[HN Gopher] Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of ha... ___________________________________________________________________ Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study Author : gmays Score : 366 points Date : 2022-03-08 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (today.duke.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (today.duke.edu) | [deleted] | jaboutboul wrote: | Well, this explains a lot... | traveler01 wrote: | It explains a lot... | dqpb wrote: | Be careful buying kids toys from china. Many of them contain | lead. In fact, it's probably best to not buy anything from a | culture of people who hate you. | | Also, get a lead test for your child at every checkup, not just | the ones where they offer it to you. The finger prick doesn't | bother them nearly as much as the vaccinations do. | rootusrootus wrote: | > The finger prick doesn't bother them nearly as much as the | vaccinations do. | | On the contrary, my kids have definitely figured out the cold | hard truth. Finger pricks _suck_ much more than injections. | breakyerself wrote: | Black children had an adjusted 0.73 to 1.41 ug/dL more blood Pb | (p < 0.001 respectively) and a 1.8 to 5.6 times higher odds of | having an EBLL >=5 ug/dL (p <= 0.05 respectively) for every | selected risk factor that was tested. For Black children | nationwide, one in four residing in pre-1950 housing and one in | six living in poverty presented with an EBLL >=5 ug/dL. In | conclusion, significant nationwide racial disparity in blood Pb | outcomes persist for predominantly African-American Black | children even after correcting for risk factors and other | variables. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084658/ | tyjen wrote: | Learned about this phenomenon when considering buying a home | built prior to 1978. | | The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in | denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes | in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately | built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a | significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was | estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before | 1978. | | Despite Baltimore leading the charge to inform the public | concerning the risks of environmental exposure to lead by | banning lead-based paint (but not plumbing or other | construction products) in 1951 following a clinical study from | Johns Hopkins University, many Baltimoreans, primarily Black, | continue to face excessive exposure to lead. The US would not | follow Baltimore's example and ban lead-based paint until 1978, | because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts. | | Lead remediation is an expensive process and even with programs | that help or completely cover the costs, many people may not be | aware of the programs to take advantage of them. | | You can start to see why the problem disproportionately impacts | the Black population. | Ansil849 wrote: | > because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation | efforts. | | I have genuine, actual trouble maintaining faith in humanity | when I hear about people like this existing. It just makes me | incredibly depressed and bummed out about life. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The statement you're replying to is blurring the lines | between creative history and dishonesty. Lead wasn't big | business, well it was, but not like steel or oil. The fact | that we were able to get rid of leaded gas and leaded paint | in a 20yr span without destroying our economy tells you how | big it was. For every lead lobbyist saying don't do it | there was probably a zinc lobbyist asking them to do it. | The feds are perfectly happy screwing smaller industries | like that it gets them political brownie points. | | The reason lead persisted so long is because it was a key | component of paint that was both cheap and durable so | literally every industry that needed to use paint to | prevent stuff from succumbing to the elements had an | incentive for lead to stick around. | | I know it's fashionable to "not have faith in humanity" or | whatever but when you drill down into these sorts of issues | you tend to find that rarely is anybody being particularly | evil and pretty much everybody is just doing what's best | for them and the people they're tasked with caring about | within the constraints of the norms of their times. | Ancalagon wrote: | This and asbestos is why I will only ever buy homes | constructed after 1979. | breakyerself wrote: | Yes because the reason they they are prodominantly | represented in those neighborhoods just because they were | redlined there as a matter of public policy for decades | oh_sigh wrote: | I'm surprised they don't control for(or even mention!) fruit | juice consumption, which can end up bioaccumulating dangerous | amounts of lead and other heavy metals at a surprisingly low | daily intake ([0] ~4oz of juice per day). I also very rarely | see anyone talking about this source of lead intake - usually | it is focused on water pipes or paint chips. Do black children | drink more fruit juice than non-black children? If fruit juice | consumption is anything like soda consumption(which I suspect | it is, but have no proof), then the answer is yes[1]: | | > With whites as the reference group, the odds of consuming | soda was 3.1 times higher for U.S.-born blacks (95% CI | 2.6-3.7), 2.4 times higher for Puerto Ricans (95% CI 1.9-3.0), | and 2.9 times higher for Mexican/Mexican-Americans (95% CI | 2.0-4.1). Those living in households with income less than 200% | of the federal poverty level were more likely (odds ratio [OR] | = 1.7, 95% CI 1.4-2.1) to be frequent soda consumers than those | in households earning 600% or more of the poverty level. | | [0] https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and- | lead... | | [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329746 | wtinasky wrote: | golemiprague wrote: | hammock wrote: | From the study: | | >examined risk factors; survey years; binary gender; | bodyweight; low birthweight; anemia; health insurance coverage; | Medicaid/CHIP enrollment; federal Women, Infants, and Children | (WIC) supplemental food program enrollment; use of water | treatment devices; b age in months; c educational attainment | less than 9th grade education; d housing built before 1960 or | 1940; e number of cigarettes smoked inside the home per day (1 | to 40 or more); f poverty-to-income ratios | | I don't see traffic proximity aka urbanicity aka leaded | gasoline particulate pollution in there. | | Lead plumbing and lead paint are two factors. But there is lead | all through the soil and air as well. | fkfkno wrote: | This recent case seems to correlate closely with that research: | | https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-55330945 (Ella Adoo- | Kissi-Debrah: Air pollution a factor in girl's death, inquest | finds) | | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-de... | kukx wrote: | Is it certain that the Pb causes the lower IQ or maybe there is | some other factor and poorer people happen to have higher | concentration? | raegis wrote: | It one of the most impactful studies on how lead affects | intellectual development, the researcher (who is white) | restricted the study to white people only because he assumed | (correctly) his results would be ignored if he included | African Americans who are disproportionately affected by lead | poisoning. | trophycase wrote: | How can you assume correctly if you aren't even testing | that assumption? | treeman79 wrote: | It's politically toxic to try and commission a study on | the intelligence of one race/gender versus another. | LordDragonfang wrote: | It's been pretty well accepted for decades that this is the | case: | | >A highly significant association was found between lead | exposure and children's IQ (P < 0.001)... There was no | evidence that the effect was limited to disadvantaged | children and there was a suggestion of the opposite. | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8162884/ | | That's a 1994 meta-study that turned up in 30 seconds of | googling, and I'm sure more recent evidence also exists. | jhoechtl wrote: | I really doubt that. While I am aware of shrinking IQ, as far as | I know its a thing of the last 30 years, leaded gas in most | developed countries was already outlawed. | kikokikokiko wrote: | IQ reduction is totally expected from the moment contraceptive | methods became fully available. Common sense seems to be out of | fashion these days, but Idiocracy was spot on: the dumber you | are the more prone to "unexpected" pregnancies you'll be. The | future will not be Star Trek. | maerF0x0 wrote: | you never know. We might be able to hit a critical mass with | Authoritarian regimes regulating reproduction, and through | gene editing. | | Perhaps when we finally translate "unintelligent people" into | "vermin" we'll do what many previous iterations of society | have done... genocide. | | Part of this is literally possible. A big part of made stark | to point out that we should be careful in the way our | language dehumanizes people of below average intelligence. | They're still part of our species, and biological history. | 09bjb wrote: | Until we treat "unintelligent" people in our society with | compassion and respect I think "intelligent" is a misnomer | for the remaining demographic. | [deleted] | ivanech wrote: | The Lead Exposure Elimination Project | (https://leadelimination.org/) is an organization that's working | to solve this problem internationally. I've been giving money on | a monthly basis and have been blown away by their progress. | Krasnol wrote: | > Experts suggest that lead paint is now one of the most | important current and future sources of lead exposure, as well | as the most tractable source to address. | | https://leadelimination.org/factfile/ | | Why is it so popular in the US? Is it better? Cheaper? | | I'm quite shocked to see it's still happening. Lead in pain has | been forbidden for interiors in Germany since 1921 (exterior | since 1989)... | istjohn wrote: | It was banned in the US in 1978. | Krasnol wrote: | So this is all historical and not being removed because of | the cost? | aidenn0 wrote: | Correct. Though note also that lead paint was being | phased out already earlier than 1978, so single-family | homes built after 1960 or so are less likely to have | lead. That still leaves a lot of dwelling units, | particularly those that were not renovated recently (i.e. | cheaper places). | mkr-hn wrote: | I still remember the school shutting down the playground | to get rid of lead paint back in K-12. In the 1990s. | aidenn0 wrote: | Unless it was a 20 year old playground, the playground | was probably made in SE Asia. We got miniblinds around | 1990 that were manufactured in China, but sold in the US | that were recalled due to lead paint. | mkr-hn wrote: | The school was built in 1979. It was probably the | original playground. All chippy-paint metal aside from | the rubber swing seats. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Related: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29043518 | JohnWhigham wrote: | And plastics/PFAS/pththalates being everywhere has brought down | sperm counts as well. They all need to be outlawed. | softwarebeware wrote: | It makes me angry to think of how wreckless the generations | before millenials were. Lead's risks and damages were well-known | long before 1996. And they still didn't ban it until then. | sjg007 wrote: | Diesel is just as bad and I see plenty of millennials driving | diesel trucks around here. | miketery wrote: | Same goes for sugar. We know the dangers it poses, we are also | seeing how much it increases risk of death due to covid. | | I don't think we should be surpsied, as much as pushing to | regulate this garbage. | | As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in office | was about improvement children's health. Her focus was going to | be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter Coke and Pepsi | came in with "donations" and the whole thing became about | exercise, no focus on nutrition. | | There should be no surprise that capital takes precedent over | health in our current system / culture. | | Arguably, we should care more about sugar than we do about | covid. | loudtieblahblah wrote: | Same for industrial seed oils. We know it's dangerous. | | But monied interests and some vegetarians who think all | things that come from plants must be good for you, prevent | this from being shoved into near all packaged foods. | nostromo wrote: | You can't ban everything... | | Marijuanna and sugar and a million other potential vices like | alcohol and video games should be available. | | But we should teach kids discipline, critical thinking, and | impulse control - rather than playing whack-a-mole with every | vice that comes along. | x3iv130f wrote: | Instead of banning things we can stop subsidizing it or | just tax it. | | Sweeteners are heavily subsidized in the US which is why | they're in everything. | loudtieblahblah wrote: | as we're a society increasingly made up of single parents | with a poverty of energy and time. not to mention their own | education on these matters. | nostromo wrote: | Perhaps we should solve that problem then. | miketery wrote: | Process is much easier to change then changing people. Its | why the government deducts taxes from you, instead of you | paying at the end of the year (both because you'd spend it | all, and you'd be pissed doing a bulk sum payment). | | Likewise we have levers, should we be selling soda / pop | with outrageous amounts of sugar in them without some sort | of healthcare tax? I don't mind sugar being available, but | right now its subsidized by our health care fees. My | insurance is more expensive because of diabetes, heart | disease, etc. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | >As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in | office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was | going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter | Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing | became about exercise, no focus on nutrition. | | Well also, the right-wing culture war machine decided | Michelle Obama was taking everyone's children's freedoms | away. | londons_explore wrote: | > Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing | became about exercise | | You know, I wouldn't mind this as long as the scale of the | donation was big enough. If they donated $1000 per american | to the US government, who could use it to reduce taxes or | improve life for americans more than the sugar decreases | quality of life through illness and poor health, that would | be great. | | But they didn't. I bet their donation was $100k or so, or | less than 1 cent per american. | rootusrootus wrote: | > Same goes for sugar. | | Except that presumably includes the current generation, | instead of everyone pre-millenial. There is certainly not any | real consensus or meaningful action being taken in regards to | sugar. It is as prevalent now as it ever was. | chucksta wrote: | Its not nothing, but it's close; | | https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center- | initiative... | nynx wrote: | Sugar is at least a substance that one can choose not to eat. | Lead poisoning and pollution aren't choices. | pathartl wrote: | Sugar isn't really optional these days. It's snuck into so | much of our processed food it's sickening. | alyandon wrote: | Indeed. Added sugar and high fructose corn syrup is in | everything. I have to go out of my way to find a brand of | bread that doesn't have added high fructose corn syrup. | It's ridiculous. | lhoff wrote: | I havent bought bread in probably 4 Years now. Investing | half an hour of work (distributed over the day) every | other week for a 2kg Bread. Half of it goes in the | freezer. | | Also buying fresh vegtables and cooking instead of buying | ready made dishes helps. | tomxor wrote: | Yup, this is basically the only realistic way to avoid | it, switch to types of food that cannot by their very | nature have sugar added. | cma wrote: | I would imagine most of those fresh vegetables have been | domesticated/bred to increase sugars. | mixedCase wrote: | It is optional to eat those foods for the vast majority | of people, but it isn't as convenient. | pathartl wrote: | Not just inconvenient, but expensive and out of reach. | mixedCase wrote: | Not really. That's exactly when I had in mind when I said | "vast majority of people". The biggest problem is access | to a cooking fire and some sort of refrigeration you can | rely on for most of the year. | | It does require spending a little time cooking and | probably to shop around rather than getting everything | from a (possibly overpriced) supermarket depending on how | much you can spend. So it's strictly an inconvenience, it | requires stretching the argument really thin to view it | otherwise. | RobertRoberts wrote: | I have a simple rule: If it has processed sugar in the | ingredient list _anywhere_ I don't buy it. | | If everyone did this, less processed sugar would be in | our food supply. (corn syrups especially but also weird | stuff like stevia, sneaky stuff like maltodextrin, etc..) | pathartl wrote: | Unfortunately that runs into the issue of education, | expense, and general preference. We're never going to | remove it by relying on consumer choice. | londons_explore wrote: | Everything is a choice to some extent. You could have gone | and lived in the middle of a forest to avoid the lead | poisoning. | | The problem is there are far too many pollutants for | everyone to be able to educate themselves about every one, | and take steps to avoid them. Instead, it's the role of | government to decide in each case whether to allow, ban, | tax, inform or restrict each type of pollutant. | bdamm wrote: | Between the marketing for children, the many "sugar | holidays" (Valentines, Easter, Christmas, Halloween, etc), | the widespread use of processed foods in children's diets, | the fact that every single grocery store in America puts | sugar products on loud display, and that some restaurants | _only_ serve sugar based drinks, I would argue that it is | not possible for American children to avoid sugar. | JPKab wrote: | An adult can choose to eat it or not (I'm ignoring the | addictive nature of concentrated sugar), but our public | health establishment has been foolishly stupid (combined | with industry marketing) at making people think that fruit | juice is natural or healthy. It's about as natural as | cocaine is. Sure, it comes from a plant, but it gets | refined and concentrated into levels that are unheard of in | nature and toxic to the body. | | Virtually my entire extended family are working class | people, and they all were feeding their kids apple/orange | juice on a regular basis without diluting it. When I showed | my sister that she could literally do a 5% solution of | apple juice in water, and it still tasted sweet, she was | blown away. I'm pretty sure most members of the laptop | class know that juice is bad for kids (gatorade too), but | that message hasn't filtered to most of the population. And | these kids are too young to know how toxic it is for them. | tw3464575686 wrote: | Gatorade ? Gatorade can't be bad. It has electrolytes! | temp0826 wrote: | _Plants crave it!_ | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | > public health establishment has been foolishly stupid | (combined with industry marketing) at making people think | that fruit juice is natural or healthy. | | Can you cite specific examples of the public health | establishment pushing juice as healthy? I got a minor in | nutrition over a decade ago and back then, public health | officials were very quick to call out the juice industry | for its predatory tactics on kids and false | equivalencies. This doesn't match my experience in | university at all. | JPKab wrote: | You're exactly right. Public health in general has not | pushed juice, but what I should have stated is they have | been complicit in not condemning it and pushing for | prominent labeling on juice. They've sat back and allowed | it to be marketed aggressively, to a point where the | mayor of NYC exempted fruit juices from the proposal for | a sugar tax. The general public thinks juice is healthy. | That's easily remedied with public health messaging, but | we all know why it hasn't: farmers/USDA/lobbyists. | mf_tomb wrote: | Sugar is bad, but it's only one part of the picture: | | "Evidence-informed dietary priorities include increased | fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable | oils, yogurt, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer | red meats, processed (e.g., sodium-preserved) meats, and | foods rich in refined grains, starch, added sugars, salt, and | trans fat." | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814348/ | legitster wrote: | > As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in | office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was | going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter | Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing | became about exercise, no focus on nutrition. | | This isn't accurate. There _were_ changes to the school lunch | program, and by most accounts they were pretty effective: | https://sph.washington.edu/news-events/news/obama-era- | school... | | The main takeaway is that the changes were fairly expensive, | so lots of schools didn't participate. | Spooky23 wrote: | The rollback they did in 2020 is ridiculous. | | My kids school lunch now is all packaged sugary crap. | Corndogs, cinnamon buns for breakfast, Trix yogurt, etc. | Even the milk is gross - lowest bidder swill that tastes | like wax. | | The hot food items are all oven-baked, in plastic wrappers. | It's essentially the same crap that you would see in a | university vending machine. | jozvolskyef wrote: | One major aspect that makes sugar a category of its own is | that there is a safe dose, and the safe dose isn't small. | It's very easy to count how much you consume and not all | cultures suffer from overconsumption. | api wrote: | It's absolutely amazing how much we shovel sugar into our | kids even at school, then wonder why they can't pay | attention. | | Sugar is our generation's tobacco for sure. | tomxor wrote: | > Sugar is our generation's tobacco for sure. | | This might seem far fetched, but I think it's pretty | accurate. | | When tobacco was at it's height most people didn't really | think it was bad for you - which gradually turned into a | denialistic "yeah but it's not that bad" - it took a long | time for society to come to terms with just how harmful it | is. | | The quantity of sugar in every day food has increased | dramatically over time, and our attitude to it has been | similar to the denialistic phase for tobbaco - "yeah it | might hurt my waistline a little bit but it tastes too | good" - Making people think if they aren't fat then it's | ok, when really the consequences are far worse, sugar is | pretty much poison for our bodies, it's bad for every | single part of it (melts teeth, causes gum disease which | poisons your bloodstream, ages skin, causes inflammation, | causes heart disease, causes diabetes, affects the immune | system, messes with cognition, makes you more hungry by | sharply switching off ketosis, and finally displaces | nutritional food making your body even more susceptible to | aforementioned ailments). | | I wish I understood this better when I was growing up. | Thankfully I had a parent who never encouraged sugary food, | and put in the effort to cook good meals... but many people | don't and are at the mercy of what super markets sell, | which is increasingly extremely sugary food. | | If there is a single leading harmful substance that is as | prevalent as leaded petrol was - i think it's probably | sugar (in the west at least). | ArnoVW wrote: | This is what my grandchildren will say about us, and our | ambivilant attitude to our use of CO2 and disposables. | rootusrootus wrote: | I don't think it helps to make this a generational warfare | issue. Especially since it's not like every person in a | particular generation had a say in these decisions. | | It's also too easy to cast judgement backwards in time, given | the lack of context and the benefit of hindsight. Better to | look forward. | dylan604 wrote: | Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it. | | We saw it with tobacco/lead/etc, so it's only natural/right | to apply that experience to other things. Theorizing that | sugar/THC could also fall into the same model is not wasting | of anyone's time. If evidence is found that it is bad, then | good can come from that knowledge. If evidence is found that | it is not bad, then party on Wayne. But the studies should be | conducted. Let's look forward to having actual knowledge | rather than just blindly carrying on in the dark with no | flashlight to guide. | Jach wrote: | As true in 1888 as now, Froude: "Each age would do better if | it studied its own faults and endeavoured to mend them, | instead of comparing itself with others to its own | advantage." | phphphphp wrote: | We are just as dumb. Processed meat causes cancer, micro | plastics are doing all sorts to us: arguably, we are dumber, | because we know all about the harm that lead and cigarettes | cause and yet... we haven't applied that lesson. Do you eat | meat? | loeg wrote: | We smoke less than earlier generations, actually. | alexfromapex wrote: | Playing devil's advocate, previous generations didn't have | access to the vast, coordinated information on the scale that | Millennials do. | jeremyjh wrote: | There are a lot of things wrong with this take that others have | pointed out, but for some reason no one noted that as the | article points out, the people most impacted by this were born | in the late 60s and 70s, and those people are Gen X. We didn't | choose this, we just suffered for it. Someone born in 1976 | didn't vote until 1994. | modzu wrote: | similarly, the second leading cause of death is cancer, and yet | we willingly bask in cancer-causing substances all the time. | future generations will probably look back and think, wtf? | jollybean wrote: | People didn't wear seatbelts in the 1950's. Infant mortality | was 10% before the age of 1 in 1910. At the same time, homeless | children would roam the streets of cities and orphanages were | common. The #1 form of surgery back then was amputation. | | To make such a statement implies how little perspective one | might have for how hard life was, the risk and tradeoffs being | made, especially when there were unknown - and especially for | 'how good we have it now'. | | I'm not even that old, but I have the lived experience from my | grandparents who were born on farms without electricity and I | believe without a doubt that we have crossed the line into | 'civilizational wealth'. We are really rich for the first time | in history. Unequal, yes, but even lower-middle class people | have access to vast material bounty: actions, travel, | decorative clothing, choices, opportunity, education, amazing | produce throughout the year, entertainment, technology, | delivery, amazing health care innovations. Heck .... people are | even less afraid of getting _shot_ these days because we know | how to stabilise and save people. Getting 'shot' used to mean | 'pretty much going go die'. Even 'heart surgery' is now done on | an outpatient basis these days like getting an oil change. | | 'Millenials' have already let loose Facebook and other | completely destructive technologies, and are taking absolutist | views on necessarily complicated things like gender identity | (and more) and I'm 100% certain that history will come back | like a wrecking ball on at least those things, of course it's | already happening with Social Media. | | The issue with lead is hard to fathom, it's still a bit grey, | I'm wondering what the effect of some other things are going to | be i.e. micro plastics, and the steroids they use on livestock | etc.. | | I'm not 'organic' by ideology but I'm wary that there's a lot | of risk in those kinds of things. | | And it goes further: lighting in the cities all night, and | noise pollution in the city and with our gadgets. It should be | mostly dark and quiet at night. | scottLobster wrote: | Speaking as a millennial, don't praise us too soon. We haven't | really gotten the reins of power yet, so it's easy to claim | that we'd do it better. In reality I imagine we'll still | succumb to various corrupting forces just like every other | generation. | | Granted I still think we have a more enlightened perspective on | some issues as a generation just due to better education | overall, but at best we might manage a marginal increase in | overall quality of life for people. | | Plus the basket of crises we've faced starting with the Great | Financial Crisis has allowed many to blame external factors for | their situation and not take personal responsibility, even when | they clearly should. I've met plenty of unwise/stupid | millennials who could do more to better their situation, but | are happy to just sit still and bitch about everything but | their self-destructive habits. | | It's like how the Boomers got associated with Woodstock/the | hippies/counter-culture, but in reality most Boomers didn't | rebel all that much. Boomers elected Reagan, and he ran in part | as an anti-counter-culture figure. | nus07 wrote: | Fantastic answer. In 30 years time we have no idea how the | youth then will view our race for urban living, yoga, tech | hustles and high inequality, juice and vegan diets, electric | cars, open concept houses, social media, tech surveillance | and screen addiction and various other things which are less | cutesy and more sinister. | | One thing that already gets me thinking of future generations | looking down on us will be this quest for travel and high | living especially for social media glamor and the new keeping | up with Jones'. This increases more flights, polluting | untouched places and how bad it is for the climate. | sidewndr46 wrote: | Lead still isn't banned in the US. You can go buy 100LL and | burn it in your plane all day long showering it over the land | below. Completely legal. | Cerium wrote: | We should definitely move away from leaded gasoline and | housing should not be allowed to develop near airports. | Phrasing the conversation around "showering it over the land | below" is to the point of fearmongering. The airplanes | burning 100LL today consume gasoline at the same rate as an | old pickup truck - they go about 12 miles per gallon. Lead | pollution today due to aviation is a fraction of what it was | in the past and is unlikely to even be the largest | environmental exposure for most children. | weaksauce wrote: | yeah i live under the flightpath of a lot of flight school | traffic and this weighs a bit on my mind. pretty busy flight | area too. Who knows the damage really? are there tests you | can take? | sidewndr46 wrote: | If it is larger jet planes, you're mostly safe. Those burn | lots of fuel, but it is "jet fuel" which is more like | kerosene or diesel. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Yes, you can get a blood test done that measures lead | level. I asked my doctor for the test and got it done. | Covered by insurance. | [deleted] | conradev wrote: | Yep https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded- | gas-wa... | xeromal wrote: | It's easy to point the finger at boomers, but where they maybe | killed us with lead, we're killing the next generation with | plastics. Sure, plastics were started in earlier generations | but we're showing no signs of slowing down in usage. | jmugan wrote: | That comment seems to blame a large group of people for | something a small group did. The problem with lead is the same | problem it always was and still is, a small group of people | benefit and are able to make everyone else suffer. We clearly | need to fix that, probably with specific measures to limit | undue influence in congress. We should focus on those specific | measures instead of divisive generalizations. | JPKab wrote: | It's pretty insane. I was born in 1981, and near as I can tell, | I'm likely a bit luckier than most other Americans my age | because I grew up in such a sparsely populated, rural area. | Still, there's no question that even people living in areas | like me were impacted since most of the population drove old | trucks, including my family. | | It's crazy to think about having a lower IQ than I was capable | of having for something that could have been solved a few | decades previously. | tlss wrote: | Recreational marijuana and JUUL is very much a millenial/gen Z | hobby, and it is being pushed with a fervor that glosses over | serious studies any potential health risks. | | IMO weed will be in 50 years where "big tobacco" is right now. | mountainriver wrote: | Not a chance, maybe smoking marijuana, but not edibles. I | know plenty of people that have done them their entire lives | and are in great shape | ifyoubuildit wrote: | That sounds a lot like "my grandmother smoked 2 packs a day | and lived til she was 99." | | I think the whole point is that it hasn't been studied yet, | so we can't say definitively if its safe or not. | yojo wrote: | It didn't even stop then. My own city (Portland) has been | regularly exceeding EPA lead action levels since 1998[1]. | | All they need to do is treat the water to raise ph like every | other city with a large lead solder install base, but they've | been dragging their feet for literally decades while the people | they serve get lead exposure. | | 1: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/11/30/lead-portland- | oregon-... | selimthegrim wrote: | You mean the anti-fluoridation fanatics didn't know when to | get off the train? (channeling Richard Pryor here) | nintendo1889 wrote: | What is provable is that the type of fluoride that they are | using is NOT the supposedly 'healthy' type that is good for | teeth. | User23 wrote: | So is fluoride's neurotoxicity[1], especially for developing | brains, and we still insist on using it, to just give one | example. We're no less reckless than prior generations and our | children will be just as baffled looking back at us as we are | now. | | Yes I'm aware that idiots are also fixated on fluoridation. | That doesn't make the science wrong though. | | [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/ | Neurotoxicity appeared to be dose-dependent , and tentative | benchmark dose calculations suggest that safe exposures are | likely to be below currently accepted or recommended fluoride | concentrations in drinking water. | | That the authors felt the need to pack four weasel words into | the sentence saying maybe it's ok doesn't indicate that they | believe it's safe. | selimthegrim wrote: | Do you have other citations? How is this different from | fluoridated toothpaste or topical application at the dentist? | trockbort wrote: | The fortification properties afforded by fluoride are | entirely topical, meaning that fluoride-containing | toothpaste can be considered beneficial. You use it and | then spit it out. Drinking fluoridated water can hardly be | considered helpful. Most of the fluoride content of water | goes directly into the stomach where its effects are | strictly not studied, and if you know anything about the | fluoride ion, the effects are most likely detrimental, and | possibly horrendous. | trockbort wrote: | Fun fact: America fluoridates its water supply because | notorious propagandist Edward Bernays convinced them to, for | money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaign | s_of_... . | tombert wrote: | I hate that everything has to devolve into some kind of "this | generation sucks" debate. Whether or not we can blame boomers | _does not matter_ , at least not until we have a time machine | to go remedy stuff. The fact is that the decisions have been | made, the damage is done, and we need to figure out what to do | _now_ , regardless of whose fault it is. | | It seems like so many of these conversations end at the "who is | responsible" part, without the understanding that we really | shouldn't care. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | I wouldn't complain if they were already unable to do | anything, but many of them are actively _preventing_ further | improvements. Often due to it coming at a cost for them. | Their unwillingness trickles down to other generations both | in teachings and in pressuring the next generation what can | and can 't be done, and how to respond. Most of late gen X | has also thrown in the towel, leaving the future generations | to solve it themselves. | | This despite the fact leaders are overwhelmingly at/past | middle age, as is wealth required to make moves as an | individual. | tombert wrote: | Sure, but I think that it's needlessly divisive to pin it | on a generation, particularly when I can find | counterexamples for each. | | I have no issue whatsoever with complaining about | _individuals_ who are destroying the world _right now_ [3], | I 'm certainly not going to sit here and defend basically | any fossil fuel executive, but I think saying it's a | generational thing is needlessly reductive and doesn't buy | us anything. I don't think Noam Chomsky [1] or Bernie | Sanders are destroying the world [2], and I don't think | millennial/gen-z bozos like Charlie Kirk are helping it. | | [1] I realize he's older than a boomer, but I think my | point still fits. [2] At least not advocating for stuff | that's destroying the planet. I am not trying to take a | directly political stand. | | [3] clarification edit. | SimplyUnknown wrote: | I agree that people have been reckless with population safety | in past, but your comment seems to imply that the Millenial | generation are somehow flawless with regards with this subject. | While safety is now more stringent than in the past, I very | much doubt that this is the case. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Physical safety is more stringent. You can't swing a dead cat | without a horde of people with safety vests and clipboards | writing you up for it. | | However, the planet is arguably the most ideologically | polluted it's ever been. First world cultures have developed | an aversion to individual and organization/group | responsibility. Democracy is not doing great. Many | institutions are bankrupt. Hardship is looming. We're in for | a wild ride. | andrewzah wrote: | As of 2021, out of 432 members in the house of congress, a | scant 31 are millenials. In the senate, just 1. | | Millenials are -not- the ones responsible for disastrous | policies (yet). They haven't been around long enough yet. | It's mainly boomers, some gen x, and a few silents. | | https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/12/boomers- | sil... | | edit: Added "(yet)" because it's not obvious, I suppose. My | point here is that the actual policymakers in congress, right | now, are majority "not-millenials". So stop blaming | millenials and/or gen-z when they're not the ones currently | writing legislature... | rootusrootus wrote: | Who is the largest single voting bloc? | | Edit: That struck a chord with millenials, ha! Tell your | friends that bitching does not help, voting does. Boomers | seem to understand this and so they have a disproportionate | amount of influence. You want it to stop? VOTE. | dragonwriter wrote: | Generations don't vote as blocks, but of the named | generations the largest number of _actual voters_ are | Boomers, still. | | 2018 was the first election where Gen X and younger | together outvoted Boomers and older. | blaser-waffle wrote: | > Edit: That struck a chord with millenials, ha! Tell | your friends that bitching does not help, voting does. | Boomers seem to understand this and so they have a | disproportionate amount of influence. You want it to | stop? VOTE. | | There is, still, a statistical bump in the boomers, hence | the baby boom. | | There is just more of them, and they vote. They've only | just started dying in big numbers. | | Plus the older voters get the more they tend to vote, for | various reasons. | andrewzah wrote: | It's my understanding that millenials and gen-z make up | 31% [0], as of -2020-. Boomers and older still make up | 44%. So sure, go ahead and blame millenials and gen-z for | policies made in 2020 and onward. | | 0: https://catalist.us/wh-national/ | vlunkr wrote: | So what you're saying is, millenials aren't responsible for | disastrous policies yet. They'll get their turn. | andrewzah wrote: | Correct. I've no doubt that the new generation will also | make some terrible calls thanks to lobbying being legal. | I believe the environment will be much more prioritized, | but we'll have to see. | | However, I'm tired of silents/boomers/gen-xers making | comments about and blaming millenials as if it's somehow | our fault the boomers and silents in congress are out of | touch. A quick look at voting demographics and the | demographics of congress dispels that notion (for now, as | of 2022). | ncr100 wrote: | Good, be tired of it. | | The blame game is unhelpful unless a holistic explanation | of Why Did You Do That is also given. | ncr100 wrote: | Absolutely. | | It's difficult to be omniscient about the impact of | everything to everything else for all future outcomes. | | Smacks of Ageism, to my mind. | ajuc wrote: | Compared to ignoring global warming - ignoring lead exposure | is a minor negligence. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Both are a product of the same process of privileging of | commodity production for profit over overall collective | well-being. | | And yes, I'm aware that said commodity production produces | wealth which also improves well-being. But there's a | contradiction there in our economic model that is not | serving us well. | | EDIT: I should add to my point above that what's common | with both these is one overarching world altering product | that has completely transformed the world: the automobile. | | Ribbons of tarmac lace the earth (it wouldn't surprise me | if this is a long term environmental problem, too), even in | some of the most remote sections of the planet. | | Cities are built around them, privileging automobile use | above a bunch of other aspects of quality of life. | | Road transport is 75ish% of global CO2 emissions. | | And, yeah, leaded fuel poisoned our bodies, minds, and the | environment for decades. | lern_too_spel wrote: | Economics has a term for this: negative externalities. A | buys a snowblower from B, gaining 4 health for not | shoveling and reducing everybody's health by 3 from | pollution. B buys a leaf blower from C, gaining 4 health | from not raking and reducing everybody's health by 3 from | pollution. C buys a lawnmower from A, gaining 4 health | from not scything and reducing everybody's health by 3. | Each seller gets 4 health from the money. Every trade is | beneficial to both parties by 1 health unit, but now, | everybody is worse off by 1 health unit than they would | be had the trades not happened. In practice, we're | usually D-Z, who participated in no trades and get a net | reduction in health of 9. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | That is an incredibly naive way of looking at it. | | The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the | village that shares the watershed with the mine" | | On anything but the shortest timeline things like like | wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the | societal level. | | If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't | smaller than the benefits of the progress then the | progress wouldn't happen because more people would be | worse off and things would grind to a halt because the | gains would be more than offset. | lern_too_spel wrote: | Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios | woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of | modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC | regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative | externalities and other market failures don't exist, that | the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples | abound for those who do not follow a religion that | forbids them from noticing. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios | woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of | modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC | regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative | externalities and other market failures don't exist, that | the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples | abound for those who do not follow a religion that | forbids them from noticing. | | It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the | "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank | check to peddle your preferred ideology (government | intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other | team. | | Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple | dozen poisoned watersheds. | | With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries | and fewer poisoned watersheds. | | Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about | regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful | to pretend that the economic activity in both of those | situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't | work this way progress would grind to a halt because the | increased material wealth of having the batteries would | be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned | watersheds create, to run with the existing example. | lern_too_spel wrote: | Examples where most people are worse off are easy to | think of. I gave an example where _everybody_ is worse | off because it is an interesting scenario. I made _no | claim_ about how often that situation occurs. There is no | reason for overall progress to grind to a halt -- the | Nash equilibria for a game can be arbitrarily bad. There | is only the obvious conclusion that governments should | get involved to fix these problems _when they occur_ , | including regulating lead use, given that we see plenty | of governments that have not and have suffered the | consequences. | catchclose8919 wrote: | ...are you sure about that? | qorrect wrote: | Yeah if anything millennial's were _taught_ to be less | reckless. They didn't just come out of the womb that way :/. | ncr100 wrote: | > wreckless the generations before millenials were | | Premise is off... | | This assuming millenials are not reckless. We're humans and our | behavior is not defined by our generation. | [deleted] | oversocialized wrote: | loudtieblahblah wrote: | were no better these days with pfas, bpa, bps, badge, | phthalates, etc. | | And we still have supplements and pots and pans that have lead | in them, along with other heavy metals. | MrYellowP wrote: | I guess that explains a lot, but let's not ignore the horrendous | education system. | Borrible wrote: | Who would have thought. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Needleman | | 'The Removal of Lead from Gasoline: Historical and Personal | Reflections' | | https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54... | | 'Lead, IQ and Social Class' | | https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-abstract/18/1/180/61682... | webkike wrote: | IQ doesn't measure intelligence so for all we know this just | shows that IQ tests measure how little lead you've been exposed | to | gordian-mind wrote: | Adding this to the list of things IQ tests accurately predict: | | 1) school performance | | 2) job performance | | 3) income | | 4) crime rate | | 5) health and mortality | | 6) quantity of lead exposed to | | 7) NOT intelligence | throwaway-m3232 wrote: | >3) income | | Hm, I know some obvious contradictions. Just saying.. not | interested in discussing this. | gordian-mind wrote: | Individual cases do not invalidate statistical trends... | imoverclocked wrote: | every rule has its exception(s) | throwyawayyyy wrote: | Seems a reasonable assumption that lowering IQ is a decent | proxy for other damage lead does to the brain, right? It would | be weird if it just damaged the bits associated with doing well | on IQ tests, and left the rest alone. | | E.g. it happens that IQ is something we measure, and EQ much | less so. That lead leads to measurable reductions in IQ is | strong evidence that it damages EQ too. (As its association | with crime would suggest.) | catchclose8919 wrote: | That's one hard to parse sentence there... or maybe I've been | exposed to too much lead as a child :) | | In all seriousness, IQ is an important component of | intelligence, mainly "fluid intelligence" that correlates well | to _learning speed_ in science and technology field, so for | anyone that needs to do lots of learning /unlearning and | career/domain hopping like we're all going to do more and more | in the future _it matters a hell of a lot!_ | | I a world where someone could pick a job/domain and stick to it | for life, IQ would matter but less... but it's not the world | we're living in, everything is accelerating and our kids are | likely to go through quite a few career changes / professional | re-conversions etc. | ascii_pasta wrote: | Genuinely curious, Where are you learning this from? | hash03x wrote: | jcranberry wrote: | How did they calculate IQ loss due to lead exposure specifically? | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2118631119 | | I don't have access and the abstract isn't very informative in | terms of sample size control group etc. | jeremyjh wrote: | It reads like they made some assumptions based on earlier | research and did some math. | Workaccount2 wrote: | Wait until everyone finds out about what COVID is going to do... | munk-a wrote: | Aye, in twenty years when we fully understand long covid a lot | of people are going to regret not putting in the blood sweet | and tears to convince ignorant family members that the vaccine | is actually a good thing. We're also going to probably look | back on the lack of continued remote learning as a dire | mistake. | amelius wrote: | And what about crime rates? | micromacrofoot wrote: | From what I've read the removal of lead from gasoline is | partially a factor in the sudden reduction of crime during the | latter half of the 20th century, but it's not enough to explain | the entire trend... which seems to be a preponderance of | factors. | jhoechtl wrote: | The remainder can be explained by bread and games = cheap | food and game consoles which kept the kids playing in the | house instead of being part of a gang. | gordian-mind wrote: | Maybe it was rather the removal of "lead victims" that led to | the sudden reduction of crime. | bpodgursky wrote: | People say this about lead, people say this about abortion, | people say this about building more prisons and 3-strike | laws. | | Nothing is monocausal, don't trust anyone who makes such a | claim unless they provide extraordinary evidence. | ch4s3 wrote: | Obviously nothing is monocausal, but it seems like the link | with lead here is best supported by evidence among the | things you've listed. It holds constant across several | countries and cultures where those other factors are quite | different. Western Europe wasn't throwing up prisons and | enacting 3-strike laws, but saw similar declines in crime. | You can find similar counter examples around abortion | access as well. Those thing probably contribute, but the | effect size of removing lead from the environments seem | really large! | jeffbee wrote: | The lead hypothesis is supported by particularly strong | evidence: there is a natural threshold experiment where | school children with blood lead levels over a certain | amount are treated to remove lead from their home | environment (and their bodies) while other children just | below the same lead level were not treated. The | difference in later life outcomes are stark. | | There is no such natural experiment for abortion. It's | just an idea. | | https://ftp.iza.org/dp10872.pdf | bpodgursky wrote: | I'm not in the slightest challenging that lead is | terrible for IQ; it's the link to national crime stats | that I think is more tenuous. | pessimizer wrote: | https://jabberwocking.com/has-the-lead-crime-hypothesis- | been... | [deleted] | xhkkffbf wrote: | But then there's been a huge rise in crime. The murder rate | in some cities is dramatically higher than just a few years | ago. But it's not like the gas suddenly became leaded again. | | This makes me think that we just can't be too certain about | these things. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Sure but it was an immensely stressful time for lots of | people, that is going to drive up crimes of all types. | Expect a similar (is not as drastic) drop in crime as well | over the next couple of years. | pfranz wrote: | From what I've seen there has been a recent rise in the | murder rate. In some places it was at historical highs--but | the cities are also much, much larger now. When looking at | per-capita data its still historically low. | | You're right in that there doesn't seem to be a definitive | cause, but quite a few things have changed since Covid | started and we're not sure what changes are permanent. | watwut wrote: | There was not huge rise in crime in general. There were | more murders during lockdowns in US, which is in fact to be | expected since people were forced to be with close | relatives - and most murders are by close people. | bluedino wrote: | Murders have been on the rise since 2014 or so | micromacrofoot wrote: | > But then there's been a huge rise in crime | | Is this actually true? I've seen a lot of people saying | this politically but haven't seen a lot of data to back it | up. From what I've seen there's been a slight bump, which | isn't too surprising given the state of everything... but | it's still massively dwarfed by the decrease in the 90s and | 00s | | For example https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270 | stjohnswarts wrote: | Here property crime was up a little bit but violent crime | was way up (50% or so). I personally think it's the | stress and anxiety of lost jobs, loss of release valves | (going to the office, seeing friends, etc). I believe | it's a temporary spike and will fade in the next year or | two. | ryan93 wrote: | https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we- | kno... | micromacrofoot wrote: | Thanks! this supports the fact that it's still lower than | before the 90s decline, and possibly pandemic related. I | guess we'll find out over the next few years. | | > Despite rising sharply in 2020, the U.S. murder rate | remains below the levels of the early 1990s. | | > Americans remain far less likely to die from murder | than from other causes, including from suicide and drug | overdose. | gordian-mind wrote: | That probably means that the main reason for the crime rate | spike since the 60s is not lead but something else. | legitster wrote: | I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a | similar huge reckoning with marijuana. | | We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is | correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, | motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very | apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious | amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. | | I'm not against legalization by any means, or free of my own | vices. But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have | known better" seems really high. | Tenoke wrote: | >We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use | is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory | loss, motivation, and mental health. | | I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta- | Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to | recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough | and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what | studies you are referring to? | legitster wrote: | The study in the linked article found that lead reduced the | IQ of exposed Americans 3-6 IQ points. | | A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had | a 6-8 point decline, _even if they had given up cannabis_ : | https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 | | Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a | wider range of usage types: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological- | medici... | | There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but | what we know so far isn't very positive. | arcticbull wrote: | That's not actually what the study found. | Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore | neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset | cannabis users*. | | They did not find a 6-8 point decline for folks who gave up | cannabis if they started later in life. In fact they found | no decline in IQ whatsoever for folks who started later in | life - both when using it and after stopping. | In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent | among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used | cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently | (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. | | > There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, | but what we know so far isn't very positive. | | ... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in | youth. | legitster wrote: | I don't think my summary was unfair. I was only asked if | there was evidence for persistent effects. There clearly | is, even if just for adolescents. | | It's also important to point out that for the adult-onset | group they only looked at 1 year back. This doesn't | preclude the possibility that longer periods as an adult | find different results. | mynameisvlad wrote: | Your summary missed a critical piece, which is that it | _is_ just for adolescents. | | I don't think, even within the marijuana community, that | there is any debate that marijuana use in adolescents is | harmful. I regularly see /r/trees comments telling teens | to stop until they're at least 18 and their brain | finishes developing. | [deleted] | mandmandam wrote: | Sorry, no, your claims and summary were definitively and | unquestionably false. | | There is a large, large difference between 'Americans' | and 'adolescents'. Vast. | staticassertion wrote: | Sorry, I took a look at the study and I couldn't tell - | what is an adolescent? Like, 10-18? 14-25? I know what | the word means, but for a scientific study I assume | there's a specific range they're referring to. | Tenoke wrote: | I hadn't seen the meta-analysis, thanks. 2=3 IQ points drop | is pretty significant and enough to be worth consideration | but it's not too worrisome. | fkfkno wrote: | >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have | a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. | | I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word | "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would | do well to escape when discussing this issue. | | The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to | both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the | list due to various factors. | | That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust | *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over | what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former. | [deleted] | manuelabeledo wrote: | > I have a strong worries that our current generation will have | a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. | | There might be such a reckoning, just not at the same level or | with the same impact. | | Water is simply a necessity, and marijuana is not. Quite | literally 100% of Americans ingest water in some capacity | and/or means. Also, brain development delay and interference, | caused by contaminated water, would be present in children, who | are not, by default, marijuana users. | deepsquirrelnet wrote: | Cannabis will probably never be legalized for children, | outside of some extreme medical conditions -- or CBD, which | is not psychoactive. It is clear that THC is not good for a | developing brain. | | It is also likely that cannabis is generally less harmful | than alcohol or even acetaminophen, and unlike those, | considered fairly non-toxic. Consider that cannabis | metabolites can be detected in your body for up to a month | after consumption. It's apparently not that high of a | priority for your body to purge it. Cannabis does not need to | be combusted. The resins will readily vaporize at | temperatures well below the point at which the plant matter | actually burns. | | I no longer consume alcohol, but occasionally consume | cannabis. My personal decision comes from a lot of experience | with both, the way my body feels after consuming them, and | studied risks associated with each. I exercise responsible | moderation in my consumption and strongly believe that | cannabis is the safer choice. | | This conversation is more about the extent to which we need | to protect adults from their own adult decisions, and/or | protect the antiquated and partially racist underpinnings | behind how and why cannabis was initially made illegal. To | that end, I'm not sure it bears much, if any, similarity to | lead exposure. | woodruffw wrote: | I agree with some of this in the abstract, but I think it's | worth noting that "regular use" in academic studies of | marijuana usually entails dosing lab animals with quantities | that a human being couldn't physically consume, or surveying | the (much smaller) population of people with psychological | addictions to marijuana. | | OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of | "normal" marijuana has become and how rapidly we've normalized | high-dose delivery mechanisms for it (like waxes and | tinctures). It's hard to predict the future given how | "primitive" marijuana consumption used to be, in contrast. | Scalestein wrote: | I agree 100% with the potency concerns. Many of the studies | showing negative impact were using standards like "10 joints | a day" which was easy to dismiss as that was an unreasonable | amount of weed for most people. Now with wax, tinctures and | 20%+ THC strains becoming the normal it seems really easy for | many people to be hitting those previously unrealistic | dosages. | version_five wrote: | I'm curious, because I have not heard of wax or tinctures, | do you think those are things that more people will use, vs | people who would have used some hard drugs anyway? | | What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users, | now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC | products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic | change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug | of abuse? | | Just because these things exist, I don't think it | automatically follows that they will get used by most | people, or even more people than would have found some | other destructive thing to do in their absence | schrectacular wrote: | They are very common - "vape cartridges" are the | preferred intake mechanism for a lot of people because | it's much more discrete (almost no smell, can pass for | normal vaping) and convenient (small size). And those | cartridges can be upwards of 90% THC. | wonderwonder wrote: | They are pretty heavily in use and available at most | locations that legally sell marijuana. Estimate they are | 15 to 20% of sales, perhaps more. Even common flower now | is 20% thc. | giobox wrote: | Just anecdota of course, but waxes and tinctures are | routinely promoted and offered in discount deals at | virtually any legal weed dispensary in the USA. They are | IMO increasingly mainstream, as they often work nicely | with tools like vaporizers which more and more young | people use to consume. | | Technology has massively changed how people consume | cannabis - many people today may have never rolled or | smoked a traditional joint ever. You can buy it in ready | to load resin cartridges powered by a LiIon battery. Many | of these things produce cold vapor that makes it | staggeringly easy to smoke an enormous quantity. At least | with a joint, there normally comes a point one's throat | will probably not thank you for continuing... The cold | vapor from many vaporizers is almost odor free too, | meaning people can consume in places they couldn't | previously. | BTCOG wrote: | Dude, literally millions of people are dabbing wax and | vaping 95% purity THC all day every day in just the US. | Millions. Not just in legal states, and not just | delta-9-THC. There's all 50 states legal | hexahydrocannabinol carts from hemp, delta-8,10 THC and | THC-O acetate widely available. Not sure though why an | article about lead exposure turned into a Reefer Madness | spook campaign. If one were looking for parallels I think | one would lean towards something like widespread use of | PFAAS chems or something. Smoking plants is up to an | individual. | Scalestein wrote: | This is all anecdotal but I have multiple friends who | smoke regularly for years. I would consider them heavy | smokers, think 5+ joints a day. Once their states had | recreational or easily obtainable medicinal marijuana and | the retail shops that come with it they quickly started | moving into the concentrates and waxes. Now they | regularly are going through grams of concentrates and | going back to their previously "heavy-use" of 5 joints a | day would barely scratch their itch. | | The availability of vape pens also makes it REALLY easy | to end up smoking way more than you would otherwise and | as an easy way to start smoking in general. I smoke and | enjoy the convenience of pens but they are perfect tools | for increasing cannabis consumption in a population. | | It is almost as if flower based cannabis is a gateway | drug to these concentrated forms and I think it is really | easy to go down that path as an already regular user. | It's more economical, potentially better for you (less | smoking) and now very easy to obtain. | | I think the "overton window" of cannabis use is being | shifted to the heavier end. Casual users will probably | stay about the same but regular and heavier users will | all shift to more or higher potency consumption. | legitster wrote: | But we still do have studies that compare cannabis users to | non-users. | | The concern for marijuana is less about the toxicity of it as | a substance, and more the psychological effects of being | high. | dr_dshiv wrote: | And the psychological effects of consuming a taboo | substance. | zelon88 wrote: | I started smoking pot later than a lot of my peers. All | through high school I was cringy and weird and | judgemental and adversarial and entitled. | | Then I started smoking pot. And I experimented with a ton | of hard psychedelic drugs. And it absolutely took a toll | on my cognitive abilities. But it had a much more | profound effect on my personality. A positive effect. | Especially LSD. | | It was like a light switch went on in my personality. I | suddenly was much more "tuned in" to the world around me. | I became mindful and considerate. My judgement faded. My | outlook had changed to one that was seriously more | healthy. Today I don't drink or do hard drugs. Just | Marijuana. And I'm happy with myself. | | I don't know what to make of that but I do know that I've | seen things and felt things and understood things from | perspectives that people who have never taken drugs can | literally not imagine. You couldn't even dream the things | I've seen. | | I believe there could be clinical uses for taboo things | like psychedelic drugs. I hate to think that without them | I probably would have eventually been red pilled or | turned into a fascist. It was that much of an eye opening | experience for teenage me. | | So while it probably did cost me about 15% of my | cognitive ability, it also gave me 100% of my critical | thinking ability. | mynameisvlad wrote: | A lot of that could just as easily be attributed to you | growing up, though. Teenagers are generally cringy, | weird, judgmental, adversarial and entitled, each in | their own ways. | | I personally had _horrible_ experiences on LSD, and I 've | seen even worse bad trips and panic attacks as a trip | dad, but I know it helps quite a few of my friends figure | themselves out. Which is why studies on these drugs is | crucial. | s_dev wrote: | > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have | known better" seems really high. | | Is there any evidence this happens with alcohol and if there is | what was societies response? I suspect it alcohol does similar | damage and we tolerate it due to the perceived benefits. | jimbob45 wrote: | It seems like the biggest and most present problem with | marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana | is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Of course, that's | obvious - smoking _anything_ , even herbal theater cigarettes, | are extremely bad for your health[1]. However, after years and | years of the pro-marijuana lobby claiming that marijuana has no | negative side effects and can't kill you, it would make sense | if teens today were confused by the logical contradictions. | | Until we transition over to non-smoking marijuana consumption, | I don't see an easy for the anti-marijuana lobby to make any | claim about marijuana that the pro lobby wouldn't be able to | refute by simply pointing to the smoke as the root problem. I | agree that the reckoning will come but it will come in the form | of anti-smoking ads (in favor of edibles or whatever else) | rather than anti-marijuana ads. | | [0]https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health- | effec... | | [1]https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and- | natur... | WhompingWindows wrote: | Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in | the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I | category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, | which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal | side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant | viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our | scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on health and | society. | | Imagine if we weren't allowed to study alcohol freely, if we | had to jump through a dozen hoops to become qualified to do one | of the few alcohol studies. We might not have so much knowledge | about alcohol's toxic effects, and we might not have the | current picture of "Marijuana is slightly healthier than | alcohol" if Marijuana had been as thoroughly studied. | survirtual wrote: | This much is clear. Scheduling MJ is extremely unwise. But I | would also extend this to everything in the psychedelic / | hallucinogenic category. They do no psychological harm and an | increasing body of evidence indicates that they, in all | likelihood, do a significant amount of mental good for | responsible users. | | An acute example of this is a psychedelic called "DMT". This | psychedelic is nearly everywhere in nature, including our own | brains. When inhaled, it lasts less than 10 minutes, give or | take. After that 10 minutes, a user is completely sober | without any indication that they were not, and no | physiological side effects. But during that 10 minutes? It is | an acute spiritual and existential experience, possibly the | most acute non-normal experience possible for a human being. | A true exploration of altered states, and possible contact | with a different form of life unbound from our reality. | | And for some reason, this substance is scheduled. It does no | harm to a user, to third parties, nor to society, is short | lived, and offers true spiritual experience but it's | scheduled. The scheduling as a whole is archaic, oppressive, | and if nothing else, misguided. | | This is also in top of the fact that it discourages addicts | from seeking real treatment due to fear of being | criminalized. | chrisweekly wrote: | I was going to post something v similar about psilocybin. | The war on drugs has had such awful consequences and | repercussions and costs, it boggles the mind. | scruple wrote: | To suggest that there is no potential for psychological | harm from psychedelics is naive. I've personally suffered | long-lasting psychological harm from a bad mushroom trip | and I have at least a couple of friends/acquaintances who | have, as well. You can quibble over the details of why | and how adverse effects happen but it doesn't change the | fact that they do. | survirtual wrote: | I meant physiological harm, definitely a mistype on my | end. | | That said, psilocybin is highly sensitive to set and | setting, especially to other neural nets and especially | to others also on it. There is a massive host of issues | in partaking with friends or around anyone else for that | matter. It will amplify hidden untruths or other sort of | otherwise "benign" sober psychological distress and make | them acute. | | What people call a "bad trip" I call an important lesson. | We can choose to react negatively and label it | accordingly, or visit it in a sense that a very advanced | mindset was indicating a problem. When done this way, bad | states cease to exist and it becomes clear the "bad | trips" were just bad other things that needed some | conscious attention. | | All this to say: go get lost in the woods and trip with | some plants & with people who hang with that setting, | they will take care of you and it is a much better | setting to do the work on self. | MathCodeLove wrote: | Saying they do _no_ psychological harm is quite am extreme | statement and is just blatantly untrue. I tend to agree | that these drugs should be dicriminalized, but you 're | doing the exact same thing thats been done with marijuana | where the benefits of the drug are praised while the | negatives are ignored. | fkfkno wrote: | Lack of guidance and cultural context leads to abuse of | all sorts of substances. For all the ills of alcohol, | there is at least (in the west) a degree of "acceptable | usage" existing in society, something which almost every | other recreational substance is currently missing. | MathCodeLove wrote: | I don't disagree, but that's not what was said. | survirtual wrote: | My mistake. I meant physiological harm. Will edit. | | Edit: cannot edit any longer. While I do not think they | do cause psychological harm in the long term (I think | they force confrontation with buried psychological issues | in order to transcend them), they most certainly can | cause short term psychological distress and issues for | people unprepared, approaching with the wrong mindset, or | using in an otherwise problematic set or setting. | arcticbull wrote: | > This is also in top of the fact that it discourages | addicts from seeking real treatment due to fear of being | criminalized. | | Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2000 and saw a huge | reduction in harm associated with drug use, and did not see | an increase in usage. They went from among the worst in the | EU in terms of HIV infections to among the lowest. [1] | | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals- | radic... | howinteresting wrote: | The problem is that if you or your family have a history of | schizophrenia, psychedelics can make things much, much | worse. But so can ADHD stimulants. | dylan604 wrote: | > It does no harm to a user, to third parties, nor to | society, | | Except it opens doors in people's minds which allows them | to think differently for themselves. This results in them | behaving less like sheeple. Why would that ever be scary | for society? | giobox wrote: | My experience is it opens the door to not thinking much | at all, but your mileage may vary. Is there anything more | "sheeple" like than a bunch of stoned people sitting | around not motivated to do much? | | Sure, not all mj users may experience it this way, but a | lot do! I certainly wouldn't be arguing it opens the door | to a bunch of usefully profound thinkers in society. | howinteresting wrote: | Marijuana is very different from psychedelics in this | regard. | pedrosorio wrote: | Parent's quote refers to the psychedelic DMT, not to mj. | dylan604 wrote: | To paraphrase Bill Hicks, if you think marijuana/drug use | has never had a good effect on society, take all of your | favorite music and throw it in the trash. All of the | musicians recording that music were "reaaaaalllll fucking | high". | survirtual wrote: | MJ on its own has certainly ruined some people, | especially daily users. I would argue, however, | significantly less so than alcohol. It also has a much | lower harm fact on others than alcohol. | | MJ used more sparingly, and especially when used on | someone with exposure to a psychedelic (not | simultaneously but maybe the weekend after a trip)? | Entirely different ballgame. It can awaken an internal | symphony of inspiration and thinking. | | Everything can be abused. Eat too much if anything and | you will suffer. But when used appropriately, very | magical experiences can be had that enable routes of | thinking and problem solving that seem to come from out | of this world. | | In general, my recommendation to anyone is to try these | things while simply meditating or hiking a safe & easy | trail. Your mileage will vary but when done correctly, | you will acquire otherworldly inspiration applicable | towards your skilled professions and hobbies. | | And if nothing else, even falling short of that result, | this possibility should be enough for legality. | gunfighthacksaw wrote: | Cannabis opens my doors alright. Not any more or less | independent thought doors, mostly the doors related to | eating pizza and grilling. | bally0241 wrote: | Joe Rogan, is that you? | KennyBlanken wrote: | > This wrong classification, going back to ignorant | viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's | | It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the | anti-war and racial justice movement. | | https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman- | rich... | | By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple | commissions around the world had concluded that pot was | largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his | own administration - who he ordered to come up with a "damn | strong statement" - concluded the same, infuriating him. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard. | .. | | Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the | criminalization aspect: | https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs | opo wrote: | >...It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize | the anti-war and racial justice movement. | | The alleged Ehrlichman quote is brought up every single | time drug prohibition is mentioned but it should be taken | with at least some skepticism. | | The surviving members of his family don't believe he made | the quote: | | >...Multiple family members of Ehrlichman (who died in | 1999) challenge the veracity of the quote: The 1994 alleged | 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time | today does not square with what we know of our father...We | do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that | this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called | interview of John and 16 years following our father's | death, when dad can no longer respond.[22] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman | | This is a very explosive quote - if Baum had included it in | his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a huge | amount of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not | include it in his book, but instead would wait for many | years before making the claim when Ehrlichman was no longer | around to dispute the quote. | | If the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it isn't a | very accurate description of the overall drug polices of | the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for | "war on drugs" rhetoric, the actual substance of his | policies is a bit different than what people think it was: | | >...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the | distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all | of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their | consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the | U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and | cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right | wing that he hadn't gone soft. So he laid on some of the | toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a | White House speech declaring a "war on drugs" and calling | drugs "public enemy number one". It worked so well as cover | that many people remember that "tough" press event and | forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a | general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief | but...a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man | who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the | Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him). | | https://www.samefacts.com/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/ | | >..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach | to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told | Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we | are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial | activities that flow from drug abuse." | | >The numbers back this up. According to the federal | government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the | "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, | and prevention) consistently got more funding during | Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" | side (law enforcement and interdiction). | | https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs | | >Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the | criminalization aspect: | | To say Reagan "ratcheted up the criminalization aspect" | ignores the structure of the US federal government. The | president does not make laws, the president can merely sign | or veto laws made by the legislature. Unfortunately the | drug policies of the 1980s were a bipartisan affair. The | real bipartisan push for harsher penalties in the US came | in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine | overdose. | | >...Immediately after Bias's death, the speaker of the | House of Representatives, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., from | the Boston area (where Bias had just signed with the | Celtics), issued a demand to his fellow Democrats for anti- | drug legislation. Senior congressional staffers began | meeting regularly in the speaker's conference room as | practically every committee in the House wrote Len Bias- | inspired legislation attacking the drug problem. News | conferences around the Capitol featured members of Congress | extolling their efforts to clamp down on cocaine and crack. | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/06/24/ | u... | | >...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for | the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. | Literally every committee, from the Committee on | Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and | Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len | Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of | legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings | about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was | looking to get a piece of the action... | | https://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_s | t... | | If you want to go back further, a good person to start with | is Harry Anslinger who headed the Federal Bureau of | Narcotics: | | >...Prior to the end of alcohol prohibition, Anslinger had | claimed that cannabis was not a problem, did not harm | people, and "There is probably no more absurd fallacy"[15] | than the idea it makes people violent. His critics argue he | shifted not due to objective evidence but self-interest due | to the obsolescence of the Department of Prohibition he | headed when alcohol prohibition ceased - campaigning for a | new Prohibition against its use. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger | | A difference with Nixon is that he was one of the first to | try to greatly expand drug treatment and also reform | sentencing in at least a small way: | | >...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for | marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it | to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that | sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be | rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama | Administration). | | https://www.samefacts.com/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/ | pessimizer wrote: | You posted this after a direct Anslinger quote had been | posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30602134 | rayiner wrote: | Okay so explain all the other countries with harsh drug | laws that don't have Nixon or minorities to oppress? Japan, | Singapore, Sweden, etc. | pessimizer wrote: | You could take a swing at it and see how it goes. The | person you're replying to has said what they believe the | cause is. You're free to propose other ones for other | countries. | | My explanation would be that the US drug war was | aggressively international. | bnralt wrote: | I've tried doing deep dives into drug criminalization a few | times before, and I've never been able to find a simplistic | explanation for it. Keep in mind, this is something that | every country in the world went forward with around the | same time, even when they were adversaries who couldn't | agree on much else. This was also something that nations | often did on their own. A lot of these movements start much | earlier than people think; look at Mexico's moves against | cannabis in the late 1800's early 1900's. Or even the Gin | Craze of the 1700's for a precursor. | | There seem to be a few threads I've found that are worth | pursuing: | | 1. The general increase in state power in various domains | of life . | | 2. The decline of traditional communities and move toward | urbanization creating a disconnected group of people that | worried the upper classes. | | 3. The tendency of geopolitics to follow social | trends/fads. | noasaservice wrote: | The anti-cannabis groups started in the 1930's with Hearst | and loads of yellow journalism | | quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were- | based-on-racism... : | | ----------------- | | Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal | Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was | one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed | it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes | darkies think they're as good as white men," and: | | "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and | most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. | Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana | use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual | relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." | | The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its | effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women | should sleep with entertainers!) | | ----------------- | | That tells me all I need to know about this whole | situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable | someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in | the same light in which they were made? | fkfkno wrote: | Furthermore, this attitude persisted well into the Reagan & | Bush administrations, with the "war on drugs" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance#Narcotics | rayiner wrote: | I'm against legalization. I thought it was just going to be a | humane alternative to putting people in jail. But instead we've | just broken down the social norm against drug use. Parts of DC | now smell strongly of weed during the middle of the day. | mandmandam wrote: | Is that your strongest argument? A smell? | | If anything broke down the social norm against drug use it | was the heroin and opioid epidemics.. Which started shortly | after Afghanistan. | | Probably the