Lead is still bad for your brain | Hacker News Reader

Lead is still bad for your brain

neurofrontiers.blog

217 pointslentoutcry173 comments

This is a great article on the biology of lead exposure.

Unfortunately on the exposure side research wasn’t done and it propagates the myth that lead exposure is only an issue for those with lead pipes or lead paint. It’s true that these are the main sources of severe lead exposure. However the article points out that there is no safe level of exposure to lead and these aren’t the main ways we are exposed to lead in the US anymore.

Today we are mostly exposed by low level contamination and thankfully this usually results in only mildly elevated lead levels. In a toddler sticking things in the mouth this could be almost any object. For adults it is food and drinks and the objects we use to make them.

I know this because my toddler had elevated lead levels even though our neighborhood never had lead paint and our water does not have lead (I tested the water coming out of our faucets).

The US has few laws against lead contamination and they aren’t very stringent and there is little proactive enforcement. This non profit has ended up creating several recalls after reporting their own testing: https://tamararubin.com/category/recall/ Most of the recalls were products marketed for children such as baby bottles. But if a child eats off an adult plate there aren’t any laws against that being contaminated.

Some actions you can take are:

  * test children’s lead levels and your own
  * make sure toddlers aren't playing with old toys (pre 1978 really risky, after 2010 is best)
  * stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).
  * Remove risky objects like the above from your children’s classrooms.
  * For cooking and food and drinks use clear glass, stainless steel, and cast iron
  * avoid processed foods. There are a lot of particulars here about what is most likely to be high in lead. Chocolate, spices, salt, and cassava products are particularly high in heavy metals.

There can even be lead in fruit pouches: https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/news/outbreak-applesauce...

I'm far from crunchy, but this led me to start making my kids pouches. They're more expensive per pouch, which was a bit surprising, but it has the side benefits that we make the pouches together (quality time) and I can control what goes in (e.g., spinach, carrots, broccoli).

I am glad you are finding the time to avoid contaminated industrial processed food.

In the apple sauce contaminations the apple sauce is always cinnamon flavored. When tested for various heavy metals, cinnamon usually has unsafe levels of heavy metal contamination, and lead is usually one of the metals: https://tamararubin.com/2024/12/six-cinnamon-products-chart/

There is widespread contamination in spices because the machinery that processes most spices is made of metal with lead. Some of the lead may be unintentional contamination, but lead is also used intentionally because it is cheap and useful. I believe it is useful for grinding, etc because when used in an alloy the metal doesn't wear down as easily.

So if you want to replicate those apple sauce products without heavy metal you would need to buy cinnamon sticks and grate them yourself.

I am a metal worker, and a foodie, living on a farm, and have experience and contacts in varios parts of the food industry, and have never come across lead, in any food relate items. As to alloying with lead, it has been used historicaly to make steal easier to machine "free machining steel" , but has no part in high strength or tool steels, and the steels used in grinding machines are going to be food grade..... even the grease in the bearings is food grade silcone grease....got some in the shop.... Good stainless wears for ever, so it is always used, at least here in Canada. So back to the lead and heavy metals, and how they are intentionaly added as "flavor enhansers" and coulorants, and basicaly how crazy people are and will do anything to steal a buck, but of course, not before passing it.right! personaly I eat only food, I make from individual single ingredients, prepared at home. The most complex food I buy is cheese, and very rarely icecream, thats it.And even then, there are things that just seem WRONG, like some grapes, that had an impossible "floral" aftertaste that lingered for hours......and now wont rot, sitting on top of the fridge. I could go on at some length, about all of the fraud in food, but Food is cheap, and there is no way to impliment a system with continious checks and investigations, that would guarantee quality and purity, without quardrupling the price, and perversly, increasing the incentive, to cheat.

So the lead in food comes from color and flavor additives. How did it get into those ingredients?

It's a deep dive, but an example or two might help, a great deal of food is processed and handled under purely industrial conditions, with all of it strored for some time, and shipped long distances, this causes oxidation and reduction of the most volitile and flavorfull/coulorfull components, which then must be protected or added back in when it is packaged for sale. Hence a vast industry devoted to flavorings, and coulorants, where many of these substances that were used are now banned, at least in a patch work fashion. Lead and other heavy metals are added to alter flavor and coulor, they are cheap and readily availible and also I suspect work as preservatives, allowing unscrupulous middlemen to by up large quantities of substandard product, and alter it enough to make it appear good enough for retailers to sell. Then there are agricultural areas that have been poluted by industry, mining, war, or naturaly, or even by past agricultural "mistakes", and again unscrupulous people can make large proffits by concealing the origin of what they are selling. So I buy spices as whole unground items, and choose carefully from small ethnic groceries, that cater to people keeping culinary traditions alive, and know by sight and smell the quality of what they are buying, and are often very hapoy to share there way of determining the good from the bad, and precisely, what to look for.

Most of the cinnamon production is in "less developed" countries where the rules, standards, and available equipment for processing foodstuffs aren't the same level as in your Canada...

Sounds like those places aren't actually cheaper, and we're just "getting what we are paying for" in terms of lower quality for lower prices.

I wonder if RFK Jr. could improve food safety checks, especially when it seems something isn't right with a food that you bought.

There's a discount store that I will no longer feel comfortable buying cheese or produce from.

they're wildly thrashing about in the FDA https://apnews.com/article/fda-layoffs-trump-doge-rehired-me...

> So back to the lead and heavy metals, and how they are intentionaly added as "flavor enhansers"

Any source on this? Lead as flavor enhancer? That would be crazy if true.

are there lead-free spice sources

How would you eliminate lead exposure by making your own pouches? Would you test the produce you use for led before using it?

