Remember that lead and read rhyme, just as lead and read, but lead and read do not.
Back when paint tasted good!
That 70s scientists hair is spot on. Nice!
Don’t forget a good dose of hookworm
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/
wow, a parasite that makes you dumb and tired
found around half the world, affecting millions of people. usually in regions where people are stereotypically dumb… effectively reinforcing the steriotype. aand it can be fixed, it’s just not done because half assing is the best we can do with rockefellers and co.
and I’ve never heard of it before at all
thanks
Yeah, I found it really interesting, especially the bit where you can get it from walking in the sand barefoot
fuckin nice😎 new friends
🪱🪱🪱
Hookworm is one of the main reasons vets proscribe things like heart guard to dogs. Puppies that look real bloated often have a hookworm or roundworm infection.
Boomers are missing 800,000,000 IQ points as a consequence of lead poisoning.
I’m sure mainlining right wing propaganda for their entire lives didn’t help much either.
Plus all the DDT boomers inhaled when the government just sprayed it carelessly around everywhere.
I wonder if this collective loss of reasoning skills resulted in any extra wars, as a parallel to the lead-crime hypothesis.
I’ve noticed that a new thing zoomers are afraid of is hose water
I remember it tasting kinda like metalic basement smell, and basement smell was actually mold.
It wasn’t deadly but probably wasn’t great either.
Hose water tastes nasty. Esp. if the hose has been sitting in the sun. Nothing like that sour tang of plastic!
You didn’t let it run for a bit before drinking??
If I’m dying of thirst sure I’ll drink through a garden hose without a second thought. If I am thirsty I’ll wait until I’m near a tap. I don’t understand the weird obsession people have with proving hose water is clean. It’s like yeah I’d eat an apple off the ground if I really needed it, but if I have the option for a cleaner apple within 50 feet, I’ll take that option.
Toilet water is also clean. Still I wouldn’t drink out of the toilet.
I meant your “especially if it has been sitting in the sun” thing
Genuinely speaking, low level lead poisoning is linked to increased aggression, criminal behavior and lack of empathy. It may be directly tied to the reason we so rarely see serial killers now, but they were relatively prevalent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. This is at the height of pollution related to leaded gasoline. It might explain Boomer and Xer MAGA conservatives too.
It may be directly tied to the reason we so rarely see serial killers now
They are still enough around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_in_the_United_States
serial killers just don’t make the news…for fucks make mass school shootings don’t even make the news anymore
What school shooting hasn’t made the news?
How about the one that happened the same day Charlie Kirk was killed?
fair enough, should have said “stay in the news longer than a day”
considering there are like a 1000 of them per year now, i’d say there’s a chance some do not.
Ah, is this that claim from Freakomics that they made right after explaining that correlation doesn’t imply causation?
They found enough causation to ban lead in gasoline despite lobbying against the ban from both lead and oil companies.
Correlation not implying causation is not the same as correlation not implying relation. When data correlates, that means that there is a liklihood that there is some connection. For any two correlating datasets, there are 3 explanations, 1) coincidence 2) causation 3) relation to a shared casual link. Figuring out which it is just requires more data, experimentation, and/or an understanding of the mechanisms of their relation. We use correlation of datasets as a guide, and even as a proof of theory given enough experimentation and correlating data to show a casual link all the time in science.
I think that the liklihood that leaded gasoline is connected to the rates of serial killers and other forms of violent crime is high not just because of the correlation, but because of that and the fact that we have studies showing how lead poisoning can effect people’s behavior. We know it can effect behavior, and we know that lead levels in the air peaked in the mid 70s before leaded gasoline was banned. It is not a leap to jump to the hypothesis that leaded gasoline causing high lead levels in the air from pollution may have effected human behavior. And then the data of serial killings and violent crime actually showing a correlation with those lead levels strengthens that hypothesis. I wouldn’t say that it’s proof, far from it. But I do think it’s likely the truth.
When data correlates, that means that there is a liklihood that there is some connection.
Yup. There’s a reason it’s called co-relation.
Right, I’m just venting my old frustration with that specific book because they only used the correlation as “proof”, rather than indeed looking at more causal signals like studies on lead poisoning.
It is certainly also true that correlation doesn’t mean that there’s no causation, even in cases were there are no other experiments yet to support a causal relationship.
What explains the Milennial and GenZ Trump bros?
Here on Lemmy they don’t count. Anyone who sucks is a boomer. Actually, those guys are also boomers.
Only explanation is lead.
Here on Lemmy it seems to be kids mostly, going by the memes. I put it down to limited experience.
Never fear, time will sort that and then we’ll be able to tell the smart ones from the average…
The internet
Is this why we can’t have nice things?
Blasted interwebs…
While it can be comforting to find something external to blame, assholes have always existed. You don’t have to look farther than human nature to explain their behavior. In fact, doing so can in some ways prevent us from fully understanding the problem. We can’t combat it effectively if we don’t understand it.