trillions of dollars pumped into feeding | terrorism instead of going on free school lunches and the | like pushed people into drug use as well. | | Seriously, I don't know how people can miss the mark this | far. Yet apparently many in DC do, and it's getting REAL OLD. | [deleted] | scythe wrote: | Kids aren't smoking weed when they're eight. Or four, for that | matter. | mark-r wrote: | Second-hand smoke? | sethammons wrote: | I was at my 3rd grader's outdoor field trip and saw a puff | of vape come up from a trio of kids. Someone had gotten a | small juul cartridge and they were puffing away on it. The | dispenser makes it much easier to hide, but it is not a new | phenomenon. My mom started smoking cigarettes when she was | 10 years old. | rubyn00bie wrote: | You're really not telling the story correctly based on evidence | you linked below, to quote: | | > Fig. 3 shows that, among adolescent-onset persistentcannabis | users, within-person IQ decline was apparent regardlessof | whether cannabis was used infrequently (median use = 14 d)or | frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. | Incontrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent | amongadult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis | in-frequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = | 365 d)in the year before testing. | | So more specifically smoking weed while your brain is | developing seems to be correlated to a decline in IQ later in | life. While those who start smoking, even copious amounts, as | adults don't have a permanent decline. | | I am cannot find reference to support your claim that people | are consuming it younger than before. | | If you're going to cite studies, you could at least represent | the findings honestly. Also, it's pretty apparent you're trying | to sell a narrative to others to induce fear of marijuana... | this is a post about lead poisoning after all. Quite the leap, | IMHO, to compare it marijuana use... | | The paper you linked below and incorrectly summarized for | anyone curious: | https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 | eloff wrote: | To be fair there are also studies showing alcohol has similar | effects on the brain. I saw one just yesterday: | | "A large study of more than 36,000 high-quality MRI brain scans | has found that drinking four units of alcohol a day - two | beers, or two glasses of wine - causes structural damage and | brain volume loss equivalent to 10 years of aging." | | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 | | I always said I would never smoke marijuana because my brain is | my biggest asset and I wouldn't want to do anything to decrease | its value to me. Now it looks like I need to take a good hard | look at my alcohol consumption. I just can't square it with my | values anymore. | jl6 wrote: | I don't think it should come as a massive surprise to anyone | that alcohol isn't exactly good for you. | eloff wrote: | You'd be surprised. I don't know many people who understand | it's actually a carcinogen. And I was unaware it's doing | permanent damage to my brain. | | It's just so ingrained in society, many don't even question | it at all. But it's one of the more dangerous drugs. It | destroys a lot of lives. | axiosgunnar wrote: | Interesting. What about porn abuse? | quercetumMons wrote: | Overblown. | [deleted] | shagmin wrote: | According to [0] peak marijuana usage was in the 70s. I don't | think with a smaller/more stable subset of the population | partaking there's going to be many more people saying "we | should have known better" than there currently are. | | https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/7... | zelon88 wrote: | I wasn't there in the 70s, but from what I understand potency | of the 70s wasn't nearly what it is today. I have no source | for this, but I've been in countless circles with long time | smokers who all correlate the same story; that modern day | mids was literally the best quality Marijuana you could find | in the 70s. So that's probably about 10% THC compared to 30% | THC which is not uncommon today. | pessimizer wrote: | When you smoke with people these days, they only take a | couple of hits. In the 90s when we smoked it was joint | after joint after joint. | | It's basically the cigarette filter thing; people know | where they want to get, and they'll keep going until they | get there, no matter how weak you make it. Which is what | made filtered cigarettes _worse_ for your lungs than | unfiltered ones. | | The calculus would be different if you were talking about | edibles, because they actually sneak up on and can surprise | you. | trophycase wrote: | I wish we could go back to that. Personally I find most | weed I smoke these days to be way way too strong. | teaearlgraycold wrote: | I don't smoke cannabis nearly as much as I used to. When I | was a daily user it didn't have any intellectual effects so | much as emotional ones. I would have been baseline mildly | depressed and weed made it so much worse. That's not going | to be a surprise to any objective observer. | | When I do have it today I make sure to seek out the weakest | stuff I can. It's annoying that you might just have one | option below 15%. Of course edibles are a far superior | option in legal states. Easy dosage and no damage to your | lungs. I'd also suspect that the milder (but longer) highs | are easier on the brain. | nickpp wrote: | If it's a matter of dosage then who knows how many joints | they smoked in the 70s vs how many hits today? | lotsofpulp wrote: | The societal risks are the same with additional worse effects | for non participants with alcohol and they have been known for | a long time. If society is OK with those risks, then I cannot | see cannabis being an unacceptable risk in 50 years. Can throw | in refined sugar too. | javert wrote: | > The societal risks are the same and additional worse ones | with alcohol | | I don't think this is correct, personally. | | (I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, | so we can only go on personal wisdom.) | lotsofpulp wrote: | Would you rather deal with someone high on cannabis or | drunk on alcohol? | | To collect data, visit all the hotels, restaurants, bars, | police, security guards, and entertainment venues in your | area and ask all the front line employees this question. Or | even who you would rather drive around. | | I guarantee everyone would rather deal with someone high on | cannabis, who might ask for extra snacks or drive slow and | be unlikely to go on a belligerent tirade or get physical. | | In terms of other societal risks, I have not heard of a | cannabis addict beating their spouse or children yet. | adamsmith143 wrote: | But omg cannabis users get so lazy and have no | motivation... /s | ska wrote: | > I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both | sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom. | | Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll note | that considering this a logical statement is really flawed. | | You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for both | sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in and of | itself. | javert wrote: | > Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll | note that considering this a logical statement is really | flawed. | | I can't understand what you are saying here. | | > You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for | both sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in | and of itself. | | Just trying to cut off the expected "studies show X" | comments before they get started. Because if studies | aren't definitive, which they rarely are, there isn't any | point in raising that. And a simpler way to explain this | is "studies conflict." | [deleted] | adamsmith143 wrote: | It's not even comparable. You an ignore the fact that far | more people use Alcohol regularly, that it has countless | other deleterious health affects and just look at pure | death rates directly attributable to Alcohol. It's just not | even in the same universe. | | >(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both | sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.) | | This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows | definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society. | javert wrote: | You're being aggressive. Please stop. | | I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than | marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The | issue is, which is worse for society. | | Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because | you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize | you aren't talking about the same thing. | | > This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows | definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society. | | Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't | actually believe studies can reliably be understood by | anyone other than those who conducted it and their | immediate peers in the field. | | A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be, | "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a | definitive study. That doesn't seem fair. | | Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you | that you are asking me to do. | adamsmith143 wrote: | >You're being aggressive. Please stop. | | If my comment is what you consider to be overly | aggressive maybe you need to get out more. | | All research is BS therefore opinion is king is one of | the weakest arguments I have ever heard. | | BTW your not so subtle digs are uncalled for. | BobbyJo wrote: | >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have | a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. | | > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have | known better" seems really high | | The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas, | water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all _had_ to | ingest it. That 's not so much the case with narcotics. I | wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ as there has | been with alcohol. | dr_dshiv wrote: | MJ definitely increases aspects of my intelligence. | | Said no one ever about lead. | ipaddr wrote: | I worry more about the covid vaccines | WinterMount223 wrote: | Exposure to marijuana and marijuana derivatives is optional. | Exposure to lead is almost never optional. | _-david-_ wrote: | Second hand smoke is not optional. It is the same reason we | banned smoking in various buildings. | fkfkno wrote: | True, but this was for tobacco, and the ban was mainly to | protect non-smoking workers (and more recently the patrons) | in restaurants and bars who started suffering with long | term health complications usually attributed to smokers. | The lawsuits would have crippled the industry, so the | change was largely financial in nature, such is the basis | of most public health legislation. | | https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in- | ba... | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/ | | For controls on residential buildings, we would need better | standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also | we could take a look at better airflow and particulate | filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and | perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be | addressed seriously. | rdiddly wrote: | I see your point, but just want to draw a line between | something you ingest willingly that affects only you, and | something foisted semi-secretly on the entire public by a | special interest (basically to make cars and/or fuel more | marketable) despite their knowing, almost from the beginning, | how toxic it was. (One of many great examples of humans using | technology because they can, without giving due consideration | to whether they should.) I would rather the law protected me | from the actions of others, and let me be the one to worry | about what I do to myself. | | [Edit: Which isn't to say there couldn't be a very persuasive | weed marketing campaign or something, that influences people to | use it and hides the negative effects. Just as there was a | campaign to squelch public debate about the negative effects of | tetraethyl lead. Nonetheless, being able to individually decide | to reject inhaling lead, like you can with pot, would've been a | welcome privilege.] | | Not sure what "current" generation means, by the way. I'm | currently alive, and currently, I'm in the same generation I've | always been in. (I'm not mad, just teasing you a bit.) | abcc8 wrote: | It might make more sense to first have a similar reckoning with | alcohol. It is a far more dangerous intoxicant and exacts a | large toll on individuals and society. | alex_sf wrote: | We can do both. | wutbrodo wrote: | Can we? Everything I understand about the public tells me | otherwise. | coding123 wrote: | It does seem weird to me that about 5-10% of a grocery | store is bottles of alcohol. | giobox wrote: | Fluids consume large amounts of shelf space by volume | regardless of what fluid it is, not much we can do about | this, so a large amount of shelf space does not mean a | large percentage of the store's total items, in theory. | By percentage of total items, it's likely very small for | most supermarkets. | | See also the large amount of shelf space typically | required to stock bottled water and soft drinks. | dTal wrote: | The variety of alcohol on offer does seem a tad perverse, | in a way that status quo bias renders difficult to | perceive. How many brands of bottled water do you usually | see? Half a dozen, tops? And much of the volume in that | aisle is occupied by huge 16-packs and giant carriers. | Meanwhile the average wine aisle has _hundreds_ of | different brands, nearly all no more than 75cl, and might | even stretch to two aisles in a large supermarket. It | dwarfs the available selection of any other category of | product. And that 's before we get into the bafflingly | endless rows of spirits. | | Is this a healthy relationship with what is, in the final | analysis, an intoxicating drug? If there were an aisle in | every supermarket with 10 times as much cannabis as you'd | currently find in the average dispensary, would we regard | that as equally normal? | dfxm12 wrote: | I don't think the number of brands on offer has any | effect on our relationship with booze. It doesn't matter | how many brand of yellow mustard are on the shelf, I'm | buying it at the same rate. Where I live now, very few | super markets have beer/wine and none have spirits. I | know I buy less booze now than I did when I lived in | places where you could get beer pretty much anywhere, at | gas stations, super markets, convenience stores, etc., | and it's probably for this reason. | giobox wrote: | Perhaps the difference is I am not baffled; Alcohol is | enjoyable in moderation and it is one of the few high | margin items in the store. Fluids are popular and take up | much more shelf space as noted. As for bottled water, my | local Safeway easily carries in excess of 20 brands | before we count the huge number of soft drinks too? | | I suspect you have not been in a dispensary recently if | you think a supermarket would stock 10x as much; the | range of products in most US dispensaries is truly | enormous now across edibles, waxes, flowers, tinctures | etc. I would strongly argue we would see a _smaller_ | range of products in the supermarket, should it become | legal to sell there. This is exactly like alcohol too, | where dedicated booze stores often have a wider range. It | would still be significant in size though - lots of | people like weed. | quercetumMons wrote: | That depends on where you're from. Some states don't | allow the private sale of liquor. | slothtrop wrote: | Interesting to see where the U.S. stands in this list - | https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism- | by-co... | adamsmith143 wrote: | >We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use | is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence | | When used at very young ages. Important caveat. The other | things you mentioned are highly speculative and I typically | discount anecdotes as mostly useless. | legitster wrote: | > I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless | | This is fair. I mention it because it was only in hindsight | that it was so obvious how many smokers were getting | emphysema and lung cancer, and that these were not actually | common diseases. | adamsmith143 wrote: | Well to be fair vapes and edibles are much more common now | and that would greatly reduce those kinds of risks. | [deleted] | [deleted] | deutschew wrote: | As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view | and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and | its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs. | | In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially | in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone | after cessation. | | I don't think it | | It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking | marijuana, the risk is big but I see many grey markets happy to | sell you marijuana to people still going to high school. | | I find both sides obnoxious, the Singaporeanesque fear | mongering about "permanent damages" based on curated and | manipulated data and the Western panacea attitude that it be | used for everything. | | Trying to tie lead exposure to marijuana is just asinine. | antattack wrote: | Smoking (anything) is bad for your lungs, throat too. | mrits wrote: | Not a huge problem when we die from diabetes or heart | disease first. | staticassertion wrote: | Something being bad for your lungs