I ask because there is no source that guarantees 100% that it won't have harmful lead levels. Lead is often introduced through the soil, so unless your organic farm where you buy produce either tested the soil ahead of time (pretty rare unless someone though it might be a concern) or regularly tests the produce they make, you're just assuming it won't have harmful lead levels.

>stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).

That would seem to mean to stop buying an enormous number of things. Extended to locations, it would mean not parking in any enclosed parking lot, or entering a number of different stores. It's not clear to me it's even possible to avoid everything with a prop 65 warning. Unfortunately, the bad incentives involved (private actions mean there is a risk for not putting a warning if some law firm can try to argue to a court in a civil action that you might be exposing people to something, while at the same time there is no penalty or cost at all to putting a completely unnecessary and bogus warning when you don't actually know of any risk) make it so that the safest option is just to put a warning.

Often times prop 65 is a lead issue. But perhaps most often it means that the company doesn't want to bother testing for lead rather than that the item definitely has lead.

With all things, be strategic- the importance of avoiding prop 65 is relative to the likelihood of it ending up in the body- so items in your kitchen, your garden, that young children would touch.

There's a good episode of 99% Invisible that discusses Prop 65, including an interview with the original author of Prop 65, David Roe: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-...

Yes, there are a lot of problems with Prop 65, but the podcast also highlights the benefits. Slapping a Prop 65 warning on foodstuffs in particular significantly decreases sales, so it's not something you just do merely to avoid extortionate lawsuits. It incentives testing beforehand, and if you find contaminants to then reformulate. Notwithstanding the seeming ubiquity of Prop 65 warning labels in California, the salient effects are significant and largely hidden--you don't notice all the products that don't have the label, and don't because they were reformulated to avoid the label. Prop 65 was one of the most significant drivers in the US of the removal of lead and other contaminants in products. The author of the bill admits the unintended consequences have been significant, especially harassment lawsuits, but he also argues there aren't really good alternatives that could have achieved what Prop 65 has with a better cost/benefit ratio.

Having an army of private lawyers vigorously prowling for contaminants in products is a pillar of Prop 65's success. You couldn't achieve what Prop 65 has with centralized regulation, not without creating tremendous (i.e. costly in time if not money) bureaucratic hurdles to creating and selling products in the market. Prop 65 is a kind of "ask for forgiveness" model, rather than "ask for permission". The former is generally more preferable if you want to preserve market dynamism and profitability, while also minimizing the risk of regulatory capture, and lax, haphazard enforcement. Moreover, you get the escape hatch of just adding a warning label, without having to take your product off the market.

There is a centralized regulatory aspect to Prop 65--the State of California's list of contaminants--subject to typical bureaucratic and lobbying externalities. But on balance Prop 65 seems defensible, however imperfect. After listening to the podcast, which if anything leaned into Prop 65 criticism, I softened my views on Prop 65.

That's an interesting behind the scenes point of view. But from a consumer point of view:

> you don't notice all the products that don't have the label

...because there are too many with it, so people stopped caring. As a consumer, I would prefer a label that identified the major risks.

Does certified organic protect against lead?

>Having an army of private lawyers vigorously prowling for contaminants in products is a pillar of Prop 65's success. You couldn't achieve what Prop 65 has with centralized regulation, not without creating tremendous (i.e. costly in time if not money) bureaucratic hurdles to creating and selling products in the market.

What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique such that labelling for them cannot be enforced by the government, and needs to be done by private enforcers motivated by profit? Why could the same type of law not simply be enforced, in a largely similar way, by a government agency?

I would generally agree that Prop 65 has had benefits, and that such labelling, in principle, could be a good thing (even if I'd really prefer if there were some requirement to actually give at least some explanation when putting a label). But the private enforcement has never made sense to me, unless one takes the view that the state actually opposes labelling and can't be trusted to enforce it.

> What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique such that labelling for them cannot be enforced by the government, and needs to be done by private enforcers motivated by profit?

It's not unique. The ADA and the NVRA are two other big laws that include private rights of action, eg

https://www.democracydocket.com/proa/

> What makes cancer and reproductive risks unique

I realize this is the first-half of a compound question, but those jump out to me as cases where there can be years between harmful exposure and someone noticing the damage.

Great read, thanks for the info. These things really are complex and worth withholding judgment until we really have a grasp of the specifics. This may have changed my mind about it.

One thing I wonder about with various regs is whether the optics are ever fully factored into the analysis. This seems to be a blind spot in a lot of regulatory behavior that affects consumers, GDPR being another obvious example. To consumers, these laws are examples of regulatory cluelessness, being so broadly applied as to be meaningless, and ultimately undermining the moral authority of the act of regulation. Who doesn't look at a Prop 65 warning and ultimately conclude 'well I guess everything causes cancer'?

Based on your description, Prop 65 did some nice jiu jitsu to navigate real-world constraints and create incentives to get some positive change in, and I imagine the author is proud of having figured out that kind of complex move. But man did it whiff on the optics.

It's extremely rare that I come across products with a prop 65 warning. And in the rare chance you do see it, like on a bowl, you might learn that some bowl paints and glazes actually have lead in them!

Second, information is not meant to be executed on directly... you are supposed to process information with critical thinking. Yes, enclosed parking lots give you cancer. Guess what, you can still park in it... In the same way that tuna contains a lot of mercury but I still eat tuna.... just less of it. I rather know and make an informed decision than not know anything at all.

What was the source of your "toddler's" hi lead levels?

