The impact of childhood lead exposure on adult personality (2021) | Hacker News Reader

The impact of childhood lead exposure on adult personality (2021)

pnas.org

150 pointstokai100 comments

Just to make sure everyone is aware - this isn't a solved issue of the past. Airplanes continue to use leaded gasoline that, while much smaller relative to everyone's car running on it, contributes to higher than healthy lead in our environment.

Lead is still everywhere, not just aviation fuel. About 35% of homes in the USA still have lead paint, which creates lead dust when doors and windows open/close, and lead in the soil where kids play outside. A large fraction of homes still have lead-soldered drinking water supply pipes. Lots of toys, food cans, and vinyl window blinds also still contain and expose kids to lead.

I measured the concentration of lead in the hot water from my kitchen faucet. My plumping is copper with lead solder, so I expected some but not too much.

The result was 105 ppb. This is insane when you consider that Flint's level was 20 ppb during the crisis.

The cold water should be zero, but I installed a lead filter to ensure this.

Lead testing is pretty cheap and there are usually a lot of labs around big cities. Highly recommend water testing even if you don't think you have the risk factors.

> Lead testing is pretty cheap and there are usually a lot of labs around big cities. Highly recommend water testing even if you don't think you have the risk factors.

Could you tell me what you used to do the testing?

Here in Germany I tested twice. Once, I took one of several online providers who send you a test kit - I think it was some 20 Euros or something similar - and you follow the procedure they give you and send the test kit back. You get an email and a website with the result after a few days. This is just for your own information, you cannot use such results in court, for example.

Another time I asked my local city water lab. They had no procedure for some random guy from the public, since those other companies exist and already make it convenient, but they still did not even try to send me away and the big lab boss himself handled my case, explaining the procedure and all, and taking the water samples back from me. Price was similarly little.

By the way, that second time I tested a very commonly sold entry-level Italian portafilter machine, a Rancilio Silvia with a brass boiler that even today contains lead. Following the sampling procedure I had agreed upon with the lab boss as the correct one the lead values I got back significantly exceeded the limits. And about those limits, the medical limit is zero. That the official limit is higher is because our society is unable to get us to that desirable level.

By the way, a good chelator for lead is DMSA, which is produced very cheaply in China. Russians produce "Unithiol" (DMPS) which is best against mercury, and somewhat good against lead (and a lot of other stuff). I actually got Russian Unithiol even though DMPS also is produced here in Germany as "Dimaval". I never used EDTA derivatives for chelation, but I have many years of.. experience with DMSA and DMPS. See somewhere in my comment history. That is why I took lead a bit more seriously and why I tested my portafilter machines. I now have an Ascaso Steel Uno PID whhere the manufacturer took great care to eliminate anything that could be problematic in all components - plus, it's a really good portafilter machine :)

> This is just for your own information, you cannot use such results in court, for example.

Whats the point of that then? If its accuracy is not good enough for court, have you just bought an experience?

I always used to get a sore throat from being a passenger on long vehicle journeys when leaded petrol was around and I was informed some years later Pectin is good for pollutants like lead.

Never heard or seen any studies that back up this claim though, but I still bought a few bottles and necked them to see what sort of effect they had.

I think N Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) may be useful for moving metals around the body.

It's not the accuracy the court is concerned with, it's the chain of custody. They are worried you would deliberately contaminate the samples to get somebody else to pay for improvements to the plumbing that aren't necessary.

> If its accuracy is not good enough for court, have you just bought an experience?

What's court got to do with any of this? You do a lab test to find out if your water is contaminated, and then you take steps to resolve that. Either change the piping, or put in a filter.

I can imagine that many landlords would not be happy to hear they have to replace all of the pipes in a house. I'm also suspecting, given the current situation in the world with regard to housing that a lot of people on this forum rent.

> If its accuracy is not good enough for court

The minimum threshold for accuracy in court is zero. Courts don't make admissibility decisions based on the quality of the evidence; they make the decision on other, more inscrutable criteria.

Not GP, but I found a local water testing company that offered a lead test kit. They gave me a jar with instructions. I brought back the jar full of water collected according to the instructions and they sent it in to a lab. The hardest part was not running water from any tap or toilet for 10 hours before drawing the test water.

