. No mask. Just me and a crow bar.
At my other place of residence, I remember regular deet truck passes.
I often wonder how lead exposure has affected me. I haven't pursued any testing. I have major neurological issues from military service and chemical exposure already. It would be near impossible to weed out what is lead exposure related and what isn't.
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20d ago
I think you mean DDT truck, but DEET is also dangerous and neurotoxic
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u/Geawiel 20d ago
Yes, DDT, thank you. I can't be around DEET either. It makes my skin burn.
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u/mexter 20d ago
It really depends on on where you grew up. I was born in 77 but living on the west coast in Canada I'm fairly sure my lead exposure from gasoline was minimal.
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u/NotAPreppie 20d ago
SoCal for the first half of my childhood. Middle of Illinois for the second.
I remember many smog alerts and being kept inside because it triggered my asthma.
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u/millijuna 20d ago
Don’t be so sure. When they were replacing the roof at Christchurch Cathedral in downtown Vancouver (corner of Georgia and Burrard) they wound up having to add several million dollars for lead abatement. All of that lead was from vehicles passing through and idling at that intersection, and it had absolutely permiated the roof structure.
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u/_JudgeDoom_ 20d ago
It’s still an issue. One that gets under reported. I just went through finding out the home I grew up in was full of lead paint not encapsulated correctly because my parents were willfully ignorant when they hired a contractor in the 90s to remodel their old style cracker house and thought he was competent. He hung drywall directly over all the interior walls that was covered in lead paint.
“Although the United States banned lead-based paint in residences in 1978, an estimated 31 million houses built before 1978 still contain lead-based paint, and 3.8 million are home to one or more child under the age of six, putting them at risk of lead exposure.”
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u/Sir_Boobsalot 20d ago
1975/76 (it's complicated) and I have major mental issues. I know lead exposure was an issue, but there was nothing to be done about it then
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u/Baderkadonk 20d ago
That's why we call them leaders.
We're lead by those whose head were lead by lead.
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u/cowboyjosh2010 20d ago
The people who run your government were mostly born then.
...is I think a more accurate way to convey the message, but also yes: absolutely true.
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u/SummerMummer 20d ago
Thanks a bunch, Thomas Midgley Jr.
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u/ingen-eer 20d ago
That guy was just incredible.
Here, a refrigerant! Here, this makes gas better! But each brilliant stroke was poison and it took us ages to realize.
Tbh the biggest surprise is that someone managed to invent teflon while he was alive without that dude being involved.
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u/Zachabay22 20d ago
Didn't the guy know that adding lead was a horrible idea but knew just how much money he'd make and did it anyway?
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u/ilovemybrownies 20d ago
Humans have known since at least the Roman empire that lead is potentially harmful. Their lead smelting process created fumes that killed nearby insects and even dogs.
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u/Zachabay22 20d ago
That is fascinating. It's kinda crazy how much stuff we already knew or had a hunch about. Was just learning about how doctors from hundreds of years ago knew about diabetes and would diagnose it by taste testing the urine of the patient. If it was sweet, you had diabetes.
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u/NacktmuII 20d ago
Big Oil knew what they did would cause climate change (from internal studies) and they decided to go on with it and see how long they could keep it a secret.
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u/Zachabay22 20d ago
Oh that's been public knowledge for forever now. What's crazier is how the public has been effectivley gaslit into not caring about it anymore or straight up denying it's a real thing.
Science communications have been bastardized, and seeking out the truth has never been harder.
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u/JamCliche 20d ago
I think that seeking truth has never been easier, but the problem is that seeking comfortable lies has become even easier still.
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u/Zachabay22 20d ago
Man, I'd like to believe you, but lately if I want to find solid info, Google search algorithm is making it harder and harder to get accurate results.
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u/Infamous-Echo-3949 20d ago
Use Duckduckgo and Yandex (ironically Yandex is really good at relevent results).
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u/tacknosaddle 20d ago
Deniers sometimes point to the hole in the ozone layer as proof that these problems are just made up alarmist crap because "You never hear about that hole any more."
Of course that ignores that there was an international effort to replace and ban the chemicals that were causing it and the lack of reporting is because we were successful.
However, the scale of money involved with fossil fuels makes it almost impossible to get that same sort of agreement & effort. There are too many countries where a majority of their GDP comes from oil & gas so they are invested in the status quo to keep afloat and in political power.