Unfortunately I don't know. We have gotten rid of a lot of old toys and made sure our kitchen and plates are lead free and did some of that before a retest and that may have helped some. We are going to retest now that he is older and not sticking random stuff in his mouth much. He still eats a lot of sweet potatoes and I suspect that could be a source. I also just got some of the new easy to use lead testing kits and am starting to test some things with that but everything seems to come up negative so far.

Can you share where to get the easy to use lead tests?

> test children’s lead levels and your own

Here's a tip for your peace of mind: if you suspect that some food you're consuming is high in lead, get tested first before removing that food from your diet. I was consuming a fair amount of dark chocolate when I first learned that it could contain high levels of lead, so I got tested before I cut it out of my diet. My levels were below the detection limit so I can be reasonably sure that any damage caused by lead consumption was minimal.

> stop buying things that have a prop 65 warning (I know prop 65 isn’t perfect, but it’s often a lead warning).

Note that:

* since 2018, the warning must include at least one specific chemical (but not all of them)

* unlike initially, manufacturers nowadays often only label products sent to California, so the benefit for residents of other states has largely disappeared

Chocolate, spices, salt, and cassava products are particularly high in heavy metals.

I'm surprised to see salt on the list. Where does most table salt come from? And where in the processing does lead come in? Off the top of my head I think of it as a simple process. There aren't any special additives for flavor, color, or shelf life, as it's not attacked by bacteria. I believe the only thing added is iodine. And speaking as a non-chemist, it would seem straightforward to separate salt from lead if the salt was contaminated.

If somebody who actually knew what they're talking about could chime in, I'd be interested.

I’ve read that cocoa processing involves drying the pods in the open air. Heavy metals in dust from nearby mines covers the surface of the pods, which are later ground up along with the cocoa.

The solution here seems simple enough: Don’t dry the pods in the open air. But the farmers don’t have a lot of extra money lying around that they can use to address this, and the market is (currently at least) still buying.

Oof. Folks had this same sort of outlook on lead contamination here in Missouri. Here's the problem: the farmers also live downwind of the lead pollution. They didn't poison the air. But now they're being expected to handle it.

My assumption is that it has something to do with machinery processing.

Most salt is precipitated from natural brine. Virtually all salt is “sea salt” including mined salt, the main difference is how much time has passed since it was precipitated from a sea of some sort. That brine contains small quantities of many metals and minerals that were in solution when the brine evaporated. Several heavy metals have significant solubility in naturally occurring brines so it isn’t surprising to find them there, but the quantity depends on the local geology and geochemistry. They won’t be evenly distributed even within a single formation due to different minerals having different thresholds for precipitation.

Natural salt is therefore not particularly pure. I believe it is typically on the order of 95-98% pure. The majority of contaminants are harmless things like potassium, magnesium, calcium, etc but there will also be traces of heavy metals, arsenic, etc.

Salt is literally one of the very cheapest bulk materials on Earth. Any non-trivial processing is going to be really expensive compared to the raw materials so people don’t do it unless they can’t avoid it (e.g. anti-caking agent for some food salt applications). As a consequence, I would expect most bulk food salt to have limited opportunity for industrial contamination.

As a youngster in the 70s (before lead sas a known carcinogen) I had a piece of lead in my lego bag (no idea how it came to be there). I thought that soft metal was neat and bit it more than once. Fortunately I still have all my hair though I know a woman who would say 'that explains a lot.

One other thing you can do - live in a newly developed area. Areas that had car traffic when lead was still used in fuel can have significant amounts of lead in the soil. If you live in an older area and suspect lead poisoning, test your garden soil and test the playground dust.

https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/prevention/soil.html

I've heard that cilantro is a reasonably effective anti-chelating agent. The jury's out on whether it helps with lead that's already made it to the brain, but there's some evidence showing it's generally helpful with mitigating the side effects of heavy metal exposure.

Did you know, the world still mines more lead now than it did 50 years ago, at the peak of 'put lead in everything' mania?

To me, this says that we still put lead in too many things. Lead is still used for flashing in roofs. It's still used as a mould release when making plastics. It's still used in making dishware. It's still used in bullets.

It's still used for all kinds of things which will one day end up in the environment and someone's drinking water.

When I posted here about how lead pipes during the Roman Empire was bad for the people I was met with a torrent of downvotes right here on Hackernews saying it wasn’t that bad. I’m not optimistic about the future.

I feel the same about leaded solder for hobby electronics.

At least leaded soldering wire is mostly contained in a large chunk, but I really don't like leaded solder paste. Which is like leaded peanut butter, and easily spread around.

All the new parts are designed based on a lead free process anyways, so you might as well get used to working with lead-free solder to begin with.

Unless you work on vintage gear...

I'm sure that contributed to some of the insanity, but they also cooked down wine in lead pots (sapa or defrutum) which caused lead to leach and act as a sweetener. I think they also used this in cooking but this is all from memory so trust but verify!

IIRC they also used lead acetate as a sweetener. It boggles my mind that using enough of that to noticeably impact the flavor of food did not instantly kill people. Meanwhile here we are talking about micrograms!

To be fair lead pipes aren't good, but the other uses in the Roman Empire were probably the cause of far more of the issues.

Especially with hard water (of which the water in Rome is VERY hard[1] today, and if similar sources are used, it stands to reason it was very hard way back when) it forms a scale that drastically reduces the amount that leeches into the water.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-water-hardness-of...

That is exactly what people told him at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43231697

He is being dishonest.