Living in an older house it's been totally worth it to test for lead in the usual places so we can be aware of our exposure risks, and also to have our blood tested periodically for lead to make sure we've been successful avoiding it.

Very interested in this as well

Thats sorta crazy for just lead solder. City water? What is the ph? Cause most of the city systems run the ph slightly basic to assure the water isn't trying to etch the pipes, and that also keeps the lead from leaching. That was actually the problem in flint, they let the water system ph get to low and it started to leach out of the pipes which is why originally they denied there was a problem (testing the water at the source).

Those levels are likely not coming from the lead solder but from the supply line to your house

At those levels there is no way that the supply line is using a coagulant.

If it's just the hot water, it could be your water heater. I would not expect soldered copper pipe, even with leaded solder, to be leaching that much lead. The vast majority of the solder is not exposed to the water, it's just sealing the lap joint of the fittings.

Running the water for a bit should flush the standing water in the pipes (which if the lead is coming from your pipes will reduce the lead). Has to be done regularly before consumption to matter of course.

Shit. I live in a VERY old building (built in 1916). No idea what type of pipe they were using. I already do have a good lead filter on my kitchen faucet.

Are you worried about exposure from things like showering and brushing your teeth?

Lead soldered copper didn't become popular until the 1960's or 70's. Before that it would have been galvanized pipes threaded together.

Maybe where you live, but here every 50s house has soldered copper.

For reference, what I said is based on my experience in California and Oregon. Where are you that you see lead soldered copper in 50s homes?

My house had pex, fitted copper, soldered copper and galvanized from fixes over the years.

Seattle and Michigan: though, no guarantees they are lead soldered, I didn't check

FWIW, we lived in a house built around 1912 and we're worried about it, but did lots of testing and things were fine. I think it depends a lot.

Yeah. We still have lead in homes, for example an estimated 85k households in Baltimore have lead exposure:

https://www.reddit.com/r/left_urbanism/comments/uj8y70/an_es...

Do you have references to these claims? I'm not saying it's impossible but this shocking and much higher / more prevalent than I would've thought

HUD[1][2] is the source for the 35% of households figure.

1. https://www.gao.gov/blog/2018/06/20/lead-paint-in-housing

2. Here's a better source actually: https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/AHHS_REPORT.PDF

Only piston or radial engines use 100LL. Turbine engines are sucking down jet A which is kerosene. Turbines don't require lead as an anti knock additive.

That doesn't make it any better, or less bad, because of the other additives it contains, for consistent performance over a wide temperature range, from standing on glowing tarmac/concrete, in the desert sun, to arctic cold, and much other stuff.

Search for something like "toxicologic(al) asessment/profile of jet fuel" and prepare to have your mind blown. While what pops up then mostly covers the military variants like JP-4,7,8, there is enough about the civil use Jet-A1 you are talking about.

In what sense does it contribute? Yes, putting any amount of lead into the atmosphere is bad, but it isn't so bad if it is so dilute that it is basically background levels. I'd imagine low quality lead pipes, and fruit juice, are a much bigger cause of high lead levels than small plane engines.

As somebody who grew up living under the flightpath of a busy airport and always appreciated the variety of small craft flying overhead, I happen to think that this is a pretty big deal. About two blocks away from my house was what we called "the ghetto." The correlation among lead, poverty, violence, and racialized populations is a major character in the story of american politics.

Have you had your blood lead levels checked? Are they elevated?

The half-life of bloodborne lead is about 28 days (according to first google hit) and I moved out many years ago; I think I'd need a bone sample or something to find a signal.

Can you prove the lead is from the airplanes? Land near airports was historically cheaper so the correlation isn’t causative.

Must I prove that 100% of the problem is lead from airplanes in every single neighborhood-by-airport before I'm allowed to express concern? Can you prove that avgas is not a significant contributor to lead accumulation in the soil of these neighborhoods?

There is no safe limit for lead other than zero, and there is no reason for these planes to continue using lead other than it being an externality.

