Stuff You Should KnowThe people of Flint, MI were horrified to find their drinking water was poisoned with lead. As we learn more about lead's effects and realize how persistent it is, the more worrying it becomes. What makes lead so toxic? Find out in this classic episode.
Hey, friends, it's Joshuam For this week's SYSK Selects. I've chosen what makes Lead So Poisonous for twenty sixteen episode that was recorded around the time of the Flint Water crisis, which apparently is still going on. Sadly, this episode is one of those ones that's filled with science culture, history, all that stuff. So I hope you really like it. It's a good one.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's to my right. So this is the stuff you should know.
It's right recording in a new pop up restaurant called Jerry's Burrito Check.
Yeah, Jerry's eating a burrito right now, A frozen one. I guess right. You didn't make that from scratch fresh Jerry frozen burrito's fine with me, though, Yeah, some of them. Nothing wrong with any frozen burrito ever created.
Yeah, I mean there's this. They're very specific, you know. I mean, it's not like a fresh burrito, but it's its own thing that's still good.
Right, this should call it like a retete or something weird like that something that differentiate it. You know, I agree with you, man.
Yeah, but man, sometimes when that reefred bean pops out and burns your mouth, yeah, that's just the best.
You have a hole in your in your on your gums for a couple of days. Yeah.
I'll throw a little cheese on top too, to cool it in the oven. No, to melt on top.
Oh that's an enchilada then, Oh.
Not really.
I think the enchilada makes the it's the sauce, right, Yeah, okay, that's.
What I'll say, swimming in sauce.
All right, enchilada sauce.
This may be your best intro yet Oa Chuck.
We're talking about lead today, that's right. Do you know much about the Flint, Michigan lead poisoning scandal that happened I should say blemish.
Yeah. I posted about it on our Facebook call a couple of months ago and sort of was a part of a lively discussion there. But only from that and then this research.
Yeah, same here. I mean I was aware of it, kind of, I didn't understand the details.
Yeah, But for those of.
You who don't who don't know about the Flint, Michigan water poisoning, but Flint Michigan has faced a lot of problems since the auto industry went away, but one of them wasn't poor water quality. They actually, the people of Flint actually paid i think the highest rate or among the highest rates in the country to get their water. Their water was pumped from Lake hereon through Detroit, and Flint bought their water from Detroit.
Yeah, get that good, clean Detroit water.
Right, You know you're in a pickle when you're buying water from Detroit and that's the healthy water.
Yeah.
So they're building a new pipeline from Lake Huron that goes around Detroit, and Flint said we're going to get in on that action. And Detroit said, oh yeah, well we're can't linger contract. Rather than pay for a short term contract with Detroit, the emergency manager, the basically the emergency mayor appointed by the governor himself, said we're just going to tap into the Flint River.
Yeah. Not a good idea, as it turned out.
No, it's not because in Flint, Michigan, they were, among other places, something called Buick City. Buick City was a four hundred plus acre car manufacturing plant that made buicks, and it really heavily polluted the river. So much so that people in Flint, after just a few months of drinking this water from the tap, started losing their hair.
Well right away. They said, this looks and taste awful.
Right, It's tastes of chlorine. And the reason it tasted of chlorin is because there were e Coli break outbreaks that they had to like treat the water with chlorine. And then it also to some people it smelled like sulfury as well. It looked, but people started losing hair, started getting rashes. There there was one kid who had an autoimmune disease already. He just stopped growing, and it was it was bad news. But the people of Flint, the Flint government, and the Michigan Environmental Protection Division basically said no, we're following all the laws. Everything's fine with the water. Just go back to sleep. Flint and Flint did something different. A bunch of them taught themselves the science of like water and sanitation and the drinking water laws. They became basically citizen scientists, and they took it back to the Flint government and the state government and said, you guys are wrong. This is toxic water and we're being poisoned, and you have to do something about it, and they finally did well.
And I think the issue was don't play dumb. We know, you know, like why are you making us tell you exactly?
And they kept that. Apparently the company line was no that here's the science here, here the results of the tests. But the tests were terrible. And if you want to know all about it, there's a really really great article on five point thirty eight dot com called what went Wrong in Flint, and it just really chronicles everything very well. But the big problem with Flint isn't that there was chlorine in the water. It was that there was a bunch of lead in the water.
Yeah.