If you must lie, be less bad at it. From the paper [1] she read and you didn't:

> It is now universally accepted that utilization of lead for domestic purposes and water distribution presents a major health hazard. The ancient Roman world was unaware of these risks. How far the gigantic network of lead pipes used in ancient Rome compromised public health in the city is unknown...[Lead isotopes in sediments from the harbor of Imperial Rome] demonstrate that the lead pipes of the water distribution system increased [lead] contents in drinking water of the capital city by up to two orders of magnitude over the natural background. The [lead] isotope record shows that the discontinuities in the pollution of the Tiber by lead are intimately entwined with the major issues affecting Late Antique Rome and its water distribution system.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1400097111

...what? Did you mean to respond to me? I'm the one exposing the lie.

There's a weird trend on here of karma chasers playing "gotcha" by posting rebuttals to things that literally nobody is claiming and hoping that we don't notice. It's fucking pathetic man. What would it take for you to reevaluate your life.

> ...what? Did you mean to respond to me? I'm the one exposing the lie. There's a weird trend on here of karma chasers playing "gotcha" by posting rebuttals to things that literally nobody is claiming and hoping that we don't notice. It's fucking pathetic man. What would it take for you to reevaluate your life.

https://archive.ph/T33PI

https://web.archive.org/web/20160617070827/https://news.ycom...

You’re confused. The original post you linked is literally downvoted all the way and has three comments with disagreeing sentiments. Water pipes made of lead are bad for you and were bad for the Roman Empire.

Nobody is confused. If the downvotes caused you to show us who you are, then they performed a duty, just not the expected one or one that you are enjoying.

She's not the one showing her ass here, Corey.

Gosh I hope she sees you Aaron!! <3 <3 <3

Oh, I have a clear conscience. Can you say the same?

The lead pipes was probably a miniscule amount of overall lead.

The ancient romans added lead acetate Pb(CH3COO)2 to their foods and wine. I can't understate just how much 'lead sugar' was being consumed.

By the way, in my later years, I did make a voluntary choice to taste it, and then rinse my mouth out. And yes, it was the closest we have to table sugar Ive ever tasted. Before anyone naysays me, I did this knowing full well the risks.

Also fast forward 1700 years,and we see the same reaction. In the 1950s USA, you could buy lead-rimmed coffee cups. The interaction between the coffee, the lead, and your mouth created the sensation of sweetness, likely also lead acetate.

In my mind, there's only two acceptable uses of lead: radiation (x-ray, gamma ray) shielding, and ICE batteries. Even then, I expect there's much increased demand for those things (and thus, the lead to manufacture them) from 50 years ago.

Even ICE batteries is IMO not a valid use. Lithium batteries are better by almost every metric, and now nearly every model of car battery has a drop-in compatible lithium battery+controller too, so there isn't even an excuse for vehicles currently on the road.

Lead batteries contain not just lead, but the H2SO4 needed to dissolve large amounts of it and transport it through watercourses when the plastic case inevitably cracks.

No, but they are dead simple aren't they? Charging them is easy. They can handle super high discharge rates no problem. Construction is simple, only lead, sulfuric acid, and plastic. The materials are cheap, abundant, and recyclable. The battery chemistry is old and well understood. They aren't made from flammable materials, and if one does catch on fire, you can extinguish it using a normal fire extinguisher. They work well at low temperatures, and can be put in storage long term fully charged. About the only downside is they can make hydrogen if overcharged, and are heavy.

Too bad they use lead, because it would be too good to be true otherwise. You have to treat lithium batteries like a spoiled child in comparison.

Lead acid batteries still offer far better performance in cold conditions, voltage stability, burst current capacity, and ease of charging.

You can overcome most of these issues, but it comes at a significant cost. I think it could be worth it, especially when you factor in that the lithium ion battery could theoretically pay for itself in longer lifespan, but most buyers would prefer the cheap, familiar, reliable option.

In my experience LiIon car batteries are a total pain. Regular battery chargers fry them, or won't turn on to charge. So you need a Li compatible charger. If you let one go flat it bricks and replacements are either very costly or impossible to source locally. I had to have a car transported by flat bed 300 miles to a dealer to have the dead Lithium battery replaced under warranty.

> Even ICE batteries is IMO not a valid use.

Why? I would posit that lithium batteries do way more damage to the environment than lead-acid batteries. Recycling of lead-acid batteries is very prevalent because it is economically worth it.

Isn't that implied by the context? Lead is fantastically bad for human health and it's worth the cons to use Li batteries to avoid pulling lead out of the earth and into the chain of human contaminants .

My point is that lead for batteries is aggressively recycled while lithium is almost exclusively pulled from primary extraction and rarely recycled.

> Despite the smaller supply of lithium, a study earlier this year in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science found that less than 1 percent of Lithium-ion batteries get recycled in the US and EU compared to 99 percent of lead-acid batteries, which are most often used in gas vehicles and power grids.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/lithium-costs-a-lot-...

Whenever I buy a lead-acid battery, I always have a core charge and it is a non-trivial percentage of the total cost of the battery. I get that core charge back when I return the old battery.

Lithium batteries have nothing comparable.

That's a fine stance, of course. But you asked "why". The posters above are focused on human health as a concern, over the environmental impact you're focusing on. Just different perspective.

Don't scream at me, but what about non-industrial, hobby soldering?

AFAIK soldering is not hot enough to vaporize lead.

Soldering contamination mainly comes from ingestion. Touching it, having small particles of lead burn off and land on your skin, then in your mouth (or eyes, elsewhere). Even so, by washing hands and wearing light PPE it’s fine.

Because if that, many people consider the ban of industrial lead solder to be over-zealous. But that ban is in place to stop consumers being contaminated if they somehow touch the board. Also to minimise lead entering the water table once it is discarded.

I love my Kester 40% lead solder and always use gloves when using it. Probably an overkill since I have been soldering since 90s.

