Posted on 03/08/2022 5:31:41 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates.
The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 1996 — the year the U.S. banned gas containing lead.
Overall, the researchers from Florida State University and Duke University found, childhood lead exposure cost America an estimated 824 million points, or 2.6 points per person on average.
Certain cohorts were more affected than others. For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust.
The team behind the study used gas consumption data, population estimates and other data to calculate that as of 2015, more than 170 million Americans had had blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter in their early childhood years.
Lead is a neurotoxin, and no amount of it is safe. Currently, 3.5 micrograms per deciliter is the reference value for blood lead levels to be considered high; the acceptable amount was once higher.
Principal study author Michael McFarland, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University and a faculty member of the university’s Center for Demography and Population Health, called the number of people affected by lead exposure “staggering.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
AMEN!!EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE SKIN IN THE GAME!
Here we go...gas bad stories to justify purposely high prices.
81 million at least
If this has any merit whatsoever, a true scientist would have sought to answer the question as to why consequent generations have been dumber.
I do not believe that it is merely a generational gap I experience when exposed to conversations of youths, even 30-somethings.
I joke about STUPID-19, but it began long before the virus. This study has major flaws.
It only affected Democrats for some reason.
Absolutely right! In grad school, my econometrics prof told about a 99.9% correlation between cotton crops in the South and rainfall in Iceland. They looked for the reason and studied everything from the Gulf Stream to the Jet Stream and could not explain it. Without a testable hypothesis, correlation is just that...an observable relation with no underpinning theory to support it.
Reason #211 the Left uses to demonize fossil fuels.
Meat will receive its fair share of criticism.
RINO is just another brand name of leftism.
Why has driver IQ steadily declined since the switch to unleaded?
See! ... It wasn't the post WWII Public "Schools" after all, AND, that's the reason the Boomer Marxist Liberals are stupid, not Liberalism.
We've been wrong all this time.
Bet I know which half.
Waiting to hear how minorities were more impacted than whites.
So that explains the reason why I am the way I am. I guess eating paint chips as a child didn’t help either.
How it could be? Lead is all natural, vegan, no carbs, no gluten!
I’d even go so far as to say that, if you don’t pay any federal income taxes (51% of the population don’t), you don’t get to vote in federal elections. Same for state and local taxes. Same reason: No skin in the game, why should you have a say in how the money is spent?
“Correlation is not causality.”
In this case, it most assuredly is, as in ingesting arsenic correlates with poisoning.
Heck. We all know education has always been flawed in many ways. I was a military dependent and went to 10 different schools K-12 by my count, so I suffered by bouncing between the different techniques being tried out by various school districts.
But back then, they did not have the astonishing level of BS we see now, even apart from the sexuality and mainstreaming of homosexuality as “teaching”.
I am particularly troubled by the relativistic teaching of history now. And the lack of civics education...since I count what is taught now as indoctrination.
The Ministry of Education has done more to dumb down the populace.
That explains a lot...
There was a science fiction book by a famous author about everyone suddenly becoming more intelligent. It turned out there was a space cloud with intelligence dampener properties the earth had been passing through. I just can’t remember the name or author because I was born before 1996!
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