And the reason why there's a bunch of lead in the water is because there's lead pipes going to a lot of houses in Flint, and the water that was being pumped through those pipes was so corrosive that it was bringing a bunch of lead with it and poisoning the city of Flint for months.
Yeah. And the reason people use lead in pipes is because it's not corrosive. Corrosive, that's how coros the water was. Yeah, exactly. That really says something, it really does, And I guess we'll loop back later and talk about the lawsuits and all that stuff. Sure that sound good.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea, kind of bookend it. But let's talk about lead itself, like, what's the problem with lead? Where did it come from? And that whole idea of using lead pipes is nothing new either, It's actually pretty old, to tell you the truth.
Uh yeah, lad Well, the Romans, of course, were the first to do almost everything, either Asians or Romans.
Sure, well, I don't know Africa, that's true. Yeah, so basically everybody except except Europe as the migration expanded exactly, And don't forget all the innovations going on in meso America as well.
Shout out to anyone who came before us. But it's been going on since ancient times. Romans using lead as lead piping for sewage draining and carrying water, even stored water and containers lined with lead. And in fact, this is pretty interesting. I think the English word for plumbing and the chemical symbol pb that is led, comes from the Latin word plumb bumb. Now plumb bumb is is that plumber's crack?
Oh nice? If it wasn't it is officially now.
You know, my friend Eddie. His young daughter asked him what plumbers crack? What was the other day and he said, I said, what did you tell her? And he said, well, you know told her what it was. He said, sometimes plumbers they bend over a lot because pipes are below you, and sometimes their pants sag a little. Then you see their butt crack. Yeah, and she went, oh, okay.
The only thing I take issue with is the use of the words.
Sometimes yeah, right all the times.
Other than that is a great explanation.
So the Latin plumb bomb, which means lead.
Yeah, which that has been mysterious to me for many decades. PEB doesn't make any sense, Like why would they call it PB?
Yeah, it's peani.
Lead right, and PB is you'll find it on the periodic table. And the reason you'll find it on the periodic table is because lead is an element, a heavy metal, and it has all sorts of properties that make it very desirable.
Yeah, really unique too, although.
Super super toxic as well.
Find Yeah, it's not often you can find something that is super malleable and soft but also strong and dense.
Exactly, which makes lead perfect for water pipes. Yeah, because it's also it also resists corrosion, Like you said, so you can run water through it, and as long as the water is not super bad, the the lead won't rust. It will leach lead into the water, but it still won't rust, right, right. So it's also not very good at conducting electricity, which makes lead very useful for other things like soldering electrical connections. The electrical connection will remain the thing that transmits the current, the lead won't. It's pretty awesome.
Yeah, did you say soldier solder? Solder? Yeah, never heard it pronounce that way.
How do you say it, solder solder? You gotta say that l.
I think the el silent unless it's regional.
Maybe regional regional to my brain, I think solder.
You said that because you're from Toedo.
Right. So the use of the use of leg goes back even before the Romans. Actually, but it first appeared mostly in art like lead paint.
Yeah, it wasn't like it They described in the articles a novelty, and it was apparently it makes colors more vibrant and it's less corrosive, which is why you still, even in the United States, see lead paint on street signs because it's less corrosive. Oh really, Yeah, that's what they say. It's still used on signs.
Supposedly up until as recently as the nineties, and it may still be going on depending on the country that it's produced.
In.
The ink on the outside of a plastic bread bag frequently has lead in it, or it used to, really, and it wasn't a problem unless the somebody kept the bread bag and turned it inside out to store food in. Then that food leached the lead out of the ink. Oh wow, it was actually like a big problem for a while.
Huh.
Well, I'm not sure that it is anymore. I couldn't find anything recent. The most recent thing I saw was nineteen ninety one saying that, yeah, it still happens, right.
Well, it's less expensive as a paint, which is another reason, and the colors are more vivid apparently. But this hasn't been a problem in the US for a while. But in China they still use a lot of lead in paint, and in two thousand and seven there were massive recalls for everything from Dora the Explorer toys to Sesame Street toys due to the fact that they had lead paint on them and little kids put everything in their mouths, including their toys because they're big dummies and they end up eating lead, which is a big problem. So there was a massive recall of Chinese products in nineteen ninety seven because of this.
No, it was two thousand and seven.
What I say, ninety seven?