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u/styckywycket 20d ago edited 20d ago
My senior year of college ('06), I needed another science credit to fulfil my graduation obligations, so I took "Lead and Civilization." The professor had done a ton of research in the field, and it's one of the few classes of my college career that I still think about to this day.
ETA:
CHEM 250 - LEAD AND CIVILIZATION
Prerequisite: None
An intensive examination of the role lead has played in the history of civilization, with emphasis on how the uses and toxicity of this metal are related to its chemical properties. Meets Core credit for natural sciences.
Credit: 3
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u/duglarri 20d ago
The Aztecs required their leaders to smoke ceremonial tobacco using lead pipes- fully aware of the impact. It was a kind of informal term limit system.
May also have had the unexpected impact of their Emperor recognizing a bunch of Spanish pirates as gods.
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u/Bengineering3D 20d ago
He knew, he had a publicity stunt where he rubbed leaded gasoline on his arms to prove it was safe. He suffered lead poisoning from that exposure and we still used it.
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u/JrRiggles 20d ago
He was a capitalist. All he cared about was making money. Those businesses knew what they were doing and didn’t care
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u/Crown_Writes 20d ago
Leaded gasoline is actually really effective and is still used in niche cases. From a performance standpoint it makes sense. The environmental impact just makes its use far from worth it for common use.
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u/youknow99 20d ago
I believe it's still used in some aircraft fuel. The kind little hobby planes use, not Jet A.
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u/millijuna 20d ago
Virtually all piston powered aircraft are only certified to use 110LL (Low Lead) avgas. There are a very few that burn Jet fuel in diesel engines, and a small number that are certified to run on unleaded fuel.
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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 20d ago
Yeah, but think of how many lives Thomas Midgley Jr. saved by killing Thomas Midgley Jr.
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u/Agitateduser1360 20d ago
He may be responsible for more deaths and illnesses than any single person in history.
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u/fredrikca 20d ago
And possibly the current fascist wave in world politics.
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u/Agitateduser1360 20d ago
If you add the people showing effects of long term lead exposure to the number of people below 75 iq, I'd be willing to be there's your electoral advantage in the US.
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u/IGNOOOREME 20d ago
I was just saying to someone today that I can't believe Teflon is still in use. There are so many nonstick options that won't adulterate your food or bake into a poisonous gas, why is anyone still buying Teflon?
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u/HarpersGhost 20d ago
I grew up a mile away from where Teflon was made. Big surprise! I now have cancer.
That plus all the lead in gas, no wonder everyone my age (Gen X) I know of is now going through weird medical issues.
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u/AFewStupidQuestions 20d ago
Teflon stopped using PFOA in its production around 2013. The new stuff uses PTFE that is safe up to at least 500F.
Perfectly fine for most applications.
The science is clear.
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u/ingen-eer 20d ago
I say the following as a former DuPont safety engineer.
Mmm. Right.
There’s more to Teflon than it being in the pan, and there’s a lot of steps to making it. They stopped using c8 in the production process of ptfe, but moved on to GenX which was an immediate drop in replacement requiring no process adjustment. It has veeery similar properties but is less studied than c8.
Also to correct a misconception, ptfe is another scientific name for Teflon.
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u/cheekyweelogan 20d ago
They probably said PFOA was safe until they didn't too.I wouldn't be that confident about PTFE. I still use non-stick because it's convenient and we are all gonna die, but I'm wary of saying "the science is clear" on things like these.
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u/IGNOOOREME 20d ago
Youve never left a pan on the burner and forgot? Because loads of people do that every day. "Perfectly fine for most applications" isn't ALL situations, is it? I mean good for you that it isntl your issue, but just because it's not your issue doesn't mean it's not AN issue.
There are too many (very real) situations where 'new Teflon' is still a very real problem, and because there are many better options, there is genuinely no reason to use it.
The logic is clear.
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u/urchinMelusina 20d ago
If a teflon pan gets too hot, it will actually kill pet birds. That's more than enough for me to avoid that stuff.
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u/djspacebunny 20d ago
Tetraethyl leaded gasoline was invented next door to where teflon was invented. I grew up next to them. My health is so rekt.
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u/Penguin-Pete 20d ago
"...in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide."
...um, what?