Yeah washing your contaminated hands is good for you but but for the water that you washed with and went down the drain.

Hobby soldering is still putting lead into the environment, and not with any necessary justification. Lead-free solder works fine. Lead solder is a bit easier, but not enough to matter. I do know as a hobbyist myself who has lived through the transition and know all about both the old and new worlds.

The problem isn't vaporizing, or the first consumers direct exposure. The problem is taking a pound of lead and distrubuting it all over the environment in the form of spatter, shavings, assembled pcbs, connections, etc. Probably less than half of the solder winds up in a product or project, and that is just a short delay on it's trip to the envirnment when the project is discarded. 100% of it ends there, and not in a nice solid lump but practically aresolized.

It's the same as just taking that same pound of lead and directly grinding it into a fine powder and just sprinkling it everywhere, where it becomes part of the soil more or less and leeches into everything and can't be removed.

And 100,000 or a million or many millions of other people all doing the same thing, every day, for generations. Yess millions. There are 300million just in the US alone, and there are more than one person in every 300 that solders at least some times.

Lead-free solder works fine as long your soldering iron is decent. Even if the lead isn't vaporized, you'll be exposed by touch and splatter. When I learned to solder I learned on complete crap soldering irons that could barely work with leaded solder, and I developed a prejudice against lead-free. But lead-free solder has gotten better, and investing in a Weller or a Hakko will save the hobbyist so much time and frustration and ruined components that it's the way to go anyway.

If your iron can hold it's temperature worth a darn, the lead-free solder is fine. If it can't, you're going to struggle no matter what you use.

Damn right, there's absolutely no justifiable reason for using leaded solder for hobby projects today. Get a good iron, and a nice roll of SAC305 from a reputable vendor and you won't have any issues.

Working on vintage computers, it's unavoidable. Removing failed components like recapping usually involve desoldering machines which use heat and suction which creates spatter and waste inside of the machine and who knows maybe even toxicity that isn't part of normal soldering.

Does modern lead-free soldering still end up having tin whiskers? That was always the big downside as far as I was concerned. A quick internet search implies it's still a thing.

From what I understand SAC305 if not exposed to corrosive environments has a relatively low (but nonzero) risk of whisker formation. But in practice in a hobby environment it's not going to be a big issue.

Pure tin (or Sn99.3Cu0.7 alloy) is garbage, the silver helps a bunch.

For demanding applications there's apparently some even more performant alloys available today, eg. Innolot [1].

1. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/55827

Fishing tackle.

Why?

It's so dense.

TIL that this is still legal in some states. (I grew up in New Hampshire, which banned lead fishing weights decades ago, mostly to protect loons from eating them.)

a lot of people just didnt bother throwing them away out of the bottom of their tackle box

We need more government regulations and enforcement to solve this problem. There's no other solution in a capitalist environment

The US is probably going to put more lead into everything because RFK Jr believes it builds character or something.

His whole thing is about environmental toxins probably being the cause of most of our problems, so no that doesn't seem likely.

Has he specifically included lead in a list of "toxins"? If not, "toxins" is such a vague term that it can include or exclude just about anything.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2025/04/11/cdc-denies-mi...

Yeah, about that.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/milwaukee-schools-lead-poisonin...

This aged wildly poorly.

Better link? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-hhs-layoffs-cdc-lead-poi...

TL;DR: RFK has cut health programs including the division that deals with lead poisoning.

The first link is about that choice's fallout on school children exposed to lead.

Yay blanket federal cuts.

Can you imagine a world where two things could be true at the same time: RFK cares about environmental toxins, and RFK cut a department that was meant to deal with lead posioning?

I don't know if this was something he pushed for, but let's assume it was. Could there still be a reasonable cause to cut that department?

A lot of people assume if you oppose the Do Good Things act, that you must be a bad person. Was this department getting results? It was spending roughly 750k per full time employee per year (based on the 150M for 200 full timers from the article). Was it working? It could have been, it also could not have been.

Maybe this was an actually bad decision made by an actually bad man. But previous coverage of him has taught me to take anything reported about him with a very large grain of salt.

His whole thing is making money. Whatever grift it is he'll grab it, that is all it is with persona's that pretend science is fake.

Nuh-uh! That's not his whole thing. He's also into destroying the lives of his ex wives after commiting mass adultery and getting them to kill themselves.

Don't forget about lead in brass and free-machining steel. Got a normal metal? Now it has lead.

Many of those uses of lead don't end up in the environment. Lead is actually quite inert when in metal form - it develops an oxide/carbonate layer and there is little erosion. Metal in bullets is pretty inert and shooting ranges filter air before exhausting it (as dust is formed from impact).

As for lead in plastic manufacturing or dishware, that's mostly a matter of buying wisely. As it tends to be used in less developed markets.

> shooting ranges filter air before exhausting it (as dust is formed from impact).

Where do you live? I have never shot a gun indoors. Every range I have been to is open air. Multiple states, including California.

Around here the biggest issue is duck hunting, where the pellets almost certainly wind up directly in a wetland.

But lead pellets don’t leech lead?

All over. There are multiple indoor ranges in almost every state.

It’s hard to have an outdoor gun range in an urban environment!

I didn’t know about the flashing. Lots of people use rail barrels that fill from a downspout to water their gardens. I wonder what kind of lead exposure that could create.

I live with children in a very old house. I would love to be able to measure my children's lead exposure and check things like window paint or house dust for lead content to see how big a problem there is.

How do I do that?

I was working part time in copper fabrication and had some potential lead exposure

You can ask your doctor, it was just a blood test

It was free but I’m Australian

Came back zero

You can request blood lead labs done through your doctor. People who work in industry and competition shooters and such will get that done to track.