Nonsense. Urine isn’t good for drinking water, but pissing in a reservoir has no effect. Why don’t aircraft pilots and mechanics have cognitive issues since they are exposed to a lot more AvGas fumes than the average person?

For one thing Urine isn't a heavy metal that accumulates cumulatively in your bones - that analogy is just awful.

I don't think you can definitively state that aircraft pilots aren't having health issues due to AvGas exposure, I can't really find any studies about it but one of the more common health side effects of lead exposure is actually a predisposition to heart attacks due to how lead messes with your blood streams.

We can try this, I will piss in your reservoir and you drink it. Clearly there was some effect.

Lead from AvGas is extremely insignificant despite what the Santa Clara Supervisors would have you believe in their quest to ruin Reid Hillview Airport.

Do RHV pilots understand conservation of mass or nah?

In a way that results in higher (or even similar?) exposure to lead compared to when everybody had cars running on it? For your average person? I'm gonna need hard numbers for that.

Okay, for the people who can't read between the lines and just resort to downvoting instead of actually being useful in a conversation.

1) The article is about childhood lead exposure on adult personalities.

2) He makes a comment about aviation and its current use of leaded gasoline ("contributes to higher than healthy lead in our environment") with the warning "this isn't a solved issue of the past".

3) This implies that the aviation industry and its use of leaded gas is in any way comparable to what we had before when everybody had daily contact with leaded gas.

4) Nobody has yet provided any evidence of the fact that aviation results in any appreciable exposure to lead for your average citizen.

5) This matters because the original article is not about environmental impact. It's about childhood exposure.

How is this so hard? I seriously question the ability of your average HNer to make logical deductions.

Just to clarify on #3 - from my original post: "while much smaller relative to everyone's car running on it". I didn't imply that the lead levels were equal or near to levels when everyone's car was running on it - I tried to state the exact opposite but, I'd clarify, the levels of lead in our environment is still well elevated from what it was prior to the introduction of leaded gasoline and lead is a heavy contaminant like mercury - it accumulates in your body and causes cumulative damage.

And to point #5 - the levels present in our environment directly contribute to how much childhood exposure you'll suffer.

No, not even close. To portray otherwise is right up there with the people screeching about radiation exposure on the order of spending a day working outside.

The lead exposure as a result of stuff your daily life (which is mostly a reflection of the history of where you live and work) contributes far more than avgas in the atmosphere. Unless you live downwind of a busy GA airport and have managed to get all other

No, of course not. But that's also not what OP claimed.

They said "higher than healthy" not "higher than when everyone's car ran on it"

OK, but there's still the same question. What is the "healthy" ppb level of lead in air, and what is the concentration from avgas?

Also, here's a plane flying at 4000 AGL. How much of the lead it puts out is going to affect the lead level at ground level? (I mean, it can raise the ppb of the entire atmosphere, which eventually affects everyone, but that's a huge mass to affect.)

It might matter for those living downwind and close to heavily-used private plane fields, though.

(2021)

Veritasium covers the story behind lead in gasoline in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA, it's a really interesting albeit sad video.

If I recall correctly, he mentions this study in the video.

The same story is covered in an episode of the newer run of Cosmos; S2E7.

I thought the coverage there was better. Brief overview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yV__MkDqqo (it ends up being an ad for the show, but good summary, nevertheless).

And a far more irreverent (NSFW? but very entertaining, and moderately informational) video about the inventor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4og8wG8VQWM&list=PL96C35uN7x...

Does anybody know of a good and affordable way to test lead in water levels? I want to test my tap water at various times and spouts (hot, cold, shower, etc) but all of the at home kits seem to be focused on testing lead paint and physical/dry items vs water testing. Or if I need to send results in to a lab are there any affordable ones out there that are recommended?

If you're in the US I'd start with https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certificat...

Clicking on my state brought me to my state's Department of Health website, whose Public Health Laboratory offers a send-in water lead test for $20.

I know it's pretty unlikely you're in NYC, but in case anyone is:

https://www1.nyc.gov/content/leadfree/pages/request-water-te...

I can't speak to how rigorous they are but searching Amazon for "water test kit" shows a lot of results. I used some to test my own water for lead, pesticides, etc.

