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Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder how much of the youth mental health crisis I keep hearing about is actually the result of poisoning. Lead, plasticizers, dioxin, formaldehyde, PFAS, aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals. How much of this is a necessary result of supplying safe food and water to more people than ever in history, how much is sheer accident, and how much is from people who care about nothing but the bottom line?

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The US phased out lead in gasoline in the eighties so I'm not sure you can blame that.

Leaded gasoline was phased out in 1996.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/history-of-gaso...

I think the point of what they were saying is that it was lead back then. What about the other poisons we know _today_ but haven't discovered that it's a huge contributor to mental health

and overstimulation from devices

That’s the obvious answer, surely, and one I’m disposed to agree with. But given that we’ve introduced a lot of new chemistry to our bodies over the last century or so, I’m suggesting that it may not be the only answer. This is not to say new chemistry is necessarily bad, either. Food and water in the industrialized world are massively safer from microbial contamination than they ever have been. People generally stay healthier, longer than ever in history. Nonetheless, if we’re inadvertently poisoning ourselves, we can do even better if we stop.

100% correct. Nature does not blink and boop. Just like a drugs out devices hijack people's natural feedback mechanisms and produce an experience that's hyper-real.

A two year-old with an iPad becomes unable to handle reality because it's dull by comparison.

Relevant social commentary (timestamped): https://youtu.be/k1BneeJTDcU?t=176

yeah the difference i feel when i've been in front of a screen all week compared to one without...its scaryt

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