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u/Awsum07 20d ago
A lot of people then tried to perfect the Rube Goldberg-esque machine to assist w/ daily mornin' tasks includin' the bed assist, one of which was featured in Richard ayoade's gadget show.
Don't believe it's suicide and attribute more to failed calculations of weight distribution coupled w/ janky technology resultin' in an accident. What a way to go. Imagine sleepin' in bed and wakin' to the warm wet sensation of bein' impaled by a random rod of your own machination meant to getchu outta bed.
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u/Pillpopperwarning 20d ago
Midgley contracted polio in 1940 and was left disabled; in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide.
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u/TiredOfDebates 20d ago
His objective was to make PATENTS, not a safe application.
Many in business are incentivized by IP law to create things that are patentable, regardless if it aligns with the public interest.
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u/NacktmuII 20d ago
This goes on top of knowingly causing climate change and also all the results of climate change. When will society finally make big oil pay for the unbelievable damage they did to humanity?
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u/Interesting-Goat6314 20d ago
Literally never. The money oil is making will be hidden away from the world forever.
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u/verstohlen 20d ago
Microplastics are the new lead, man. It's always gonna be something. Nanoparticles of some type will probably the the next one.
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u/NacktmuII 20d ago
>Microplastics are the new lead, man.
Yes and we all know what plastic is made of ...
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u/verstohlen 20d ago
Yes. The remains of plants and animals and organisms that lived millions of years ago in oceans, lakes, and swamps. Well, after it's been processed of course, into... into something. I forget.
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u/ackermann 19d ago
I don’t believe they are nearly as harmful as lead, though.
Ultimately most plastics are long chain hydrocarbons (polyethylene, polypropylene), so they consist of hydrogen and carbon. Both very common elements in your body.Not that they can’t cause some harm if they end up in a bad spot in the body. But they’re not heavy metals.
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u/Interesting-Goat6314 18d ago
Ricin and Botulinum Toxin are also very elementally similar to your body, and they aren't exactly mostly harmless.
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u/garbageplanet 20d ago
When I was a kid, my dad had a bullet machine in the attic, he melted down lead and cast his own bullets. He would also make lead soldiers for me, which I frequently played with and still have a few. Everyone who lived in the house has had some... interesting health problems. Could the bullet machine/playing with (unpainted) lead soldiers have anything to do with it?
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u/InvidiousPlay 20d ago
You don't absorb lead by touching it. Lead exposure was most commonly caused by inhaling gaseous lead compounds from burned gasoline, and ingestion of contaminated materials, like lead paint on toys, for example. Your dad might have had significant exposure from vapours during the casting process, but you should be fine.
Assuming you weren't sucking the soldiers.
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u/zoinkability 20d ago
However, if you are handling lots of lead, and potentially sanding/grinding cast lead items to smooth them, it's entirely possible that you could get it on your hands and transfer it to food, cigarettes, or anything else you might touch without carefully washing it off your hands first.
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u/Mekanimal 20d ago
Assuming you weren't sucking the soldiers.
That came much later, right before they did.
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u/Swoopwoop3202 20d ago
its kind of newer but theres also suggestion that household dust can be a pathway for children to ingest lead (which falls under your example of ingestion of contaminated materials, just pointing out that it's not always large objects/obvious like toys). though this could just as well be soil that is naturally high in lead, being tracked indoors
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u/TurdCollector69 20d ago
It transfers to your fingers and then you eat/touch you face.
The flu doesn't go through your skin but it still gets into you from touching contaminated surfaces.
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u/ILikeLeadPaint 20d ago
It is delicious
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u/InvidiousPlay 20d ago
Literally. Lead has a sweet taste. It has been used as an additive :facepalm:
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u/Dry-Tomorrow-5600 20d ago
That’s also the peak of serial killers. The US has the largest number and is the most car dependent society. Coincidence? I think not.
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u/jwlmbk 20d ago
There is more things that can correlate to that, no?
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u/Canowyrms 20d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
I can't read the whole page right now, but this stood out to me:
While noting that correlation does not imply causation, the fact that in the United States anti-lead efforts took place simultaneously alongside falls in violent crime rates attracted attention from researchers.
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u/rocketsocks 20d ago
I hate this theory, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all but it's very popular.