Though I'd want a lab test to be sure.

I've done this but it was with local labs. Depending where you are, there might be some in your area.

Check out gosimplelab.com

Blood Lead Levels in early childhood are also predictive of stunting, a serious developmental disorder with lifelong consequences that include immune function issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31031640

Imagine what the lifelong prospects for the Flint kids are going to be. Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C all have high lead levels in their drinking water. These cities are often associated with minority violence but what if its all a direct result of high lead levels and the cities / states failing the vulnerable people that live there.

Blood lead levels of Flint kids were barely elevated during the crisis and far lower than levels from earlier years.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30871386/

"Conclusion: Analyses of GM and percentages ≥5.0 μg/dL of BLLs do not support the occurrence of a global increase in BLLs in young children of Flint during the entire 18-month period of FRW exposure."

Anyone else curious about whether their spouse might have been exposed to lead?

In time, I wonder if lead gas in the US will be written about like lead pipes in Rome.

We haven't even learned the lesson of lead in our pipes yet. Sure we shouldn't use it, but my house still has lead pipes running from the street upto the house. SlumLord refuses to do anything about it, and threatens to sell if we "make a big deal about it".

Flint MI, is still suffering with lead pipes too.

Yes, I hope we are ridiculed for our use of lead in gasoline & pipes. But the real outrage is how these criminal CONTINUE to get away with it.

Wouldn't threatening to sell involve having to disclose he's got lead pipes and lead to a need for remediation?

Unfortunately not in my jurisdiction. The "lead pipes" disclosure is for `inside the house` plumbing.

He's a slumlord, even if it was a requirement he wouldn't do it.

Almost certainly. In fact our problem may be significantly worse.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oa.3001

In particular look at this graphic:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/ca143408-881b-4b17...

Supposedly many lead pipes actually when even somewhat older will be coated on the inside with crap that prevents most lead exposure. New pipes for sure sound like a problem

The insane thing is that this has been known for a long time. Bavaria banned lead pipes in 1878 (not a typo).

I'm from Bavaria, and I was absolutely furious when I learned a few months ago that, living in San Francisco now, there is a real chance of lead exposure through pipes and paints. Our house was built in the 50s, so that increased those chances. And California has one of the better regulations.

Even so called "lead free" pipes were allowed to have significant lead content just a few decades ago!

What you can do is, for $75 per faucet, get your water sampled and tested by the SF water department. We did that and got back the result that there was no lead in measurable quantities. This was a great relief. Our house looks fairly renovated, so they seem to have gotten rid of those pipes, too.

This is the kind of thing that you just don't think about when moving to the US.

CA is always weird about this stuff. I constantly see signs and warning labels basically telling me that my apartment and the containers that my groceries are packaged in are giving me cancer. If it's such a big deal why not go further than just having a sign? What is the common person supposed to do with this information? Just live outside? Is it just so that everyone can say "well, we let them know."?

Those warnings are a result of an initiative petition. An initiative petition can do anything. It doesn't have to make sense and the legislative government thereafter has relatively little power to fix it.

Lead paint is everywhere still, its not uncommon to be found on children's playgrounds still, on the equipment, not in the ground

They closed 2 in Philadelphia, PA in 2019 for remediation https://www.inquirer.com/health/philadelphia-lead-playground...

I hope you are aware of how we handled asbestos as well.

I am not. Wasn't it just ripped out?

I remember in Germany in the 80s our elementary school got closed for a while, and the classes relocated temporarily, to rip out all the asbestos.

I went to a school which just had a stark warning on every wall not to disturb the asbestos

guess i should check into if i'm eligble for cashing in one of those mesothelioma cheques at some point

Anyways now you know why Americans seem a little 'off'

Nope, unfortunately it was largely left and covered up, its still found in a a lot of products as well

https://www.mesothelioma.com/asbestos-exposure/products/talc....

My rule of thumb is generally anything the EU deemed unsafe, we rounded up by %20 and said it's fine

> Wasn't it just ripped out?

No. My apartment in CA was required to disclose to us that our apartment had asbestos in the ceiling. (And lead in the paint. $2,700/mo for the privilege!)

