This isn’t quite a climate doom article, but, the underlying thread is that Fossil Fuels Are Bad (even though NBC News and Warmists use a lot themselves)
Lead in gasoline tied to over 150 million excess cases of mental health disorders, study suggests
Exposure to lead in gasoline during childhood resulted in many millions of excess cases of psychiatric disorders over the last 75 years, a new study estimates.
Lead was banned from automobile fuel in 1996. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, looked at its lasting impact in the U.S. by analyzing childhood blood lead levels from 1940 to 2015. According to the findings, the national population experienced an estimated 151 million excess mental health disorders attributable to exposure to lead from car exhaust during children’s early development.
The exposure made generations of Americans more depressed, anxious, inattentive or hyperactive, the study says.
Interesting. But, most lead was taken out of gasoline voluntarily by 1986. For one thing, lead destroyed catalytic converters. The petroleum companies also knew lead was bad, and there was very few leaded gasolines by the mid-1970s in the U.S.. Say, I wonder what the dangers of all these precious metals like lithium in EVs will be?
The researchers — a group from Duke University, Florida State University and the Medical University of South Carolina — found that the exposure also lowered people’s capacity for impulse control and made them more inclined to be neurotic.
Lead-associated mental health and personality differences were most pronounced for people born between 1966 and 1986, according to the study. Of that group, the greatest lead-linked mental illness burden was for Generation Xers born between 1966 and 1970, coinciding with peak use of leaded gasoline in the mid-1960s and mid-1970s.
Horseshit. Gen X is a pretty darned stable generation. I’d suggest that removing lead has created more of a problem with Millennials and GenZ, who seem batguano wackadoodle, always yammering about needing mental health days and being traumatized by having to do simple homework and their jobs.
“Studies like ours today add more evidence that removing lead from our environment and not putting it there in the first place has more benefits than we previously understood,” Reuben said.
In fairness, all that lead was actually bad for people, just like asbestos. But, baby boomers and Gen X are a hell of a lot more mentally stable than the follow on generations.
Reuben, who was the lead author of that study, said the new research “doesn’t create new information about whether lead causes harm, nor do we say this is a study that proves causation — we’re really just taking existing evidence and applying it to the whole U.S. population.”
So, we already knew lead was bad, and have already mostly banned it. So, what was the point of the study?
I wonder, though, what will a study in 20 years will say about the COVID vaccines, masking, and all the Crazy that came with the over-reaction to the Chinese coronavirus? How it stunted growth, made people mental messes, and such?
Let me summarize:
study suggests
However…. Chicken Little Man, AKA Elwood….Now we know what MAY HAVE caused you.
;-)
Casey Jones is just another Obsessive Commenter (OC)!
Even an old engineer ilke Casey needs to understand the language of science. Theories are not proven. They can always be falsified. Therefore, data can either support or refute a theory. In describing experimental results scientists will honestly, and correctly, state their work “may”, “suggests”, “is consistent with”, “supports the theory” etc. Note that scientists have to extrapolate from data sets that are less than the total population.
Chickie Man (??)
If you actually understood Scientific Theories you wouldn’t be all in on man made global warming.
But you don’t and you are.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Casey Jones typed: If you actually understood Scientific Theories you wouldn’t be all in on man made global warming.
Go on… tell us more, choo-choo.
Chickie Little Manee
Hapy to help.
A scientific Theory must be falsifiable. That is, it must be testable.
One failure and it’s out.
An “observation theory” is actually a collection of anecdotal events.
A scientific theory must be predictable. None of the man made global warming predictions have worked. FL is not under water.
Mr Teach creates a hypothesis to support his bigotry, typing: Gen X is a pretty darned stable generation. I’d suggest that removing lead has created more of a problem with Millennials and GenZ, who seem bat guano wackadoodle
LOL. HIS generation is pretty darned stable! Sounds like Trump may nominate Teach for Sec of Transportation!
Lead is a dangerous heavy metal and has been removed from paints and gasolines.
Mr Teach: So, what was the point of the study?
To give conservabloggers something to whine about. Did Mr Teach realize that leaded gasoline may have led to 150,000 psych cases?
May… MAY have led to 150,000 psych cases?
There he goes again with his unsubstantiated claims… kinda like man made global warming.
There’s a reason Rimjob is known as the dumbest commenter here at the Cove.
Bwaha! Lolgf!
MAGA47
MAY be the dumbest..
I wouldn’t consider lithium a precious metal. At least not until they start advertising it on TV along with gold, silver, platinum and palladium. :-) But in any case, it’s different than lead in gasoline. The lead goes into the environment as the fuel is burned. while the lithium stays in the EV’s battery. While there’s not much of a ev battery recycling plan that I know of, if EVs become as widespread as the greenies wish, there will be a plan, just as lead-acid batteries are recycled now.
The association between atmospheric lead exposure and mental illness is rock solid. The best work was done in the early 2010s and violent crime. What they found was that there was a lockstep correlation between atmospheric lead levels and crime with a 22 year lag. In other words, atmospheric lead peaked in the US in 1970s and crime peaked in the 1990s. See the graphs here for the US. Similar studies were done with the same results for Europe. The correlation coefficients ran around 0.9 according to level of lead and level of crime. There are a bunch of these studies, and they are exemplary in terms of their objective scientific methods.
With crime, the key is that violent crime requires two things, mostly. First it requires poor impulse control. Second, it requires young adult males full of testosterone. Lead exposure took care of the first. As childhood exposure to lead increased, impulse control in these kids was decreased. As childhood lead exposue decreased, more kids made it through adolescence without getting into trouble. The data is rock solid.
Those who are my age may remember the panic about crime in the 1990s (remember the movie “Death Wish”). It was used as an excuse for the passage of the National Firearms Act and all sorts of other horrible legislation. Folk may remember the debates about the effectiveness of the old assault weapon ban, with anti-gunners crowing that crime dropped after its passage. Crime did drop, but it had nothing to do with guns. It all had to do with the level of brain damage in adolescents due to lead exposure.
The study referenced in your post is basically just a statistical model that takes known lead levels and known effects of lead levels, and then applies the correlation. It’s not an observation study, really.
Lead was present in pipes, solder, and paint. The combination did have influence on select groups of children. Gas had little to do with it.
Leaded gasoline is the leading cause of dangerous blood levels of lead.
Drastic reductions in lead (Pb) in gasoline is correlated with drastic reductions in lead in blood.
Most European nations started reducing lead in gasoline in the 70s, and blood lead levels starting falling. Dropping from an average of 15 microg/dL to 1 mircrog/dL. Similar results were seen in North America.
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-022-00936-x#:~:text=The%20dangers%20of%20adding%20lead,and%20five%20died%20%5B16%5D.