Competition shooters? They're not likely to touch lead, unless they fatally disobey shooting range safety rules.

Now the people manufacturing the bullets for those competition shooters... they need lead tests.

Doesn't some of the lead end up in the air?

It’s not obvious, but practice enough at indoor ranges or reload your own competition ammo long enough. I have heard firsthand accounts from shooters who at some point weren’t feeling well, got tested, and found out they needed to be a lot more careful with their lead exposure.

Interesting. I'm obviously not from a shooting culture :)

Don't be hard on yourself. None of us are born with this knowledge :-)

If you ever shoot, just remember it is a really good idea to wash your hands afterwards (using the dlead soap if possible). It is not a bad idea to have a change of clothes and to wash your clothes right away as well.

A small amount of lead makes its way out of the chamber in the form of dust and fumes after shooting. It’s quite easy to breath this in or get it on your hands and accidentally ingest it. Not enough to matter for someone who occasionally goes to the range, but significant for those shooting nearly daily, especially if shooting indoors.

the obvious solution is to switch to depleted uranium ammo

A lot of primers have lead, and the dust ends up in the air.

The primers in the ammunition contain a lead compound

I’ve more recently have gotten into competition shooting and it is definitely something to be aware of because it can easily slip into concerning exposure levels. A Reddit group I’m in just had a guy find out he was over exposed. Here’s the post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nass/comments/1jtrzm7/lead_levels/

Congratulations on getting into competition! I started competing and intentionally practicing to get better about 4 years ago after a long time of being a safe but casual shooter. In the last year I have won some major Glock-sponsored GSSF matches - 1st place Amateur out of 140 at their national championship Talladega, AL. One more win and they are going to bump me to master class. I do not reload my own ammo so I have less lead exposure there. I am very careful with my range routine though. I have dedicated cross trainer shoes as my range shoes that I put in a plastic bag in the trunk of the car on the way home. I wash my hands with the dlead soap right away (have wipes in my bag for outdoor use). Finally, I put my clothes directly in the wash when I get home to reduce tracking anything inside particularly since I have small children at home.

That's awesome and congrats on the success so far! Smart move on the lead precautions. I need to get some of the wipes for my bag!

There are test kits for at-home usecases like paint and stuff - I think they're pretty reliable. For exposure, you can get blood tests at your GP. They might be absurdly expensive if you're in America, but maybe next time you travel to Europe you can pay privately and get a better deal.

Some US states require lead screening (blood tests) for babies and toddlers. In that case they are covered by insurance. My son has been tested once so far.

I'm in Europe and I see no way to get such tests. Other than lying and saying that you are at risk of contamination ("My hobby was glassworking"), I never saw any kind of test that you could pay yourself. Everywhere the government says "100% reimbursed", but you cannot even order one by yourself unless you have a good reason.

So, I don't even know if it's expensive or not.

A friend got a routine physical and blood screening last week and to my surprise it included testing for lead acetate. I've never seen that before.

Oops! Just found out that a lead acetate level test is for particular proteins and is NOT used to detect blood lead levels:

https://microbenotes.com/lead-sulfide-test/#result-and-inter...

In the US, you can get a lead test directly through Quest Diagnostics, without going through your physician or insurance, if you are near a testing center. Probably costs less too.

You can buy a Lead Test Kit and check it yourself https://www.epa.gov/lead/lead-test-kits

For the house, hire a professional inspector who will use an x-ray fluoresence meter and dust test strips. You want a professional because they will be more thorough, and check things that you would not know to check.

To test your children's exposure, you can have their blood tested. They may very well be exposed from sources other than your house

As the other commenter mentioned, you can buy at-home testing kits. But what you really want is to hire a lead testing and remediation company. We also live in an old house and we spent a huge amount of time applying "lead block" paint and replacing older windows (disastrous for lead dust because of the friction) and some older pipes. You may also want to test your outdoor soil, because older houses near roads will accumulate lead paint in soil due to years of traffic fumes, plus lead dust from the exterior of the house. Kids will sometimes eat dirt, don't ask me how I know. (Also: regular blood lead tests for your young kids! If you live in an older city this will be standard.)

Also if you do any construction that disturbs old paint (demolition, window replacement) be careful to seal off the area using plastic, then clean it carefully with disposable wipes.

> You may also want to test your outdoor soil, because older houses near roads will accumulate lead paint in soil due to years of traffic fumes, plus lead dust from the exterior of the house.

You also want to do this if you're going to be growing anything edible in your front or back yard.

While that's great, the downside is that if you know there's lead in your house, you are obligated to clean it up, no matter the cost. That's why when old houses are sold or rented, they come with pamphlets warning of lead exposure, unless they are certified free of lead, but few want to pay for that.

If you wish to do some of your own tests, vs using a service, swab test kits have a reputation for being very poor quality and unreliable. This led this gal to start a kind of one-woman crusade on the topic:

https://tamararubin.com/2023/01/dont-panic-these-lead-test-k...

She recommends the american brand Scitus for swab test kits.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Look for a lead abatement company. The surface test kits only test the surface. A dedicated company should have a X-ray device that can determine if there is lead that has been painted over. Also get soil tests since houses with lead paint will have been scraped and that leads to lead going into the soil around the house.

> A dedicated company should have a X-ray device that can determine if there is lead that has been painted over.

Isn't the risk of lead paint only relevant if it's exposed? So you should test any visible layer and any layer that later becomes visible, but deeply nested layers don't matter so much.

Pottery stores usually have a "lead test" kit. Quite simple to use.