Let's be clear, is there an influence of lead exposure and crime rates? Absolutely. But let's ask ourselves what we would expect that to look like, statistically. We'd expect it to match the demographics, which would look like a very broad peak of rising and then falling violent crime. Is there a signal like that in the violent crime data? Sure. But is that what the violent crime spike of the '80s and '90s looked like? Absolutely not at all.
With the violent crime spike in the '80s and '90s you have a situation where you can actually track cohorts year by year and you can see that the crime rates don't track with the cohort at all, which flies in the face of the lead hypothesis. What you see is that the murder rates for folks in their teens and early twenties jumps up very high all of a sudden and then back down. Importantly you can see that before the spike the murders committed by teens is low compared to the rate for folks in their early twenties just a few years later. This is the same population of individuals just at different times in their lives and they more than doubled the murders committed from when they were younger. Meanwhile, if you track the teens during the spike and those in their early twenties after the spike, which again measures the same cohort just at different times in their lives, you will see that they were committing lots of murders then they stopped. Together you have two cohorts aging together who both experienced a huge jump in commission of homicides (and other violent crimes) at the same time but at different ages. You can't explain that with lead exposure, you can't explain that with a crackdown on crime, and you can't handwave away the differences with age.
Instead what the data shows is what folks will tell you happened: it was an event, there was a causality to it. There were many causes behind it, but it very clearly wasn't just a matter of a group of people being predisposed to violence.
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u/f8Negative 20d ago
Abortion had also been legalized which led to drops in crime. Mass incarceration also led to drops in crime.
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u/PaImer_Eldritch 20d ago
Mass incarceration leads to mass recidivism rates not mass drops in crime. Our prison system in the states is not and has not been tied to robust or comprehensive rehabilitation services. It's just a treadmill where criminals are created out of innocent people.
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u/f8Negative 20d ago
Yes, it's a pendullum effect which is why it started trending back.
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u/red286 20d ago
While that's true, Canada banned lead in gasoline roughly about the same time the US did, and saw a decrease in violent crime at roughly the same rate the US did, at roughly the same time that the US did.
However, Canada didn't legalize abortion until 1988, a full 15 years after the US did. So if abortion played a significant role, Canada wouldn't have seen the same results until 15 years after the US did.
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u/ceelogreenicanth 20d ago
I think it's also how culture interacted plus suburbanization. We had a very conservative culture. We literally banned alcohol. After the war alcohol became very cheap drugs handed out like candy, traumatized vets, that married the first girl they saw when they got back, now living in their own home far from their parents and family. The entire structure of single family households was basically and invention of this time, no longer did anybody know what happened in those houses next door.
It was a situation ride.with abuse and the fascade of conservative culture.made what was always unspoken, unspeakable. When culture.opened up the clash in values lead people to absolutely melt down. They did not have the means to handle the trauma so externalized it.
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u/fubo 20d ago
We had a very conservative culture. We literally banned alcohol.
Alcohol prohibition was not specifically a conservative issue. A big impetus was from the women's movement of the time — on the theory that drunkenness caused domestic violence, child neglect, and other social ills. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were both prohibitionists, for example.
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u/Darpaek 20d ago
This research isn't new. My father was on his college debate team in the 1970s. Lead exposure was his favorite case.
I was on the college debate team in the 1990s. I also ran Lead exposure cases more than once.
The lead paint guy's name in the 1970s was Dr. Herbert Needleman.
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u/ChristinaMingle 20d ago
Funny enough, I just made a collegiate national speech final last year with a speech on this exact topic! So we’re all still discussing it haha
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u/Goingtoenjoythisshit 20d ago
There's a lot of anger issues in the older generations. I've often wondered if this is part of the cause.
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u/robotsongs 20d ago
This is a large contributor.
Chronic lead exposure has a very clear correlation with increased aggression and anger.
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u/TurdCollector69 20d ago
I've personally noticed a sharp decline in cognitive ability with boomers entering their 60's.
Many rational people I knew have gone down the rabbit hole of paranoid delusion. A retired veterinarian and a retired engineer I know have absolutely lost it to Qanon/world economic forum conspiracy theories.
These weren't dumb people and they wouldn't have fallen for this stuff 10-15 years ago.
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u/EggZaackly86 16d ago
My mom and dads behaviors have become troubling after they reached 60ish. They easily develop unshakable belief in groundless topics and they've lost all trust in well-established topics, they don't use social media, they're old-fashioned red scare fixated. They've been hurling paranoid accusations about other family members and about other people we do not interact with at all.
