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The correlation between lead and IQ has been looked at from a couple of different angles, and there does seem to be a correlation. It’s not large, granted, and there’s a greater correlation between lead and violent criminals than IQ, but IQ does seem to be affected by the amount of lead in the environment.

Certainly, I don’t think it reasonable to expect dramatic increases, since lead only really hit hard in the 50s and 60s, and tapered off in the 70s with the elimination of leaded gas. The Bell Curve pretty clearly shows that the black IQ curve is substantially to the left of other ethnicities, and so even removing lead isn’t going to fix that, but I think it’s fair to say that lead is going to have an impact on cognition; any amount of lead above the minimum at which it can have a biological effect is going to be deleterious. It’s also pretty clear that lead pollution was more concentrated in inner cities in the 50s-70s where blacks were most populous, so there would be a greater number of blacks impacted by lead-related issues.

I don’t say this to excuse blacks, but I’m pretty confident that environmental lead had an effect on blacks.

Plus, my comment was sarcasm anyway, so it supports your posit about the Left and their “eating paint chips” meme.