Toxic lead has cast a long shadow over our health. A new study published Wednesday shows that exposure to lead in the 20th century severely damaged the brains of Americans, contributing to many mental illnesses that otherwise would not have been diagnosed.
Scientists at Duke University and Florida State University conducted the study, adding to their previous research on the effects of lead on our health. He said that childhood exposure to lead—especially in the decades it was found in gasoline—has contributed to 151 million cases of mental illness among Americans over the past 75 years. These findings suggest that lead exposure is more dangerous to humans than we know.
Automakers began adding lead to gasoline in the 1920s, in an effort to reduce engine damage. Lead oil eventually became the single largest source of fuel for the American population, reaching its peak in the 1960s. But while scientists have long known that high levels of lead exposure were bad for us, it became firmly established by the 1970s that even small amounts of lead can be harmful, especially to the brains of growing children.
It will take many years for the oil to be completely removed (1996 in the US, but 2020 any country in the world) and other common things, however. And scientists are still trying to quantify the subtle but significant health effects of the continued presence of lead in people’s lives in the 20th century, including researchers who have conducted a recent study.
The team of previous survey in 2022 He calculated that nearly half of all Americans alive in 2015 were exposed to lead-related problems as children, based on population surveys and known levels of leaded fuel use in the country. In addition, they estimated that this advance lowered the IQ of Americans by 824 million, or about 3 points per person (those born in the 1960s could lose up to 6 points).
In their new study, the researchers decided to examine the frequency of head movements. They also presented their previous data on lead levels in the American population along with other data that estimated the amount of lead needed to increase the risk of various mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, and attention deficit disorder. From there, he developed the vulnerability of Americans to mental illness, called the “general psychopathology factor”.
All in all, they thought that lead exposure, especially at the tip of leaded gasoline, added 602 million points to this risk for Americans living in 2015. . The most significant increases associated with lead were seen with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
“Early childhood exposure appears to have contributed greatly to the underappreciated prevalence of mental illness in the United States over the past century,” the researchers wrote in their article. printed Wednesday in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
While these findings are only estimates of how lead has harmed our mental health, this is far from the first study to blame lead for its pervasiveness in society. Another study said found evidence that high crime rates have fueled more crime in the 20th century by increasing people’s propensity for violent, anti-social behavior, for example. And given that there is no safe way to identify, the researchers say their math may be underestimating how advanced our brains are.
Lead levels in the environment are now much lower than they were in the 1960s. But there are pockets of the country where levels are higher than normal and sources that can lead to higher levels of lead exposure, such as waste water systems (visible during the rainy season) . The Flint Water Crisis) or old buildings built before 1978 that began to be painted.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2.5% of children between the ages of 1 and 5 are affected. very high speed of lead in their blood. And there are many parts of the world where lead laws are very lenient. The researchers mentioned the latest information from the UN It is estimated that approximately 800 million children, one-third of the world’s population, are currently exposed to high levels of lead.
Yes, there are undoubtedly many people still alive today who have suffered from mental illness caused by lead that would not have happened in a better world (not to mention the families or caregivers who have also been affected). So even though the worst harm from lead may be over, its damage will continue to be great for a long time.
Leave a Reply