Yeah, you're hearkening back even further to the Urban Dance Squad days.
Yeah, did you look them up?
No?
Oh, man, you're missing out.
I don't think that's true.
Really, Yeah, why just because I like them now?
I remember them vaguely. Oh yeah, it wasn't like i'd never heard of the Urban Dance Squad. No, you have good taste of music.
Mental flows for the globe. Great, like a legitimately great album.
Of all right, I'll look it up. I'll look it up.
It's just weird that you say. You think you're not missing out?
No, No, because I mean again, I remember Urban Dance Squad for some reason. I put them in line with like Spin Doctors in three eleven.
No, No, well, you know what I mean. Three eleven could be slightly compared because they were kind of a rock rap group, but they were Dutch. Urban Dance Squad was yeah, oh okay, so that makes them cool in here.
Right, automatically. Yeah, somebody who just picked this up is like, what are they talking about?
I know Enchilada's Urban Dance Squad. So lead paint in the United States is well, it's still an issue in some ways because older houses still have it. But yeah, as of nineteen seventy eight, they said no more, get the light out. That's right, and they define it as any paint or surface coating that contains lead equal or exceeding one milligram per square centimeter.
Yeah. So basically in nineteen seventy eight, it said, if you're going to manufacture something for somebody's home that people are generally going to come in contact with, most people don't come in contact with street signs.
Yeah, it's the deal, right.
Then you can't have lead in it. But again, any house built pre nineteen seventy eight, and there's plenty of them out there, very likely has lead paint in it. It also probably has lead pipes. Yeah, and there's a lot of lead around us all over the place in places you wouldn't even think, like there's lead and leaded glass like a glass, no, really like a glass you like you might be using, you conceivably could be drinking lead out of it.
Oh, but you don't drink out of leaded glass.
Sure. Yeah. They use it to make regular plain old dumb glass in a more like crystal. It gives it like a ping when when you tap it. It makes it the reflection a lot sharper. It also lowers the melting point, so you know, if you put it in the oven, it doesn't like right, but it's conceivably bad for you.
You know, who was on it long before the United States government. Federal government was the city of Baltimore. In nineteen fifty one, they banned lead pigment for interior paint, very smart for their housing. And since the fifties it had kind of been phased out in different parts of the country. And then in nineteen seventy one we finally got the Federal Lead Poisoning Prevention Act, and then it took seven years after that to fully ban the paint the paint lead paint.
Right. There's another big source of lead that was all over the place in the twentieth century, and that was in gasoline in cars. There was an additive in gasoline that was added to gasoline called tetra ethyl lead, right.
Yeah, you remember that, like you know, up with unleaded or fully leaded right.
And the reason that they added lead to gas was because there was a problem called knocking right where in a high performance engine, when the gas entered the ignition chamber, the combustion chamber, it may just get so amped up that it would combust, it would ignite before it was supposed to, and this would basically disrupt the movement of the pistons. Right when they did that, they knocked, they pinged, it did all sorts of bad stuff. The lead kept the gas from combusting or igniting before it was meant to, so it was a pretty great additive. The thing is, we already knew that lead was not good for you at the time, but we added it to gas anyway. And then it was finally phased out in the seventies. Starting in the seventies, i should say, because we started adding catalytic converters to our cars.
Yeah, that helped that, and just our the process of the chemical process of refining petroleum just advanced, so we no longer needed it.
Right, So it wasn't just crummy gas. It was pretty good gas. It didn't need lead. Yeah, if you run leaded gas through a catalytic converter. It totally messes it up. And the catalytic converters there to prevent emission, so you take lead out of gas. The problem we found is that during these few decades from like the twenties till actually nineteen ninety six was the last year you could have lead in your gas in the United States. Yeah, nineteen ninety six. During this period, basically all the cars on the road were spewing lead lead vapors into the atmosphere that would just go into the air and then come back into the ground and settle in the soil and water and your face.
Yeah, I had. I used leaded gas in my I had to put it in my early VW Beetles that I drove.
Oh yeah, I had a couple of.
Old you know, vintage, well vintage. They bought them new. Oh yeah, yeah. My mom she bought a sixty eight beetle brand new. Wow. That's when I drove when I turned sixteen.
Wow, I think it was still around huh yeah, yeah. Nice.
You know, those things they never die if you take care of them.