Interestingly, Lead is still used in fuel for small aircraft. It's called avgas 100LL (Low Lead). I do worry about the effects of the fuel, given lead's health effects at low exposure levels.

> “even if we were to completely stop mining for and using lead (which we aren’t, since the lead-acid battery market is projected to increase in the next years”

I’m surprised by this. Modern cars (EVs, at least) have started replacing their 12V lead batteries with Li-ion, which are more durable, store much more energy, and of course are less toxic.

But in any case, isn’t the one advantage of lead-acid batteries their recyclability? Don’t 99%+ of lead batteries get recycled into new lead batteries?

Surely there can’t be all that much new lead being mined for batteries?

Most EVs have a 12V lead acid battery for standby power and to buffer the 12V accessory system. The solenoids to the traction battery are open when parked and the 12V battery closes them when the car is started.

This does mean you might actually need a “jump start” for an EV if the 12V battery is drained, eg from leaving a light on or a fault in the 12V charging system.

Yes, EVs still have a 12V battery, but it’s not always lead acid. Tesla, for example, switched from lead acid to Li-ion 12V batteries in all their models several years ago. So have Porsche, even in combustion models I believe.

They are a lot more expensive though, at least aftermarket.

Yes but you have to replace them much less often. Kind of like LED vs incandescent light bulbs.

True - they're also lighter.

I assume that jump starting an EV takes a lot less current than jump starting an ICE due to no need to crank an engine. I'd guess it just needs enough to power the control electronics and close the solenoids to the traction battery?

That raises an interesting question: is the power requirement low enough that you could make a hand cranked EV jump starter?

You would be correct.

It needs enough to open the contactors which allows the high voltage battery to send power via the inverter to charge the 12V

My Lithium Ion jump pack is tiny, about the size of two iphones stacked on top of each other, and a single jump uses only a few %.

Back to crank starting a car? We have come full circle.

That's because everything in a car is standardized into 12V, but the EV engine run on some hundreds of Volts. It would be dangerous to feed energy from the engine's battery into the rest of the car.

As a sibling said, that doesn't require that you use a lead battery. The only requirement is that it's insulated from the main one.

The lead batteries have always be 90%+ recycled (well, at least since any time we should care about). So the amount of mining is still proportional to the amount of batteries running around.

Right. The recycling rate is around 99%, apparently. So the number of lead batteries running around only has to shrink by 1% per year before we don't need to mine any new lead for batteries. Something that seems likely to happen in the coming years as EVs become dominant and Li-ion gets cheaper.

86% of lead being mined is for batteries. I just replaced my UPS battery, and their shop was stacked high with UPS devices and battery packs and it was a real reminder to the massive amount of batteries out there.

So data centres and edge compute UPS devices. Something has to keep the lights on when the power goes out while the generator kicks in. While the lead is recyclable, the power demand keeps going up. So my guess is AI…

Radiation shielding. There's a lot of it in industry involving electron beam processing which produces x-rays. From printing machines using EB set ink, welding, melting, cross-linking, etc. A lot of those machines are lead shielded. Even at particle accelerator labs I've walked past stacks of lead bricks around beam lines (esp around the injector)

Sucks that there's so much use for something so dangerous. Amazing the perils we have both dug up and invented in the pursuit of progress which is ultimately just making money.

There's a "acceptable minimum level of lead" in most processed foods such as baby food.

This is because food cannot be heavily processed without some heavy metals leeching in, according to a food safety guy who is a long time friend.

It is completely mind boggling we let that happen.

What do you think the regulatory standard should be set to? It is currently set to 10 ppb (parts per billion).

Do you think it should be 0? 0.0000 ppb? No detectable lead whatsoever? What do you do if detection technology improves and the minimum detectable level decreases?

Even if you go live totally off the grid with your child and grow your own vegetables in your backyard with completely natural ingredients, you will still end up with some level of lead - which is a natural ingredient itself, after all.

At some point, you have to set a threshold and say that any lead below this level is not worth the cost of removing it or avoiding it. Would you pay 10x more for baby food at a 1 ppb level instead of 10 ppb? Do you think that would produce a net benefit for society?

Granite has lead at levels of 30,000ppb, fwiw. Lead is a naturally occurring mineral. the only way to fully eliminate lead would be to live in a fully synthetic environment, everything grown hydroponically, etc. https://www.science.smith.edu/~jbrady/petrology/igrocks-tool...

Not only that. Life accumulated those over the eons, as the rocks eroded, the useful metals got saved by life, and the rest was washed down. So the natural levels are way higher. Life is good at hoarding these "heavy metals".

People in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43631251 have been arguing that these people must have been some top class elite, and I totally get it. They are too good looking. But, that's how it was. The typical of the past would be above celebrity looks today. A lot of curent idols look stunted in comparison.

Another poster linked to this study that states [1]

    Existing rates of lead absorption are about 30 times higher than inferred natural rates

[1] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14334042/

That’s fully consistent with the idea that there has to be some threshold for lead in food because it’s literally naturally occurring in the soil.

In fact, to fully avoid lead, you’d basically have to carefully grow food hydroponically. Certified Organic mineral fertilizers like basalt rock dust (which provide calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, etc) would obviously not be okay if you wanted to eliminate all lead, as basalt contains 7.5ppm lead, comparable to the average in the Earth’s crust.

What method was used to infer the natural rates?

Most of the lead in baby food comes from the industrial processing. So if you grow your own apples and make your own apple sauce and don't put industrial processed spices in it it's likely not going to have any detectable lead in it.

The problem with our standards for baby food isn't necessarily that they are too high. The problem is that there is little enforcement. You have know way of knowing you will be getting 10ppb or be the unlucky one getting the large dosages that eventually got reported to the CDC. For much of the rest of the food supply the standards do allow for too much lead.