is presumably going to | be very bad for your heart. | fkfkno wrote: | Marshmallow leaf is often used as an alternative for | those seeking to quit tobacco, and does have known health | benefits: | | https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking- | marshm... | | Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar, | and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which | will indeed place more stress upon the heart. | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: | Plenty of ways to use cannabis without smoking | (combustion). Examples include edibles, vaporizers, | suppositories, and topicals. You've heard of the nicotine | patch but did you know they have THC patches? | markus_zhang wrote: | Unless it clearly provides any medium to long term benefit I | guess I'm going to avoid it. Plus it is expensive. Same for | alcohol amd cigarette, I avoid them as much as I can. The only | thing I need is caffeine but I'm tricking myself by drinking | decaffeinated most of the time. I hope one day I can remove | that too. | JaimeThompson wrote: | Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more | hope for the future then less would use such things to escape | from reality. | somenameforme wrote: | When saying things like this, I think you should intuitively | consider the corollary of your sentence. If people are using | drugs to "escape from reality" presumably because have | insufficient money to do nicer things, then the implication | is that people who have lots of money would use drugs at a | substantially lower rate. | | And so this is pretty easy to test. I did a quick search for | 'marijuana use by rate by income' and the first paper that I | came upon [1] showed there is indeed quite a strong | correlation between substance use and socioeconomic status - | in other words, the richer or more privileged individuals | were (in terms of coming from wealthy family backgrounds), | the more likely they were to use drugs. | | So unless there is some confounding variable that we may not | be considering, it seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis | that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. | | [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/ | JaimeThompson wrote: | >t seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people | are using drugs because of a lack of money. | | To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a | better future. These are not the same. | jshen wrote: | It's more than that. High paid people in very demanding jobs | also turn to it and drinking so they can "turn off" work for | a bit. | sonicggg wrote: | Of coursr, all the wealthy and successful people absolutely | do not partake in recreational drugs. | goodpoint wrote: | You missed "had more hope for the future" | slg wrote: | >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have | a similar huge reckoning with... | | I thought that sentence was going to end with "Covid".[1] | Research was just published yesterday which indicates that even | mild cases have resulted in damage to the brain. Meanwhile, | over the last few months we have just accepted that everyone is | going to get it eventually. Who knows what the long term impact | will be of us all giving ourselves a little brain damage? | | EDIT: It is funny that the HN community's commitment to moving | on from the pandemic has gotten to the point in which linking | to research that suggests maybe getting Covid is bad is | downvoted. | | [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5 | sandworm101 wrote: | >> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have | known better" seems really high. | | Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized. | We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how | many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear | absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing | alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out | against alcohol use in recent years.) In fact I see | advertisements for alcohol virtually everywhere. So no, I do | not believe we will have a reckoning in 50 years about pot. | serjester wrote: | Anecdotally I know a good amount people that now smoke all | day, every day now that we work from home. At least among the | people I know, there's no stigma - they tell me it "helps | them think". I don't think this is the case with alcohol | without a lot of people calling you out for having a | "drinking problem". | BakeInBeens wrote: | Consuming cannabis everyday all day will also results in | dramatically less consequences in your life than consuming | alcohol the same way. The abuse factor of cannabis is | really low all things considered and gets even lower if you | avoid smoking. | ck2 wrote: | Lead exposure isn't over by a long-shot. | | Anywhere there is an airport with prop aircraft there is leaded | fuel/exhaust spew for miles around it. | | Can't believe we just don't have the care to protect people, | write it off as their problem and then let the poor/ignorant | suffer in "pollution zones" | cpncrunch wrote: | The EPA is planning on issuing a proposed endangerment finding | for leaded avgas in 2023, and there are already a number of | unleaded avgas replacements available that can be used in the | majority of aircraft (other than some high compression | engines). | | https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin... | | In terms of actual lead, the amount used by aviation is a tiny | fraction of that used in cars. | teknopaul wrote: | Independent of the effect of lead on intelligence isn't it | impossible to reduce the IQ of half the population because IQ is | a comparative calculation across that population. Ie as | intelligence goes down the definition of 100 IQ points changes? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient | redleader55 wrote: | The IQ should be defined for the human race, in a time | independent way, not for a specific nation or group. This | allows us to make comparisons between different times, between | different societies, etc. | | Otherwise, if the IQ is redefined to always follow the current | mean, it can only be used to classify people between smarter | than average and "dumber" than average, which is not so useful. | jart wrote: | I guess it's useful if your goal is to figure out how to | divide kids into separate math classes. I don't think anyone | intended ability to rotate blocks and scramble letters as a | timeless gauge of the quality of a person. | cylon13 wrote: | Don't conflate intelligence with quality or value. Every | human being is inherently valuable independent of their | intelligence, and there are plenty of other interesting | features besides intelligence that make people unique and | interesting. Believing that IQ measures something tangible | is not equivalent to ranking people based on their value | any more than believing height or weight measure something | real. | jart wrote: | Am I being excommunicated already? I thought that's what | I said. | quercetumMons wrote: | I'd imagine that it is nearly impossible to control for time | with tests like IQ. | kanzenryu2 wrote: | For something like lead you can look at different parts of | the world at the same moment where lead was abolished at | different times in the past. | | Also of interest might be: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect | cutemonster wrote: | Auto generate IQ tests, so cannot be learned by trying many | times / cannot learn by heart. And have people in the next | generation do the same auto generated tests. | | This won't be perfect, but, using mathematics, Id think it | would be possible to know how (im)precise the comparisons | would be (confidence intervals of the differences). | | Also, might not work for really bright people (they'd learn | how the auto generated tests get generated? They might sort | of "disassemble" them and find the answers quickly?) | darawk wrote: | This doesn't work because of the Flynn effect. Raw IQ | scores have been consistently increasing over time. So | much so that the average person in the 1920s would be | considered mentally challenged today, if you used their | raw IQ scores. However, we know that obviously the | average person in the 1920s was not mentally challenged | in the sense that someone with that same raw score would | be today. | | This is all a pretty big mystery and suggests we really | don't understand this "IQ" thing we are measuring. | However, one big consequence is that we _definitely_ | cannot meaningfully compare scores across time. | quercetumMons wrote: | Think of it from the individual-up. Even if the half of people | with affected IQs were spread proportionally throughout the IQ | bell curve, they'd have lower IQs than they did before. The | other half would raise just as much as the affected half | lowered, but the affected half still have lower IQs. | krob wrote: | programmarchy wrote: | And so few capable of nuanced discussion. | russellbeattie wrote: | Thanks for taking the hit from the "HN isn't about politics" | crowd, this is something that needs to be said again and again. | | Right wing conservatives and their followers - aka Republicans | - are the number one threat facing the world today, hands down. | Beyond their abhorrent legislative agenda based on their shared | hatred for various parts of society, their complete | disconnection from reality and traitorous attacks on democracy | itself have essentially disqualified them as a legitimate | political party. | | In terms of lead's influence: My assumption has been simply | that lead and mercury in the air caused a minor, yet | statistically significant, impairment of cognitive ability | which has robbed Boomers and much of GenX of their ability for | both _empathy and critical thinking_. This has led to a swath | of the population who is more susceptible to totalitarian | messaging which always include intense hatred of others, | conspiracies and wild accusations. | | To paraphrase an old cliche: All Republicans are NOT lead- | poisoned racist sociopaths that think Putin is a great leader, | the virus is a hoax, the election was a fraud, etc. However, | the reverse, is obviously quite accurate. | ouid wrote: | This headline is very bad, because it sounds like the observation | you would get if there were no effect. | munk-a wrote: | How does "Thing decreased in half" sound like the effect you'd | expect from population independent variables? If, in the last | century, the average number of toes had decreased in half I'd | have a hell of a lot of questions. | hateful wrote: | Thomas Midgley Jr can be thanked for this. He also played a role | in developing CFCs (Freon). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. | pklausler wrote: | Midgley can be blamed for leaded gasoline, but not lead paint | or lead plumbing. | | (He also came to a famously ironic end, strangling in a rope | contraption of his own design.) | brain_staple wrote: | Not so ironic, that's exactly how I'd expect Midgley to die. | krrrh wrote: | One of the most heartbreaking things I ever learned about was the | high levels of lead in Mexican candy. This is apparently mostly | due to the inks used in the packaging. | | https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.2754/ | | The following paper also pegs pottery as an issue. Just | devastating. | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221499961... | | > Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will | experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead | exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is | responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for lead- | induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4 years. | nicolas_t wrote: | I was recently horrified to learn that the baby glass bottle I | had been using with my baby had lead paint on it. | https://tamararubin.com/2021/12/sailor-themed-glass-nuk-baby... | | Apparently, it's considered to be acceptable by current | standards. Despite the fact that babies will obviously touch the | bottle (and the paint) and then put their hands in their mouth. I | bought glass bottles because I wanted to avoid plastic thinking | it'd be safer and I was reassured by seeing that they were | manufactured in Germany :( | | I think we still have very far to go in terms of toxic substance | exposure. | fkfkno wrote: | There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_dioxide#Pos | sible_carc..., which is used in many glazes and coatings, but | also as a whitener in health supplements and toothpaste! | zapataband1 wrote: | learned about teflon via the movie 'Dark Waters'... it was | horrifying | downrightmike wrote: | Small airports have more smaller prop planes, fun fact, they | almost exclusively use leaded gas because it gives them more | power. So if you live near one, you're getting a dusting of lead | everyday. Like this one in the middle of $500k+ homes suburbs: | https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chandler+Municipal+Airport... | dmitrygr wrote: | This has been disproven so many times, it is tiring to even | try. Small amount, dispersed over huge distances. Current | measurements indicate NO more lead in the blood of people near | airports than not. It is only heard nowadays from land | developers seeking to capitalize on a few acres among "the | middle of $500k+ homes" | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Don't forget the part about "gives them more performance" | which is just an overt lie. They use it because aviation is | regulated to high heaven and there are no approved | alternatives yet. | Ancalagon wrote: | Yeah I believe it's more of an maintenance deal. The leaded | gas causes less wear on the cylinders and pistons, so | generally makes the plane safer and less risk of a major | malfunction during a flight. There aren't many alternatives | with similar characteristics to leaded gas. We used to use | it in cars for the same reason, but decided the | maintenance/safety/health trade offs were worth banning it. | elihu wrote: | It doesn't give them more power. As I understand it, small | planes last a long time, and a lot of them have old engines | that were designed for leaded gas and wear out faster if run on | unleaded fuel. Thus, the FAA is reluctant to approve unleaded | fuel in those aircraft. | programmarchy wrote: | Presumably there's an epigenetic effect from this i.e. having | dumber parents would have negative effects on their children. But | over time that should improve with the removal of lead from the | environment. So we can at least take solace in that things ought | to get better: | | > Blood lead data were instrumental in developing policy to | eliminate lead from gasoline and in food and soft drink cans. | Recent survey data indicate the policy has been even more | effective than originally envisioned, with a decline in elevated | blood lead levels of more than 70% since the 1970s. | | https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm | leecarraher wrote: | and then i thought, well look who is telling us that | cf141q5325 wrote: | Its one of the really bad part about many regions in Africa at | the moment dealing with e-waste. | https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/10/29/toxic-charge-h... | | Besides people melting lead batteries everywhere for recycling, | much of the cooking dishes are made from recycled aluminum auto | parts. Often laced with lead. | frontman1988 wrote: | DR Congo has been exploited so much it pains my heart. Sadly in | coming years it's probably gonna get worse for them given they | have so many minerals and both China/US are gonna tussle over | them. | hash03x wrote: | DethNinja wrote: | Perhaps past lead usage in fuels will indirectly lead to collapse | of the civilisation: | | Lead is known to decrease empathy and increase crime. | | I don't want to generalise an entire generation but boomer | generation was heavily poisoned by lead and perhaps this made | them more selfish and less emphatic. Maybe this is the primary | cause of many current problems? I wonder if humans were supposed | to be more emphatic in past before all lead poisoning happened. | Buttons840 wrote: | Maybe, but the events that proceeded the boomers weren't always | empathetic. [Rephrased] Was leaded gasoline being used in WW2? | I presume so? | mschuster91 wrote: | > Were Nazi's eating lead for breakfast or something? | | German here. The root cause for Nazism was not just a | widespread acceptance of antisemitism, but especially the | economic hardships following WW1 that gave rise to populism. | A poor and desperate population is always liable to fall for | a skilled demagogue. | watwut wrote: | And loss in WWI which was considered unfair along with wish | to report it and win this time again. Stab in the back | myth, the militarization of all government services and so | on and so forth. | | The antisemitism was not unique to Germany. It was all | around the Europe for centuries. | fullshark wrote: | Crime rates have fallen historically until COVID. I think it's | more likely the post WW2 and post Cold War (perceived) eras | were periods of irrational exuberance culturally in the west | with uncommon optimism in western lead globalism and its future | (What you consider civilization I take it). The last few years | were a big time reality check on the collective interest in | that future. | xpe wrote: | Pun intended? | | > western lead globalism | | You probably meant 'western-led globalism'. | fullshark wrote: | Heh not intended but I'll claim it retroactively to save | face. | ch4s3 wrote: | The rate of violent crime nearly quadrupled between 1960 and | its peak in 1991 in the US. Even with the COIVD bump, rates | are comparable to the mid 60s, and aren't tracking the | previous climb. | ElephantsMyAnus wrote: | Really? It looks like the complete opposite happened: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/m | e... | ch4s3 wrote: | Yes, 2015 was about on par with 1967[1] in terms of | property and violent crime. Incarceration is not what I | was talking about. | | [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_Stat | es#/me... | ElephantsMyAnus wrote: | But you agree that it needs an explanation, right? You | gloat about a dramatic decrease in crime, yet the number | of inmates increased tenfold over that time period. | ch4s3 wrote: | See my other reply[1]. I'm not gloating, simply conveying | facts about numbers. The increase in incarceration is | mostly due to tougher sentences for non-violent crime. | | [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30605054 | ElephantsMyAnus wrote: | Maybe the tougher sentences worked? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_State | s#/... | ch4s3 wrote: | Then why did Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan see the | same drops in crime? They all lock up a minuscule | fraction of their populations by comparison and had | larger or similar drops in crime. | | The timing is also wrong, the drop in crime started | before incarceration ramped up. | | Also as I mentioned the plurality of incarceration is for | nonviolent crime, a lot of which is simple drug | possession. | ElephantsMyAnus wrote: | They didn't: | | https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_Rate_i | n_N... | | https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/14/national/cri | me-... | ch4s3 wrote: | To respond to your other comment, homicide rates were | falling starting around 1990, and the prison population | exploded after that. Something else must be going one | here. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons[1] as of | last month 45.3% of the total US prison population is | there for non-violent drug offenses. Only 3.1% is for | homicide, assault, or kidnapping. In the late 80s and | early 90s lots of states and the federal government | instituted really draconian sentencing laws. | | So yeah, violent crime is WAY down from 1990, drug | arrests have been soaring since. | | [1]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate | _offen... | fullshark wrote: | So it's dropped for 30 years... | | I'm not disputing the claim that lead poisoning can lead to | violent crime, I'm disputing the claim that the turmoil of | the last few years (my guess OP means starting with | Brexit/Trump) is due to lead poisoned Boomer brains being | less empathetic. Arguably the world is more empathetic than | ever if you study history (simple data point: entire | economies were built around slavery for most of human | existence) and this one data point in isolation is really | not a particularly strong one to point to for the claim. | ch4s3 wrote: | I'm only commenting on violent crime, not political | upheaval. | fullshark wrote: | Yeah that link seems reasonably well established. The | link between "current problems" (whatever they are) and a | generation of lead poisoned boomer brains isn't. I'm also | not exactly sure what OP is suggesting and trying to | connect the dots from their offhand comment. Probably a | waste of time all around so I will exit the discussion. | ch4s3 wrote: | Yeah that seems tenuous. Declining institutional trust, | and the botched handling to trade liberalization in the | 80s and 90s coupled with the post 2008 bailouts probably | has a lot more to do with current political instability | in the west broadly. | gordian-mind wrote: | What's the big change that happened in the 60s and started | this trend? | hash03x wrote: | ch4s3 wrote: | A lot of baby-boomers started reaching the prime age for | committing crime all at once. | depingus wrote: | According to the article: | | Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early | 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. As a result, Reuben and | his colleagues found that essentially everyone born | during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have | been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car | exhaust. | gordian-mind wrote: | So lowering the general IQ in a society by a few points | means an explosion in crime? | DFHippie wrote: | Is this a rhetorical question? Leaded gasoline. | [deleted] | kixiQu wrote: | FWIW the article is claiming Peak Lead would be Gen X. | fallingfrog wrote: | Yes- older gen x and the youngest boomers. | stjohnswarts wrote: | This is untrue. The "rome collapsed because of lead" | revisionary history is bunkum. | rootusrootus wrote: | Is there any reason to believe that post-boomer generations are | more empathetic? If anything, it feels as though empathy has | been decreasing across the board amongst all age groups as time | goes on, right up until the present. Maybe the Internet is | stronger than lead. | jccooper wrote: | For context, leaded gasoline phase-out began in 1973, based on | the 1970 Clean Air Act. It was largely gone in the US by the 80s | but not officially eliminated (except for General Aviation) until | 1996. Other countries continued to use leaded gasoline, largely | in Africa and the Middle East; the UN started an effort in 2002 | to eliminate it in those places still using it. In July 2021, the | last stocks of leaded gasoline (in Algeria) were exhausted | (probably literally). | istjohn wrote: | And we still use leaded fuel in aviation. [1] | | 1. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas | S201 wrote: | GA pilot here. This is true and most of us don't like using | leaded gas either. It's nasty stuff that leads to increased | wear on our engines, is more expensive, and is increasingly | used as justification for closing airports. Plus we're | exposed to it when fueling our planes. | | However, it's worth mentioning that recently the first | unleaded avgas, G100UL, was approved by the FAA. We're trying | to move away from 100LL (leaded avgas) and are finally making | some progress on that front. | | https://gami.com/g100ul/g100ul.php | [deleted] | hadlock wrote: | Yeah in the US I recall in 1991 or 92 the pumps had "UNLEADED" | in great big letters running up the side of them. My dad's '77 | chevy had a gas gauge near the center console that said | "UNLEADED FUEL ONLY". | | There's been another push to get rid of leaded gas in aviation | but studies show that it's virtually undetectable in the | environment. | mark-r wrote: | They made the gas tank filler hole a smaller diameter for | unleaded gas cars, so that the leaded nozzles wouldn't fit. | | https://uiobservatory.com/2010/how-intelligent-design- | saved-.... | 09bjb wrote: | Source? I have no reason to doubt you but would love to see | where those data. Most of what I heard is that "lead exposure | above zero is significant" and "if you're living near an | airport, especially one serving smaller plans, you are being | exposed". | gunfighthacksaw wrote: | I remember the UK in the 90s/00s had unleaded written on the | pump too, but there was no leaded option. | | Actually, I think I have a vague memory pre-millennium of | there being leaded pumps (typically red handle vs the green | unleaded) | screye wrote: | Has widespread use of lead been exclusive to the US ? I'd imagine | that there are other countries which still haven't transitioned | off lead, and that they can be used as control. Alternately, are | there states that never embraced widespread lead use and if they | can be used as a control too ? | | Some also attribute the removal of lead to substantial decrease | in violence over the last few decades. So, I am not surprised | that the effect size here is so large. | | Might an impolite question to ask, but is there a known | correlation between IQ and propensity for physical violence ? | (controlled for socio economics and protected classes of course) | thinkcontext wrote: | > Has widespread use of lead been exclusive to the US ? | | No. Leaded gasoline was used throughout the world. Leaded paint | on the other hand was in some cases banned in other countries | 50 years before it was in the US. | sacrosancty wrote: | > Might an impolite question to ask | | > controlled for [...] protected classes | | I hope not. This fear of not fitting in with contemporary | politics is toxic to science. Social science is already badly | broken and is filled with it. If somebody can't be objective | because of fear of being labelled a heretic for not deferring | to the law to decide which factors must be controlled for, they | have no business doing science on that topic. Are you aware | that genetic information is a protected class in America, | despite the fact that it influences IQ? Why would you | arbitrarily control for that, but not for other factors that | influence IQ such as maternal care? It's complicated to decide | what to control for, but the _law_ is absolutely not the place | go to make that decision. | thenerdhead wrote: | We're definitely smarter now though and know better...or are we? | sgfgross wrote: | In case anyone is interested in the article itself: | https://oa.mg/work/10.1073/pnas.2118631119 | veltas wrote: | Didn't we have a previous study debunking this research on | statistical grounds? | hash03x wrote: | dionidium wrote: | What has never made sense to me is that the IQ effects aren't | equally visible across income/class groups, but we know there | are millions of wealthy people living in old housing in Boston | and NYC and Providence and so on. Lead levels in those houses | must be just as high, right? But those kids aren't experiencing | the same IQ effects. Surely this suggests that something else | is a bigger factor? | ivan888 wrote: | I imagine frequency and budget of renovations in older | housing influences the degree of lead exposure from paint. | Poorer neighborhoods may have housing units with largely | original (or old enough to contain lead) paint, whereas | richer neighborhoods would have a larger proportion of high | quality renovations which would eliminate some of the lead | paint | LordDragonfang wrote: | Wealthy people are more likely to have good childcare | (nannies, after school activities) where kids spend less time | unsupervised and able to, for example, eat paint chips. For | that matter, stuff like chipped paint is less likely to be | left in a deteriorating state by more affluent owners. | dionidium wrote: | Just as a matter of common sense, what are we talking about | when we talk about "eating paint chips?" Does eating a | couple flakes lower your IQ in a measurable way? Seems very | unlikely. What are we talking about, then? Do we imagine | kids to be shoveling paint chips into their mouth day after | day? Surely that's a pretty small number of children (if | it's any), nowhere near enough to suggest generational, | cohort-level effects. So what is it that we really think is | happening here? | bsedlm wrote: | there's this thing about the modern internet era which makes it | possible to find a study to debunk (or support) pretty much any | idea/theory you want. | | specially in the midst of an information/propaganda war | | all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think in | the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which supports | what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a good tactic | anymore | Verdex wrote: | > all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think | in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which | supports what I already believe?". | | Hmm. | | It looks like you're ascribing to the above comment the | thought process: "I'm only looking for studies which only | tell me that which I believe." However, the above comment | doesn't seem to be saying this. They thought there was more | to the story and are querying for the rest of the story. | | Meanwhile, you seem to ascribe to yourself the quality of not | searching for data that supports what you already believe. | | However, it seems to me that searching for more studies (even | if you're only looking for data that confirms your bias) is a | better outcome than assuming (without more proof) that people | who aren't you are thinking "the bad way"TM. | | I mean, if you had searched for additional proof to discover | that what you already thought was true about above commenter | (ie they were thinking the bad way) you might have discovered | that they in fact were simply looking for additional context | due to recalling past events that indicated that there might | have been additional context. | austinjp wrote: | Indeed. One issue we have today is a glut of scientific | information, some of which is high quality and some isn't. | Also, some will later be shown to be false, and some correct, | in any given context. | | It's not enough to say simply that a study exists (even if it | is a large meta-study); it's necessary to actually read it in | full and critically appraise it. | | But ain't nobody got time for that.... which is a problem! | fallat wrote: | If they don't have time to read the paper, they aren't | investing in the argument enough, and at that point you | know the other person is not open to being wrong, which | then you respect and end the conversation. | veltas wrote: | I'm sort of asking if anyone remembers this as well, was | posted on HN, I probably could find it myself but since I | don't have the time right now I thought I'd make the comment! | rootusrootus wrote: | It also does not help that many scientific papers suffer from | a reproducibility problem. | | But I hate to sink into defeatism and assume that there is no | such thing as objective fact unless I do the experiments | myself (and get them right...). | pessimizer wrote: | > I have decided not to think in the way you just did e.g. | "where's that study which supports what I already believe?" | | I'm not sure you have if you immediately assume what veltas | believes because they're asking to be reminded about another | study. Seems like projection. | | My personal opinion is that it's less noble to close your | ears to new information once you've found the information | that you prefer than it is to look for more information when | you don't like the information you have. | bogwog wrote: | This is nothing new, it's a defect of humanity that has | existed forever. It's also a problem that has been solved | through the scientific method and peer review. | | It goes against our nature, so it's a skill that needs to be | learned and practiced. This means that the average person | isn't going to have those skills, and even people with those | skills aren't all going to be experts. | | What is new is that the internet is leading every random | idiot to believe that they're an expert on everything. So | finding a link to a "study" with a title that sounds like it | supports your point (without even reading it, and definitely | without critically evaluating it) is seen as _doing | research_. | | > all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think | in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which | supports what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a | good tactic anymore | | You might be victim to what I described above. Finding a | study that already supports what you believe was never a | "good tactic". In fact, calling it a tactic makes it seem as | if it's an adversarial thing where there's a winner and a | loser. It's not. Facts and truths aren't partisan (ignoring | them is) | meowkit wrote: | +1 to this response. | | To add, playing a paper like a trading card is essentially | an appeal to authority[1]. | | Readers, you have to build mental a model and use causal | mechanism and research studies as evidence, not proof. | Accept the models which are stronger than the ones you | have, even if they make you uncomfortable or conflict with | your preconceived notions. Its ok to flip between | conclusions as new evidence presents itself. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority | paulpauper wrote: | a meta study showed the effect to be minimal to zero | | https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/08/02/the-effects-of-lead... | scythe wrote: | That's focused on crime, not IQ/cognition. Crime is not a | purely mental phenomenon, so it would likely have a weaker | correlation with lead even if the effect is real. The blog | post _does_ try to dissemble on the IQ question, but the only | evidence presented shows a significant effect of lead (contra | the blogger 's thesis). | frazbin wrote: | the whataboutism is strong in this thread.. people talking about | sugar and marijuana. Really? | mardifoufs wrote: | Here I thought the word "whataboutism" could not be possibly be | more overused. You realize that drawing parallels in a | discussion is not whataboutism? | pessimizer wrote: | Whataboutism is when you discuss the content instead of just | bickering over the headline. | jodrellblank wrote: | Whataboutism is not every time someone says "what about X". | It's when you are asked a question and you dodge it by saying | "What about X". e.g. | | "Lead is bad for health", "sugar is bad for health", "marijuana | is bad for health". Not whataboutism. | | "Mr Senator what's with your taxpayer funded holiday?", "What | about YOUR broken election promises?". Whataboutism. | | > " _Whataboutism or whataboutery is a variant of the tu quoque | logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent 's | position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or | disproving the argument_" - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-08 23:00 UTC)