Biden announces proposal to replace all lead water service lines in US within 10 years
The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.
“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.
I've long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades. Lead that accumulates in the bones over one's lifetime leaches out into the bloodstream when one becomes elderly, like calcium does with osteoporosis. Cognitive issues and rage are associated with lead exposure.
That's exactly what has happened.
Imagine, if you will, a country that has a lot of land area, which uses personal ground transport to grt around. Imagine if, for decades, those personal transport machines used large, ineffcient engines that ran on a fuel that caused aerosolized lead to be blown into the atmosphere at a staggering rate?
Do not forget lead paint, pipes and crystal.
Also more recently, people who will cycle 1000 rounds of cheap ammo through sixteen different guns as a hobby and then spread that lead contamination all through their car and home, and they'll do this every week for years.
Shooting as a hobby isn't new, but the volume and frequency people are doing it has definitely gone way up in some parts of the US in the past 30 years.
I remember watching a grand thumb (gun nut YouTuber) video where he found out about the lead poisoning and started wearing an N95 mask at the range.
He switched to lead free ammo IIRC. His buddies made fun of him.
I hadn't thought of that one.
Imagine, if you will, a three by seven inch wooden frame -- a frame that's a gateway to a world of imagination. Wipe your mind on the welcome mat. You're about to enter...
The Scary Door.
It turns out it's man.
That's a tiny door
I'm not sure about that, I've had lead poisoning for thirty years and I'm still not stupid enough to support those assholes.
it's dose dependant, and while your particular neurological effects may be different, in population studies for almost every country where lead has been banned, there is a direct relationship to violent crimes as well. Lead gasoline use goes up, crime rate goes up. Lead gasoline stops, and as the lead is measured to leave the environment, the violent crime goes down.
Intelligence is only one possible thing affected. It's also highly associated with emotional impulsiveness.
Oh I'm sure. I have many of those issues, but then I also did before I was poisoned and treated for it. How much it affected me is hard to say though overall because I've got adhd and have always been impulsive.. My temper has been an issue since I was born, so I have a lot of practice suppressing it.
To me it seems there's a lot more at play including lack of critical thinking skills and not just intelligence when it comes to their support.
How did you find out you had lead poisoning?
I burned my leg by getting splashed with a bit of molten metal when I was working at a metal foundry when I was around 21 years old. My family doc tending to it ran some tests and next thing I knew I was on medication for it... some kind of horse sized pills that were nearly impossible to keep down.
Late edit: Chelation therapy I guess it's called.
People typically can see a ~3 IQ point deficit with long term lead poisoning.
I guess thankfully I had a couple to spare :)
I worry about this a little bit for myself.
I was just shy of twenty years old when leaded gas sales ended in California.
So I definitely grew up with lots of exposure. Hope it doesn't dement me out in my final couple of decades.
I worked on a community gardening project in the city when I was in grad school. We had an ordinary urban residential lot and wanted to plant a community vegetable garden.
The soil was so incredibly contaminated with lead from 70 years old leaded gasoline that we had to scrape off the top 6 ft of topsoil and send it to a toxic waste dump, and the replace all of that. Then we built raised garden beds to mitigate lead uptake in the plants.
Most cities in the world are still heavily contaminated and lead will never go away.