Lead Limited Brain and Language Development in Neanderthals and Other Hominids?
today.ucsd.edu
today.ucsd.edu
And what did we learn from history? "The federal government banned the use of leaded pipe and solder in new plumbing systems in 1986, but many remaining pipe networks in older cities and homes predate the policy; the EPA estimates there are still 6 to 10 million lead service lines across the country." - https://greenyplace.com/when-did-they-stop-using-lead-pipes-...
Almost 2 million tons of garbage, among that 40k tons of toxic waste: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Deponie
1 million tons aluminum & other stuffs: https://www.fcp.at/de/projekte/details/sanierung-altlast-n6
One might imagine that diluting such water to reach "safe" levels is not as healthy as water that never saw a toxic waste dump.
It's also not the case that tap water is always safe, even if it's declared to be. During hot summers, there's very often bacterial contamination, requiring addition of chlorine or other antiseptics. But until that is caught, some days might go by.
The lead develops a layer that keeps it from dissolving into water (much like aluminum develops an oxide layer) and won't hurt anyone as long as the water source doesn't pull a Flint. This is true for pipes both in houses and city pipes upstream.
Is it more dangerous than not, yes. But it's not really an "active" problem.
Anecdotaly, a landlord tried to rent me an apartment with lead. After receiving the warning that complex was built before lead was banned for construction, I asked if they used lead pipes and was ghosted. When I tested the water and it came back positive with lead.
Sure, you could rip out all the old metal pipes and replace them with (say) PVC. Even handwaving the expense and issues of that - did you just replace "lead" with "microplastics"?
There is a concentration of it where it becomes harmful.
>dependent on things the landlord doesn't control
They have the ability to filter water.
Unfortunately, lead seems to follow a "anything above 0.000000000000% is harmful, though more is worse" rule.
> They have the ability to...
True, but there are a lot of filter-worthy things which can be found in drinking water -
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national...
- so how much filtering, for which contaminants, should they have to do? How often should they have to re-test the (probably municipal) water supply, to verify that their filtering is doing the job? And how much will they mark up the price of water for their tenants, to cover the expenses of all their extra filtering and testing?
The city I live in is replacing lead service lines across the entire city and offers low interest financing for homeowners.
Crucially, the water treatment chemistry needs to remain consistent. Changing the process is what caused the lead pipes in Flint to start leaching lead into the water. They changed water suppliers during a budgetary crisis.
From the Wikipedia article:
> In April 2014, during a financial crisis, state-appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley changed Flint's water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River) to the Flint River.[7] Residents complained about the taste, smell, and appearance of the water. Officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water, which resulted in lead from aging pipes leaching into the water supply, exposing around 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.[8] A pair of scientific studies confirmed that lead contamination was present in the water supply.[9][10] The city switched back to the Detroit water system on October 16, 2015.[11] It later signed a 30-year contract with the new Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) on November 22, 2017.[12]
The degree of water filtration often requires about having to learn about re-mineralizing.
You can drink distilled water all day every day, you get all the minerals you'd ever need from food. Remineralization post-filters are purely for better taste (subjective of course).
Drinking distilled water strips your body of things that naturally are in water, because no fresh water lake, river, etc is distilled water.
Another key part of distilled water is that it also has fewer electrolytes. Electrolytes to a good degree are our friend. If water already has a bit of magnesium in it, it's helpful, everyone just gets it.
I respect if it's working for you but I have met many folks who it didn't work for.
Remineralization felt like a pain, but like most things it doesn't hurt to try and collect your own experience rather than understand everything before beginning.
Since drinking water can be location based, some water may have more calcium naturally in it, or something else, etc.
Water filtration seems to exist plenty inside the US and outside too.
Hot water in a home usually sits in a metal tank that is full of scale/minerals. Once the sacrificial anode is used up (maybe 1% of people actually replace their anode when needed), the tank begins corroding.
Hot water is for washing things, cold water is for consumption.
I replaced my hot water heater and supply pipes myself, so it has no more lead than the cold. They're currently tearing up my street to replace the lead in supply lines, so... everything will hopefully improve here.
Also the hot water sits in a tank (in most homes) full of scale and may just taste worse.
We were also taught to run the cold tap until it got really cold (indicating that fresh water from the mains was coming out) before drinking from it.
Weirdly, I remember that we had our water pipes replaced with plastic and the heating system modernised when the house was renovated in the late 80s, but we still persisted with those habits afterwards...
Australian friends still get super upset with me for wasting so much water - they have water conservation drummed into them from an early age, so tend to see running the tap even for a second or two too long as being some sort of terrible sin.
I'm not buying this claim that all caves contain lead (throughout Europe, at least). Europe is not a wonderland for lead mining. Southern Missouri (USA) historically produced a significant amount of the world's lead supply, but no early hominids evolved there.
And I don't understand the figure early in the article. It seems to show that Homo sapiens evolved with quite a lot of lead exposure, while H. neanderthalis did not - so they didn't need our "immunity" to lead.
Finally,
> “If all humans have this newer mutation in all corners of the world, very strong genetic pressure must have selected for it in our species.”
Or, it was present in the bottleneck die-off of H. sapiens 800kya, and hasn't mutated since. The added complexity in organoids in the lab is interesting, but the mere presence of a single base pair in a gene doesn't guarantee that it is genetically important.
> “The FOXP2 gene is identical between us and the Neanderthals, but it's how the gene is regulated by NOVA1 that likely contributes to language differences.”
That at least does underline the importance of this genetic difference.
I'd say that's a "willfully optimistic" take. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#History
> In 1991, together with Claire Ernhart, Scarr was involved as an expert witness on behalf of the lead industry in the lawsuit United States v. Sharon Steel Corp., on the opposite side of Herbert Needleman who was testifying for the U.S. Justice Department owing to his research on the relationship between lead exposure and IQ.[0]
> When the trial was declared open to the public, Scarr initially refused to come and later when she was persuaded she constantly refused to answer questions. Scarr received money from the lead industry for consulting services which creates a conflict of interest.
> Scarr retired to Hawaii in 1997, where she learned scuba diving, even obtaining a rescue diver certification. She also traveled "a lot, especially on cruise ships"
Jesus Christ.
(No I don't mean lead poison them, I mine figure out what they are like without lead.)
Now, how can I get my family tested for lead exposure? I worry about the old silverware…
I use this form sometimes myself in a dialogue, as it fits that context. But as an isolated story title, I invariably end up reading the whole sentence several times, trying to parse it.
People lazily remove words until it fits instead of reworking the whole thing sometimes.
Fair warning HN also automatically replaces submitted links with canonical links despite most canoncial links pointing to the original domain for SEO purposes. There is no warning or feedback for any of this, you're just expected to notice and edit your post after the fact.
Did lead limit extinct hominid and Neanderthal brain development and language?It seems to be from lead naturally occurring in the soil where crops are grown. There is a similar problem with arsenic in rice.
More recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45582809