The disclosure is standard in CA. They don’t test they just assume.

I don't know about CA, but PA its generally a pretty safe guess whats gonna have it

Sure, but I've moved into newly renovated places in CA. If it was built before a certain date, you get a "lead notice". Even if the walls were all torn down and repainted.

It is worth mentioning that it’s straightforward to get paint tested for lead content too. Here in an older part of the US there are many companies that do testing. It costs a couple hundred dollars for a typical single family house and you can see the results immediately. Anyone in a house in the US built before the late 1970’s or so that has children should consider it.

Thanks, we will do that. My wife thinks it's unlikely since we have no flaking paint anywhere, the windows are fairly new etc., but I think it's worth the peace of mind.

Focus on the wear spots, like door jams and window sills. Lead paint is fine as long as you keep it in good condition, but its hard to keep it in good condition if parts are rubbing against eachother.

Also, the standard for contractors is to assume your paint has lead in it if the house was built before the late '70s. Even testing a whole house for lead paint is extremely expensive, and there's no central registry of lead results, so you're gonna have to test over, and over, and over.

For water, just to add some extra safety, we installed a reverse osmosis water filter system for our refrigerator hookup, and removed the standard refrigerator one.

Testing a whole house for lead paint isn’t expensive. Testing is done with handheld analyzers that give results in seconds, a whole house takes maybe a couple hours.

And some states do indeed have a central registry of lead results. Mine does. I went online and easily found test results from the 1990’s for places I’ve lived.

Oh geez. What does that mean in practice? If we see no flaking paint anywhere, are we safe? I am not sure about the basement. Is pulverized lead paint in the air a concern?

Get a company to come out and do lead testing. They will give you the results, recommend abatement contractors, and maybe give you some tips and recommendations.

Where I live the people that do the testing are required to be different from the people doing abatement. (And once the abatement is done you can get the people that did the testing to come back out again and officially verify that the housing unit meets lead safe standards.) But US states differ in some of the details here.

Condition and rubbing is the problem. If you have no rubbing or condition problems then you should be OK.

If you're concerned about tracking it in from outside, or improper renovation, you can apply the tests to dust too, which is where any pulverized lead in the air would come from.

At risk of compromising your relief slightly, from what I understand the lead measurements may change depending on the water chemistry flowing through the pipes (i.e. the lead may stay put wherever it is in the system but leech if the right water chemistry (which may still be within regulations) flows through).

House pipes being changed is probably 90% of the worry anyway. If it was recently enough, you might be able to pull the original permits and get a better idea of what was replaced.

Would you expect the lead to be completely undetectable if that was the case? We did wait for more than 8 hours without using the lines, as instructed, before taking the sample.

We always talk about how the lead poisoning turns lower middle class into criminals, but I wonder what's the effect on the educated, affluent people who nontheless get the same exposure.

I have a pet theory that Yeltsin, Chubais and the like ripped the Soviet state and economy apart out of the lead-induced haze and desire to vandalize, only they had not just a sorry bench to ruin but a whole country.

I’m guilty of this one, but I do find it ironic that the potential of inadvertent lead consumption becomes a neurotic preoccupation and that neurotic preoccupations are a symptom of lead exposure.

Lead is actually still astonishingly everywhere: mugs (any color glaze), kids toys, old crystal, brass, stained glass, etc. The particulates still become dust and percolate the air. Reverse osmosis your drinking water costs $200-$300 for a kit. A relative had someone come in with this expensive lead-detector gun and over 3 hours found significant traces on 100 different things in the house. Just be generally suspicious of anything colored manufactured in China or old antiques.

Pnas.org though? Really?

I laugh every time I see it, but PNAS has been around since 1915.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proceedings_of_the_National_Ac...

I wonder what the effect of chelation (EDTA) has on personality then.

> Chelation therapy is of limited value for cases of chronic exposure to low levels of lead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Treatment

It's probably dumb overconservatism, the issue with chelators is that they are often rushed. You can distill low amounts of edta for a longer duration in order to reduce toxicity. Also the following deficits (e.g in zinc) should be supplemented obviously. Moreover there are underused synergies https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21649453/

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