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Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

And extremely small lead exposure levels at that, too. Not to mention accounting for much of the SES/mortality correlation - who knew it was so simple and easy and definitely didn't involve any confounders like genetics? If you believe that, I have a lead-free bridge I'd like to sell you.

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There is no safe (measurable) level of lead in the bloodstream.

Used to be considered safe below 30 µg/dL. Then 10. Now 5, last I heard. I have no reason to believe the action level will not continue dropping further.

What amount of lead would you consider acceptable in your bloodstream?

Very little, but the question raised by this study is how much lead leads to death. They’re claiming the answer is very very little, and further claiming that it accounts for more deaths than COPD, infections, and accidents combined. They did this based on a survey and blood levels, without taking many (if any) confounding factors into account.

As to why they’d do this, the lead author’s role as an expert witness for plaintiffs in cases of lead poisoning seems suggestive.

Considering the primary adverse effect of lead poisoning is neurological, and psychiatric conditions are its fallout, if poor lifestyle choices are the result of bad decisions, perhaps low-level lead exposure fuels a simmering sub-clinical hopelessness that defies treatment, and provokes poor self care.

Everybody is such a big fan of LSD microdosing, and maybe this is the other side of that coin.

Most poeple aren’t a fan of LSD microdosing, including me. I’m a fan of studies which honestly account for confounding factors and draw a line between causation and correlation. This ain’t that.

You are begging the question. The claim 'there is no safe level' is based precisely on dubious epidemiological results like this, and this study is already being used to push exactly that claim. I am fine with <10ug in my blood because I am not yet aware of any natural or randomized experiments showing benefits from decreases in that level, as makes sense with any kind of plausible dose-response curve - the last few ug should matter the least.

This "extremely small" argument falls flat, as is well known, pre-industrial levels were < 0.05 ug/dl. That said, I agree the result is suspiciously strong.

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