Reducing it down to a vague concept of “human nature” is shortsighted and ignores the science into environmental factors that affect human behavior on a societal level. There is no one, singular “human nature”. We are products of our environment and our upbringing.
They never said assholes don’t exist. They said there were more cases of violence and serial murder due to the increased level of lead exposure.
You don’t have to look further than the surface, no, but neglecting to do so is just myopic and willfully ignorant behavior. It’s hilarious that you then end it by saying we can’t fight it if we don’t understand it. We can’t understand it if we don’t study it and the factors that influence it.
Cool, so all we need to do is keep lead exposure to a minimum and in a generation fascism won’t exist, right? If you’re agreeing with the statement “lead exposure explains Boomer and Gen X MAGA conservatives” then something along those lines must be what you’re trying to say.
And you said I’m oversimplifying things, sheesh.
The drinking from the garden hose thing is just stupid. I picture people who think there is something dangerous about this as denizens of the world in ideocracy.
The joke shows a hose, but we know the real issue were the lead pipes.
Not even that where I lived. Unless of course the lead was up stream. You would have got the lead in any case.
You’re body
Haha, perfect! Man, it’s the little things.
I mean… It’s still technically correct. You are body. 🤷♂️
No YOU ARE BODY!
We are all body!
Add nice leaded gasoline puffs to that leaded water, and you get big beautiful lead poisoning
Fun fact, basic ethanol works excellent as a fuel additive to reduce knocking, but because it’s already a well known compound, fuel companies couldn’t patent it as an additive, that’s why they invented leaded petrol instead, so they could patent it.
(E: For full completeness, it should probably also be noted that potential legal difficulties surrounding reliably obtaining or producing industrial quantities of Ethanol alcohol in prohibition era America probably also played some role, but the patent thing was definitely the main reason)
So how did that work, did every fuel company have a patent for lead additives? Then this means the patents didn’t stop any one of them from having these additives, which is the supposed function of patents.
And if any one of them got the exclusive patent, the others could just use ethanol, which didn’t happen.
I got a solid few years of leaded gas fumes in me when I was born. I’m fine!
Tap for spoiler
No, no I am not.
I was 13 when leaded gas finally went away. I am fine.
Now kids growing up in houses with peeling or oxidized lead paint OTOH… Ooooo, that shit killed and maimed…
and we still have lead water pipes all across the country…
We just got a letter from our water company that the part of our outside line they own may or may not be lead-based. And that they are not sure about the part we own. They also have no current plans to investigate or replace the part they own unless we decide to replace the part we own. Then we need to call them to coordinate the installation.
Unbelievable.
It’s very rare anymore that you find lead pipes in houses - even old ones.
Modern water supply pressures being what they are means that the pipes mostly have failed. Going on almost 60 years now since the “old school” leaded piping was made and used. Lead was used because it lasted longer then iron or copper, - but not THAT much longer.
Leaded pipes usually would get brittle and crack.
I grew up in a few places where the pipes were old and the standing rule was ALWAYS let the water run for a few minutes before you got some to drink, as you were bringing in fresh water that wasn’t going to have much leachate in it.
Also, the cracks in the lead pipes would get bacteria in them and the water would just smell and taste metallic.
You can have copper pipes and the solder to join it will have lead in it. Some of that still exists because it wasn’t until the late 80’s/ early 90’s that all lead was finally banned from plumbing materials.
After the mid-60’s that was where the main “new plumbing” source of lead leachate into water supplies in homes came from - not so much pipes anymore so much as the solder used in valves, faucets and joints.
Thing is, you can STILL buy leaded plumbers solder (50/50 its called), but it’s used for HVAC, sheet metal applications and wastewater - NOT supply.
You’re more likely to come across old leaded paint in houses that long ago had the plumbing redone. The ceilings, walls and trim - well that just got covered over with a nice new coat of paint.
My gawd! This whole situation makes so much more sense to me now.
I wonder what unforeseen consequences await our micro plastic brains!
There’s likely very little, if any, plastic in our brains:
If I remember the episode correctly, the study looked at secondary chemicals in the brain, but there are other explanations for them, which are more plausible.
Lead poisoning
Ain’t nothing wrong with drinking from the water hose
Well, no, but its not the hose that’s the problem - it was the lead pipes.
Edit: apparently the hoses had lead too
Also many cheap hoses have lead in them that leach into the water. Lead in hoses help keep them bendy in the cold.
The devil we always were taught about was the leaded paint that was peeling and oxidizing on the ceilings. Lead white to this day is still a nightmare for anyone doing restoration work on older homes. Not even painter’s bane - calcimite (calcium white) is as problematic and THAT shit makes me want to scream and pull my hair out when I encounter it.
And public water is even worse now in most of America.
Citation needed.