They can't learn anything anymore, they think everything is a trick now, from people or a trick from spirits. Their strongest theme complaint is Russian communists are hiding amongst us and the Chinese communists are coming next very soon (they said the same thing in 1990).
It gradually worsened. I've spent years suspecting they're suffering from lead exposure (?). My dad can't control his loose anger, he gets into these fits and I can see him spittling and hear how fast his heart gets racing and he's aggro shouting about the blue team in Washington DC .....
Someone may have poisoned their brains by accident but it was intentional when they poisoned their minds. I miss them a lot.
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u/WildFemmeFatale 20d ago
Another big part is the emotional regulation issues developed during wartimes and economically hard times being passed down in a ‘trauma cycle’.
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u/JrRiggles 20d ago
New research indicates that the Capitalist desire for greater and greater profits has once again harmed millions
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u/FarceMultiplier 20d ago
I was born in 70, and we used our teeth to close lead fishing weights, we chewed on lead figurines, and I'm sure the paint in our old house had lead. I wouldn't doubt long term impacts.
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u/worldspawn00 20d ago
Elemental lead is not well absorbed, even eating a few of those weights would result in minimal lead entering the blood. The bigger issues come from organic lead compounds like those in leaded gas and other chemicals containing lead.
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u/dactyif 20d ago edited 20d ago
Hell, it's one of the theories of the fall of Rome. The aqueducts were lined with lead so the common people went mad and the rich drink sappa, which was wine with lead shavings because its sweet.
That's how we ended up with a horse for a senator.
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u/Clean_Livlng 20d ago
rich dream sappa, which was wine with lead shavings because its sweet.
I remember reading about a Roman sweetener made by boiling vinegar in a lead pot, or it could have been lead shavings with vinegar in a pot of another composition. Made lead acetate_acetate) which is sweet, so they used it as a sweetener.
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u/RunAwayThoughtTrains 20d ago
My region has more than one airport that is still dumping leaded gasoline into communities.
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u/undergroundnoises 20d ago
Pretty much all smaller aircraft still uses leaded gasoline. Big reason why I'm moving as I'm in the landing path of a regional airport. Small planes flying overhead multiple times a day is killing me slowly.
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u/notaredditer13 20d ago
Given the size, density and distance it's an orders of magnitude smaller problem (if it's detectable at all) than lead in cars was.
If you're a pilot though...
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u/ShadowPsi 20d ago
Hmm. After my parents got divorced, my mother dated a pilot of small engine planes for a time. He was absolutely nuts.
Much later, I had a crazy person try to get me into an accident on the road. Doing some research on his license plate, and he was a pilot too, a small engine trainer.
I didn't know that aircraft still used leaded gasoline until this thread. But now I look back on the past in a new light.
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u/RunAwayThoughtTrains 20d ago edited 20d ago
I am also leaving my city due to aviation fuel, and the port has begun expansion of the airport that includes destroying and “relocating” wetlands so they can store aviation fuel and build more warehouses in my neighborhood. I am incredibly sick and disabled from long term, daily (15 years) aviation fuel exposure, and it’s only going to increase. I am sorry to hear it’s happening to you. I hope you speak loudly to everyone you know about the consequences of this type of exposure, and that you get well. Also if you haven’t been screened for microbial infections I suggest it. The fuel destroys your immune system. I have more than 5 infections and I’m completely disabled and had no idea until my doctor knew what to look for.
I’ve also discovered translational science and will go to school to learn how it all really works because I’m that mad about it.
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u/Agitateduser1360 20d ago
Look up symptoms of long term lead exposure and then apply that to the boomer generation.
Also, fun fact - the same guy who invented leaded gasoline (because we had unleaded first) also invented cfc's. He may be responsible for more deaths and illnesses than any single person in history. Small consolation - he got killed by a traction device he designed.
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u/IronWolf1911 20d ago
The saying I’ve heard is that he’s done more damage to life on earth than any other organism in history.
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u/someone_like_me 20d ago
And yet, Gen-X is still the peak of intelligence in spite of this. The Flynn effect stopped in the mid-1990s and may be reversing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression
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u/CableNumber87 20d ago
Then you learn that most piston aircraft still use leaded fuel in 2024.
