NBC News: Lead in gasoline tied to over 150 million excess cases of mental health disorders, study suggests

[Dennis Donovan]

NBC News - Lead in gasoline tied to over 150 million excess cases of mental health disorders, study suggests

Exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas, which was phased out in 1996, resulted in anxiety, depression and ADHD symptoms in generations of people, researchers found.



Dec. 4, 2024, 6:01 PM EST
By Elizabeth Chuck

Exposure to lead in gasoline during childhood resulted in many millions of excess cases of psychiatric disorders over the last 75 years, a new study estimates.

Lead was banned from automobile fuel in 1996. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, looked at its lasting impact in the U.S. by analyzing childhood blood lead levels from 1940 to 2015. According to the findings, the national population experienced an estimated 151 million excess mental health disorders attributable to exposure to lead from car exhaust during children’s early development.

The exposure made generations of Americans more depressed, anxious, inattentive or hyperactive, the study says.

The researchers — a group from Duke University, Florida State University and the Medical University of South Carolina — found that the exposure also lowered people’s capacity for impulse control and made them more inclined to be neurotic.

Lead-associated mental health and personality differences were most pronounced for people born between 1966 and 1986, according to the study. Of that group, the greatest lead-linked mental illness burden was for Generation Xers born between 1966 and 1970, coinciding with peak use of leaded gasoline in the mid-1960s and mid-1970s.

People born during those years “can’t go back in time and change that,” said Aaron Reuben, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar in neuropsychology at Duke and the Medical University of South Carolina.

/snip

Explains a lot... 🤔

[TheProle]

1. Jesus. That's horrible. K&R

[Irish_Dem]

2. Lead causes brain damage in children.

[durablend]

3. TSF: "Need to add it back. Make Gasoline Great Again"

[roamer65]

4. Lead plus increased CO2 equals MAGAts.

[Hekate]

5. Lead pipes. Lead paint. Leaded gasoline. We've known for a very, very long time that it damages

…children’s brains and even correlates with a rise in crime in contaminated neighborhoods.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

10. They knew what was up when they were poisoning the earth with "ethyl" gasoline

And they tried to ruin anyone who blew the whistle. Of course, DuPont was in on it.

This is a great little essay on the subject:

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/

The Ethyl-Poisoned Earth
Chronically catastrophic chemist Thomas Midgley accidentally poisons the world with a neurotoxin, and Clair Patterson tries to stop him.

At the turn of the twentieth century, as the age of automobiles was afoot, the newfangled gasoline-powered internal combustion engine began to reach the limitations of the fuel that fed it. As higher-compression designs were tried, an engine-wrecking condition known as “knock” or “ping” would invariably develop. Though they didn’t know it at the time, the noisy destruction was caused when the increased heat and pressure prompted the air/fuel mixture in the cylinder to detonate all at once as opposed to an orderly burn. In spite of this problem, there was a demand for high-compression designs since they provided increased horsepower and fuel efficiency. The latter was particularly appealing in light of America’s forecasted fuel famine.

………….

The Ethyl corporation allegedly offered him lucrative employment in exchange for more favorable research results, but Dr. Patterson declined. For a time thereafter, Patterson found himself ostracized from government and corporate sponsored research projects, including the a National Research Council panel on atmospheric lead contamination. The Ethyl corporation had powerful friends, including a Supreme Court justice, members of the US Public Health Service, and the mighty American Petroleum Institute. Nevertheless, Patterson was unrelenting, and the resulting rise in scientific and public awareness eventually led to the Clean Air Act of 1970, and a staged phaseout of leaded gasoline. Ethyl and Du Pont sued the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that “actual harm” must be demonstrated rather than just “significant risk,” an effort which successfully prolonged lead additives’ life by another decade.

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[Wicked Blue]

6. Didn't the Roman Empire have problems with lead leaching into drinking water?

Cripes, are we ever slow learners.

[Aristus]

7. Yeah. Roman engineers used lead for water pipes.

Even though the Romans were aware of a link between lead exposure and cognitive deficits.

[BannonsLiver]

9. And here I thought it was the nanoplastics

[SharonAnn]

11. That's coming!

[jmowreader]

12. They still have this problem near airports and racetracks

The only two things you can use leaded gasoline for now are race cars and piston engine airplanes.

In 2007 NASCAR changed from leaded to unleaded gasoline. Here's an interesting article:

https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/3716345-how-nascars-switch-to-unleaded-gas-boosted-test-scores-near-racetracks/

What happened was two researchers who are also NASCAR fans studied the FCAT scores in schools within 10 miles of Daytona International Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway - the two tracks in Florida that hold NASCAR races - and learned that the FCAT scores went up over 4 points after NASCAR got rid of the lead in its race fuel. They learned that one NASCAR event run with leaded gasoline in the cars puts 10 kilograms of lead into the atmosphere, and air currents carry the lead far from the track.

There are five manufacturers of racing fuel in the United States: Sunoco Race Fuels, VP Racing Fuel, Fuel Factory, Renegade Racing Fuel and Torco Racing Fuel. ALL of them sell unleaded gasoline. There are exactly two professional racing series anywhere in the world that still use leaded gasoline - the NHRA's Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle classes. A lot of Sportsman drag racing still uses leaded fuel, but the guys who run for a living are mostly burning either unleaded gas or something that isn't gasoline like methanol or nitromethane.

[Deep State Witch]

13. Wow

That's like, how many millions of Americans? Including me and my husband.

The other thing is, did it change people's DNA so that they're now passing these issues down to their kids?

[intheflow]

14. Genes being changed and passed down could explain Gen Z's anxiety, too.

Not wholly, as they have lots of reasons to be anxious in our socio-political climate, but anxiety genes could also have been passed down. 🙁

[MineralMan]

15. Correlation Does Not Equal Causation.

Whenever you see some research that "suggests" something, generally that suggestion, as in this case, is based on some correlation or another. Demonstrating that one thing causes another, though, requires a different approach to the research.

Notice that I'm not saying that lead additives in gasoline does not cause that effect. I can't say that, either, since we have no proof of either case.

We need to be careful about accepting conclusions that are merely "suggested" by some correlation between two things. Often, the causation is never demonstrated.

[Faux pas]

16. Yikes

And