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Comment on Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood

solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

I expect it’s mostly us older folks who grew up during the leaded gasoline era.

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sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yep.

The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.

Boomers and X’ers.

During the peak era of leaded gasoline in the United States, which ran from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the average blood–lead level (BLL) for the general US population was routinely three to five times higher than the current reference value for clinical concern and case management referral (3.5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood) (3–5). Consequently, millions of adults alive today were exposed to high levels of lead as children. While these exposures were deemed harmless at the time, animal studies and epidemiological evidence accrued in the intervening years reveal that such exposures likely disrupted healthy development across multiple organ systems (particularly the brain, bone, and cardiovascular systems), resulting in subtle deficits to important outcomes, such as cognitive ability, fine motor skills, and emotional regulation (6), that may influence the trajectory of a person’s life (e.g., their educational attainment, health, wealth, and happiness). These deficits largely persist across time and, in some cases, worsen (7, 8) and are now hypothesized to put individuals at risk for difficult-to-treat chronic and age-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease and dementia (9–11)

I have been saying for a decade now, 90% seriously, 10% jokingly, that a reason why you see ‘Karens’, Boomers have baby-like tantrum breakdowns way before something like dementia would be setting in, is significantly due to many of them having lead poisoning, because they match the symptoms caused by it.

… and such people usually have an extremely immature reaction when you say that to them.

Oh well, I’m sure the millenials are killing the ~~blissful~~ wrathful ignorance industry as well.

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