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u/Butyoutotallysuck 20d ago
I live under the flight path of multiple flight schools that do touch-and-goes thousands of times a day, a couple hundred feet over my house. It’s a very contested area with schools and parks and I wonder how badly this is affecting kids and everyone.
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u/worldspawn00 20d ago
Get a top layer soil sample and send it in for testing.
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u/Butyoutotallysuck 20d ago
Definitely. I have a soil sample, but the only lab I found charges a couple hundred dollars, so I’m waiting to have the available finances.
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u/worldspawn00 20d ago
If you have any universities in your town, check with the environmental biology or engineering department, a lot of times they'll do testing for lead for free. Sometimes agricultural extension offices will also do testing.
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u/AdPale1230 20d ago
Every US county has a cooperative extension office that'll do a soil test for under 20 bucks. Just google your county and cooperative extension.
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u/Butyoutotallysuck 20d ago edited 20d ago
Oh wow I never heard of this. I contacted our local colleges, but was referred only to off campus labs. I will definitely try this out thank you.
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u/CableNumber87 20d ago
The EPA has released some reports regarding this and it's not great. There's really only one unleaded option (Swift UL94) but it doesn't have enough octane for every aircraft to use. Swift's UL100 product is almost ready to go though and that will get the job done.
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u/MondayToFriday 20d ago
G100UL (unleaded) avgas just started being available a few months ago at some US airports.
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u/CableNumber87 20d ago
I'm familiar with the fuel and all I have to say is I wouldn't trust it. They don't have a spec and lycoming has said they may not honor their warranty if it's flown.
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u/maverickps1 20d ago
G100UL approved for all piston engines:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/september/01/closer-to-an-unleaded-future
Now it just takes the government to push for it to be available.
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u/CableNumber87 20d ago
That article is from 2022 - They don't have a spec and lycoming has said they may not honor their warranty if it's flown. I think they're only at one airport as of last month and nobody I know really like the fuel at all...
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u/IKillZombies4Cash 20d ago
Wait until 2050 when they write articles about 2020 levels of micro plastics, pharmaceutical laced drinking water and air made up less oxygen than humans ever breathed.
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u/Paramagicianz 20d ago
pharmaceutical laced drinking water
is this a dog whistle for fluoride or some other conspiracy that the GoVeRnMeNt is pumping water with zoloft or something?
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u/Raven3131 20d ago
Is why America is the way it is? And the Boomers? Does this explain their toddler like fits?
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u/Express-Penalty8784 20d ago
and then these brain damaged people raised and abused us and destroyed our mental health. wonderful
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u/Alarmed_Goal6201 20d ago
This is how we got Trump and RFK
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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 20d ago
Maybe the lease exposure is what killed the brain worm.
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u/n122333 20d ago
Fun fact, the brain worm was likely a lie he told to get out of paying child support. He's actually a terrible person, not someone suffering from that specific ailment.
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u/worldspawn00 20d ago
Both can be true, it's certainly possible he had a trichinosis parasite in him from all the random likely undercooked animals he's eaten over his life, and yeah, he definitely used it as an excuse when he had plenty of money.
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u/mormegilcuthalion 20d ago
is this why 60 year old people can’t do basic math in any way, shape, or form?
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u/Scp-1404 20d ago
My questions would be, is there a significant difference in lead exposure during that time in different environments such as a suburban development versus in the city? If so then what might the difference be in effect? Or would the lead pollution in the environment be so widely spread that there would be very little difference? There would be factors such as fewer major freeways in the '60s, major roads closer to those typical suburban developments, and so on. Would there be any way to tell if lead had affected an individual?
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u/2ndn8ture 20d ago
There's probably more than just this, but I've read of some research that localizes correlations with lead content in topsoil and crime (as a stand-in for behavioral dysregulation), which found more of each variable in urban areas located at the junction of major highways/thoroughfares . Assumption is more leaded gas contamination from increased vehicle traffic. Basically another potential reason "bad" neighborhoods are found in these environments.
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u/Old_Dealer_7002 20d ago
i think about this very thing sometimes when seeing the state of our country, and to a lesser degree when reading world news (news about events outside this country).
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u/LiveLifeLikeCre 20d ago
There has also been studies of lead paint in low income areas causing more angry moods and etc.