I would like it to be "equal or less than a standard reference food of similar ingredients" which would penalize adding lead or heavy metals via the processing itself instead of naturally occuring.

There’s also lead in any random patch of dirt or gravel because it occurs naturally in granite at about 30 parts per million (and usually less in other rock types). https://www.science.smith.edu/~jbrady/petrology/igrocks-tool...

The “action levels” of lead in food (fruits and vegetables, etc) are 10 parts per BILLION, and stuff less than that is considered acceptable, because otherwise freaking everything would test positive because food grows in dirt which contains minerals from rocks.

Lead has higher allowable levels in things like nuts, again because they are grown in the dirt and have a lot of minerals. I think peanuts and stuff have 100-900ppb lead. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12011-024-044...

Another poster linked to this study that states [1]

    Existing rates of lead absorption are about 30 times higher than inferred natural rates

It's not the case that all soil is contaminated with lead that then ends up in high levels in food. Top soil is composed mostly of decomposed plants. Plants only take up a small fraction of the lead in the soil. So the contamination of the top of the soil must reach some threshold. Due to leaded gasoline, there is widespread lead contamination in top soil, and I have read many parts of the world still use leaded gasoline in agriculture. Without human activity my understanding is that most soil samples would test very low or non detect and most food would as well. In some types of food (I know this is true of spices and to a lesser extent chocolate), much of the lead in food can come from processing phases after it is already harvested.

We certainly know it is the case that food produced by one producer varies dramatically in lead levels from another due to testing. Some of that may be attributed back to the soil, but it still goes to show that we could be testing soil levels and avoiding growing in lead contaminated soil.

Thank you for those links. For the nut study, they are studying finished products bought in the supermarket, so it is possible that some of the contamination may come from the processing (removing shells, etc) which is pointed out in the study itself.

[1] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14334042/

I wouldn’t call it contamination if it’s literally just from natural soil and minerals sourced from fairly typical rocks.

I wasn’t claiming heightened lead exposure is good, just responding to those who seem shocked that we tolerate some low level of lead in foods. Obviously leaded paint is dumb and we STILL, for some reason (well, I know the reason, but it’s not a good one imo), allow leaded aviation fuel. In fact, fully unleaded fuel was not allowed in a very large fraction of general aviation aircraft until recently because the FAA dragged their feet in approving lead free fuel mixtures for heritage general aviation aircraft (which is a large fraction of the general aviation fleet since lawsuits and the FAA have made newer aircraft just obscenely expensive), which is still very rare in small airports.

It is, ironically, the downstream effect of improper and over-regulation of general aviation.

It's not mine boggling at all.

Our ability to detect lead only gets better and better with new technologies. Whereas a few decades ago we could detect 1 part in 1 million (ppm) we can now routinely detect down to 1 part per 1 trillion (ppt), that's 1 million more sensitive analysis.

To give a sense that's a 1 microgram in 1,000 tons of material.

As a result, you can't set the level at "no lead" because that's an impossible level to achieve.

Right now the US sets it at 10 parts per billion. So in a normal jar of baby food - approximately 100 grams - that's less than 0.1 microgram of lead.

Lead naturally occurs in soil at levels 15-40 parts per million or 1,000 times higher. Growing your own veggies in soil untouched by man is going to risk higher levels than allowed in baby food.

> If you know there’s lead somewhere in your community, try to get involved and push for programs that limit its removal.

Programs that to have it removed? I think.

Also what would it be like to go through life knowing you had lead disrupting your brain.

>> Also what would it be like to go through life knowing you had lead disrupting your brain

That's pretty much anyone born before 1980 or so. We breathed it every day and it coated every outdoor surface in every city.

There are people who think it suddenly stopped being bad for your brain? They must be chewing on paint.

The article is more about the fact that the exposure risk hasn’t gone away after banning it in fuel and paint, and that it’s still everywhere and contaminated the soil.

What methodology is used for lead testing ? I eared about blood sampling but that quote from the article make me wonder the effectiveness:

> the half-life of lead in the blood (meaning the amount of time needed for the concentration to drop to half) is relatively short, at only 28 days, that’s not the same as the half-life in the body. Some of the lead in the blood will not be eliminated, but it will actually go into the soft tissue, i.e. kidneys, liver, brain, where the half-life is a few months, and more annoyingly, into the bones, where the half-life is between 10 to 30 years. What’s more, from here, lead can leach back into the bloodstream, from where it can once again get into the soft tissue and cause more damage

I've always wondered about whether I've been affected by this due to various known sources that I (mis)handled in times past.

Are there any pragmatic steps I can take to reduce/reverse any effect?

Someone said to look into cilantro... Hopefully grown without lead contamination... That's all I got.

"The answer is high-octane gasoline!"[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/yiJFVs1gZqo?t=845

What about lead tape for golf? My putter has a strip of it on the sole. I don’t lick it or anything but is it shedding contaminants constantly?

Yes, it's depositing some lead on surfaces it contacts, including likely the grass on the green. That said, if the tape isn't wearing away and requiring regular replacement, the amounts likely are trivial. A quick search suggests that lead-free alternatives such as Tungsten-based weight tape are becoming available.

>Now, acute effects of lead exposure are pretty clear. If someone were to chomp down on a piece of lead, it would result in seizures, coma, and possibly death.

Tell that to anglers. Chomping down on lead is how to put weights on the line.

I take about 20g daily of psyllium husk, i'm worried about lead. Any advice?

Check for reviews that test for lead levels and buy products with low lead. For example, ConsumerLab is one subscription website that does this testing, but there are many others.

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