America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables | Hacker News Reader

America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables

wsj.com

50 pointsbookofjoe18 comments

From another article on this (https://www.businessinsider.com/att-verizon-abandoned-phone-...):

> According to the EPA, the safety standard for lead levels in the soil where children play is 400 parts per million. Sediment in a Louisiana fishing spot often frequented by local kids was found to have 14.5 times that amount in June 2022, the Journal reported.

> Former EPA official Linda Birnbaum told the Journal its findings "suggest there is a significant problem from these buried lead cables everywhere, and it's going to be everywhere, and you're not even going to know where it is in a lot of places."

That’s over 1/2% lead. That’s absurd. I find it hard to believe that a decaying cable could do that to sediment in a fishing spot unless the sample was dug up right next to a cable.

If Louisiana is a state which allows lead tackle, the fact of it being a fishing hole is likely causal wrt lead pollution.

> A recent Canadian study (ECCC 2018) stated, “An average Canadian angler can lose 11 to 15 jigs and sinkers per year while fishing due to snags and other reasons. This adds up to about 460 metric tons of lead jigs and sinkers lost every year into Canada’s lakes and waterways. This represents the most significant source of lead releases into Canadian waters.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6675807/

Zero tolerance standards make it hard to tell what’s real. This reminds me of the asbestos hysteria of the 90s.

Asbestos is a hazard, but a manageable one if it's still intact. I think there's probably an analogous risk here - as long as people aren't somehow ingesting it, it's probably fine where it is. If you're doing demolition where the material is involved, some proper PPE and disposal is in order.

Unless you actually chew the cables, very little actual risk. I would be more worried about drinking water from a system still containing lead pipes. They still exist in a surprisingly large amount of places in the USA.

They found lead in half of children tested under the age of six. Where else are they getting the lead from - AV gas?

lead paint. there's still a ton of it around. most of it is covered by other paint, but when it chips, you still get exposure (and kids absolutely will eat paint flakes). also fun tip: if you want to get out of a lease early, you can ask your landlord to do a test for lead paint. if the building is >50 years old, the landlord is unlikely to want to take the risk of $10000s of renovation or having to disclose the lead to future tenants

Lead is naturally in tons of rocks. It's in a ton of other industrial processes, and it's still the most common material for sewer mains - most are reinforced with resin by now, but shifts can still cause major cracks that will let lead in.

There's still a ton of real uses for lead - we'd probably be better off if our electronics were still full of it, because they'd last longer.

Electronics lifespan seems to be limited by obsolescence, then battery wear, then switches, then connectors, with various random other stuff mixed in.

I don't see a lot of stuff failing anymore. Consumer stuff is all pretty good. I don't know about high performance stuff, maybe gaming GPUs get hot and fatigue the solder it something, but the more common stuff seems to get replaced before it failsn

Water, paint chipping, air pollution from coal power plants.

Don’t get me wrong, it would be good to phase out these cables especially the ones in the ground which contaminate the soil. But let’s not imagine they are a very significant problem. I’m actually annoyed by the article because it gives the actual significant lead emitters - coal burning power plans - some kind of cover up.

Paint.

My house has lead service pipes and we test it annually. Because the people running our city water supply aren’t criminally incompetent, the water chemistry is such that there’s virtually no contamination.

Kind of everywhere if you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cAB5FG4bXI&t=800s

With a sensitive enough test you should find lead in all children. There's a small amount in the air.

The primary source of lead pollution in the air is coal power plants.

It's going to be interesting when it gets out that carbon fiber acts a lot like asbestos when burned.

https://archive.ph/kkHN4

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36654318

Makes me feel safer knowing this.

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