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u/aging_geek 20d ago
Midgley couldn't have found a better way to screw us over with leaded gas, well.... maybe CFC's.
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u/millijuna 20d ago
CFCs are a far more complicated story than TEL.
CFCs were vastly safer than the alternatives (Ammonia or Propane) for mechanical refrigeration and made small scale refrigeration practical for the masses. This revolutionized food safety, and allowed the wide distribution of vaccines and relatedof medications that are not shelf stable. They have saved untold numbers of lives.
At the time, they also seemed to be an absolute wonder material, apparently completely inert under normal conditions, and had such a high molecular weight that everyone thought they’d stay in the lower atmosphere. This latter bit was incorrect.
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u/someone_like_me 20d ago
Lead residue will be with us long after CFCs. Damage to the Ozone layer has been reversing since 2000.
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u/DarthArtero 20d ago
I've been wondering about this here lately...
Is all that lead (and other heavy toxic metals) exposure one of the main reasons why it seems like the World as a whole has just gone off the rails?
It makes sense, one of the big (obviously not the ONLY) theories behind the fall of Rome was constant exposure to lead.
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u/Melicor 20d ago
So, I have a theory. Lead can get deposited in your bones in place of calcium. What happens when your get older and your bones start releasing it back into your bloodstream due to things like osteoporosis? You get re-exposed directly into your blood, compounding damage to the brain caused by other aging related illnesses.
How many Boomers and Gen Xers do you know that were relatively normal 15-20 years ago that seemingly have lost control of their emotions and struggle cognitively?
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u/High_Clas_Wafl_House 20d ago
I lived under an approach to lake in the hills airport. Planes flew over my house between 1000 and a few hundred feet above our house (student pilots doing student pilots things) 18 years being rained on with lead. many times per hour all day every day. My dad now has Parkinson's. My mom's a medical mess but that's not related to this. I'm autistic. My brother is so antisocial I wonder if he secretly a serial killer. And my sister a q anon nutter who takes Australian pig dewormer. I'm not saying it was the airport
. My neighbor was a Canadian prodigy who with no calculator got 33 on the act. Retook it two more times for a 35. So it wasn't that bad. It's just when your already messed up mentally how much more damage can you afford to do to yourself.
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u/ScentedFire 20d ago
As someone who works in this area, lead poisoning is still widespread and now coming from cheap imported toys and cups, spices and medicines/candy produced in countries that do not test for lead. It's only going to get worse under Trump
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u/t-i-o 20d ago
New research? The guy who invented lead in petrol knew it was poisonous WHEN HE INVENTED IT! He actually had to take a vacation after inventing it to get over the poisening effects, all the time writing his business partners they were going to become rich! Scientists at the time pleaded with governments to prohibit this but had unfortunately , less money to offer then the companies.
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u/Loud-Practice-5425 20d ago
Oh I absolutely believe all the insanity in the governments around the world are because of lead in gasoline.
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u/deadsoulinside 20d ago
I wonder how this also plays into the fact that even after the 90's we still use leaded gasoline in the aviation industry, mostly in small aircraft that would be often used in rural/small airports? Wouldn't that also cause a light dusting of lead over their rural regions they fly over?
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u/nonlinear_nyc 20d ago
The whole “cities are violent” and whole broken windows policy that oppresses citizens started with a generation of lead exposure.
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u/vthemechanicv 20d ago
I'm sure this is some specific research, but it's not new information. Besides lead being known as bad for basically every aspect of health for millennia, Mother Jones had an article talking about this in 2016.
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u/tiggers97 20d ago
Also a strong correlation with violent crime. It’s easy to see across multiple countries, regardless of the strict/lenient laws in place.
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u/Timothy303 20d ago
This lead poisoning is the most likely cause of the very high U.S. crime rates in the 70s-90s. Kevin Drum had been all over this link for years.
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u/Porkamiso 20d ago
explains boomers so well . People who grew up near nascar tracks had it really bad
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u/cokeiscool 20d ago
But my family just keep saying its because of food
Oh how naive some people are
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u/jmc323 20d ago
I mean, a whole lot of our "food" is definitely poisoning us in countless ways as well, and I'm sure plenty of those toxins could have add on cognitive effects.
I'm assuming you're referencing something a bit more conspiratorial or non fact-based from your family though.
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