Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrunk IQ Scores of Half of Americans

[L. Coyote]

https://neurosciencenews.com/lead-exposure-iq-20150/

In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being.

A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the United States.

The findings, from Aaron Reuben, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University, and colleagues at Florida State University, suggest that Americans born before 1996 may now be at greater risk for lead-related health problems, such as faster aging of the brain. Leaded gas for cars was banned in the U.S. in 1996, but the researchers say that anyone born before the end of that era, and especially those at the peak of its use in the 1960s and 1970s, had concerningly high lead exposures as children.

The team’s paper appeared the week of March 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead is neurotoxic and can erode brain cells after it enters the body. ...............

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[bucolic_frolic]

1. Gas odor

I remember mom and I sniffing gas fumes through an open car window at the gas pump and remarking how good it smelled. They sure must have been putting something in it.

[L. Coyote]

3. If you can smell gasoline, paint spray, solvents, thinner, lacquer, etc. UR being poisoned.

The reason they add that smell chemical is so you know you are being exposed to a toxic chemical. If you use these things, you need to wear an approved respirator.

OSHA Respirator Requirements for Selected Chemicals

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Did they have respirators in 1965? /nt

[L. Coyote]

6. Of course.

[bucolic_frolic]

8. I never heard of one, and surely not for the general public

[L. Coyote]

13. Romans used respiratory protection.

100 Years of Respiratory Protection History

[gratuitous]

2. The Nation did a full-issue article on lead

A fascinating read. Lead was added to gasoline to help Standard Oil get rid of the lead by-product of its refining process. They teamed up with General Motors to sell the notion of leaded gasoline to the public. Cars will run smoother and last longer with leaded gasoline! Actually, that wasn't true at all, but it got rid of all this useless lead. Oil-based paint was sold with lead, which added a certain luster and glisten to painted surfaces. And when it got old and began to disintegrate and flake off, it poisoned countless thousands of children, whose developing brains and bodies were contaminated. But those back end problems really weren't Standard Oil's concern.

[hunter]

15. Tetraethyl Lead was used to boost the octane of raw refined gasoline...

... so that more powerful (pound for pound) higher compression engines could be built for cars and airplanes. General Motors made this discovery in 1921 after years of research. High octane "premium" gasolines were then created for "premium" cars with high compression engines. The oil companies followed the lead of General Motors, not the other way around.

Modern unleaded automotive gasolines are largely synthetic.

Lead was used as a pigment in paint. White paint used lead carbonate, yellow paint lead chromate, red paint lead oxide, etc.

Modern unleaded paints use titanium oxide as the white pigment, iron oxide for red, and many other compounds that are less toxic than lead.

[Caliman73]

5. And that is how the Republican Party was created.

[raccoon]

7. I was thinking, that's why there are so many Trump supporters. Nt

[uponit7771]

10. +1,

[cilla4progress]

9. Another thing

I have been projecting...

Crone intuition is POWERFUL!

[MagickMuffin]

11. That explains some things

If only there was a good remedy for this!

[liberal N proud]

12. Explains the trump supporters

[Sneederbunk]

14. In high school I tried to use the lead excuse with my teachers.

[DSandra]

16. So America is being destroyed because of a decision made by General Motors and Standard Oil in 1921?

See how everything is interconnected and if we let sociopaths get their way then we are all screwed...

[JanMichael]

17. That certainly explains a lot. A lot of idiotic behavior may be.

I will also use it as an excuse for my own stupid behavior.

On another night I've always been advocate for reducing lead paint another lead hazards in a house I did not realize though that cars prior to 1996 we're almost as bad. Height of it was in the 60s. Yeah that's when I was born