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Comment by alexk307 | Hacker News Reader

Did you even read the article? It’s about chickens in certain parts of Australia where there is high concentrations of lead in the soil. Nothing about all eggs being contaminated or all proteins are bad, just that if you have lead in your soil, maybe don’t farm there.

> I’ll take my chances with lead.

Probably the most moronic thing I’ve read on HN

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Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It only makes everything worse, and stuff like this:

> Probably the most moronic thing I’ve read on HN

is the quintessence of what the guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Also, you carried it further (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32426030) and that's exactly what we don't want.

I did read it, and the intent of the article is to discourage people everywhere from using non-industrial food sources. I will take my chances with farmed eggs because the balance of probabilities are that this will not be the dangerous part of my life, and the alternative is accepting the admonitions of people with insincere agendas.

Further, I like how it is on skeptics to maintain the high quality tone of a discussion, but the hegemons are somehow not accountable to conventions around civility, wit, and clarity. It's like some people have some kind of luxury-stupidity whereby someone whose opinions aren't officially protected can't afford to be that petulant.

Another commenter here observed it's a war on nitrogen with protein as a casualty, which is pretty consistent given aligned climate change initiatives.

> the intent of the article is to discourage people everywhere from using non-industrial food sources

Not at all, It's clearly pretty straight science reporting typical of Ars Technica. That nearly half a million Australians keep backyard chickens is in and of itself interesting, and those people probably want and need to know about lead risk. It may also be worth other urban chicken owners checking their soil and eggs for lead. People who live in cities and keep chickens are likely to read Ars, so it's a natural story for them to run. No conspiracy needed. The call to action is to just get your soil tested.

Its the headline that I personally take issue with. It is about Australia, but the title implies that backyard eggs all over are more likely to contain lead.

Pick an average US headline; does it even mention US?

The local context bias is here to stay.

On HN users are in fact expected to modify titles which are misleading or clickbaity, without resorting to editorialization.

This would include for example, changing an article from a Florida news source saying "diabetes epidemic out of control" to "Florida reports highest level of diabetes in its history" (these are completely made up).

There is also a strong bias to reverting titles to the original formulation.

We have a convention to add (year) to mark the date. We should take up a convention to add [context], too; e.g.

[In Sydney] Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead...

I tried that several times, but mods often revert that.

I wonder what @dang thinks about this.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's true: is there any reason to expect Australia to have higher than average lead levels? My understanding is that it's mostly from paint and gasoline, in which case it should be similar to the US and other countries.

I don’t think it’s an austrain problem. I know in the US it’s also an issue. Leaded gasoline is one of the drivers of all this lead in soil. When I was younger fuel was labeled “unleaded” when they took the anti-engine knock chemicals out.

There is some lead naturally in soil but it’s generally low levels

UMass has a lead in soil fact sheet:

https://ag.umass.edu/soil-plant-nutrient-testing-laboratory/...

“The US EPA has set a safe soil lead threshold limit of 400 ppm total lead using this method. The US EPA also recommends that soils used for gardening fall below 100 ppm total lead. In Massachusetts, the regulatory safety threshold is 200 ppm total lead….To reduce your risk of lead poisoning, the following is advised: Good Gardening Practices to Reduce Lead Exposure

-Locate gardens away from old painted structures and heavily travelled roads.

-Give planting preferences to fruiting crops (tomatoes, squash, peas, sunflowers, corn, etc.).

-Incorporate organic materials such as high quality compost, humus, and peat moss.

-Lime soil as recommended by soil test (a soil pH of 6.5 to 7.0 will minimize lead “

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