Did you like ever use duct tape or anything like that on it?
No, but I did. Funny, you mentioned I had a whole sizable hole in the rear floorboard. Yeah. That My friends call it the Flintstones car because you could, like you put your feet down and run.
So I did have a board, a running board, No, just a board over the hole, but I mean you could remove the board and run, Yeah, while you were sitting in the back seat.
That's right, great car.
Yeah.
Lead has been added to cosmetics over the years, jewelry, pottery, and then today because everyone knows let is so such a jerk. One of the only places you're going to find it in the US at least is in your car battery.
Your car, yeah, your car battery, or your laptop.
Actually, yeah, which is why it's really important to recycle that car battery, don't or that laptop. Don't throw it in the woods. Yeah, responsibly recycle your electronics and batteries.
Yeah. If there's one thing that we've learned since the twentieth century is that lead has some serious staying power, and it has a very pesky tendency to get out of wherever we put it, right. Yeah, and yeah, if you put it in just a regular landfill that's not designed to accept things like lead, it'll just leach into the ground water, and same thing with your e waste your laptops, And the reason that they're used in laptops is because the lead actually protects you from the radiation that would shoot out of your laptop screen into your face. Yeah, if it weren't for the toxic lead in there.
That's right, glass cathode ray tubes like you find in your computer laptop screen.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know about your laptop or your computer.
Yeah, your monitor, Yeah, I'll bet there's but you should lead in there.
You should responsibly recycle your laptop too, for sure reasons.
Yeah, I know you did a.
What was it called electronics recycling?
Yeah? What was it? Like? Just a thought or I have no idea what you're talking about. You did a video series where you like, now sure deep thoughts.
No, I can't even remember I created the series.
Yeah, but you did one on e recycling.
Yeah, but nobody cared or watch.
So the world was not saved.
Everyone said, Chuck quit doing it all right, Well, let's take a break. I'm gonna go cry a teer for a man. What was the name of that series?
I don't know. We'll go get forties and pour them out on the Curb Forum.
All right, we'll be back in a second. All right, Josh, we've talked a lot about lead so far and Enchiladas rock bands. Yeah, lead comes from the earth, though, let's let's take it underground.
Yeah, it's not actually, I mean, it is naturally occurring, but it doesn't naturally occur in its pure form.
Yeah, you don't just like dig down and you're like, hey, there's a big hunk of lead, right, let me pull it out.
Instead, lead atoms have I think four unpaired electrons maybe in its outer shell. So it likes to form connections with other things. So when you find lead in the earth, you're gonna find it in the form of an oxide or a sulfide or something like that. Frequently it's combined with silver, and so that means it has to be separated. And even the Romans back in the day, which by the way, these Roman lead pipes that they used for baths and for sanitation and stuff still intact today.
You can still dig those up and beat people with them.
You could, they're so strong. That's the other place you'll find a lead pipe is in the hand of some dude coming at you.
Yea or a game of clue.
Oh, yeah, that's right. It was bent. Even the guy was hit so hard with it. Yeah, kernel mustard. He was not to be trusted.
He was not. But yes, the Romans they had a pretty ingenus man, they were so smart. They had a pretty ingenious process called coupilation. The extent of that is basically the idea is that some precious metals, I'm sorry, precious metals, All precious metals won't oxidize, but dumb metals will. So if you heat that junk up, it's going to separate.
Right, And they used it mostly to separate from silver. But these days we get most of our lead from something called galena, where a lead sulfide is found, right.
Yeah, and our process is sort of similar. It is very like using heat to separate things.
And this actually very much resembles Do you remember our waste gasification episode?
Yeah, I could remember which one this evoked.
Yeah, it was that one, because the process is very similar. So you take some lead sulfide and you heat it up in the air, so there's the presence of oxygen and it converts into lead oxide and sulfur dioxide, right, So you separate them out a little bit. Then you take that lead oxide and you add carbon coke and you again mix it with some air and as that happens, the air combines with the oxide into car. No, the carbon combines with the air and becomes carbon dioxide takes all of the oxygen molecules from the lead atoms. So the lead, basically what amounts of pure lead, becomes molten and goes down to the bottom of the furnace and carbon dioxide goes out into the atmosphere. It sounds like a very safe process basically creating molten lead and carbon dioxide.
Yeah, that's called roasting and smelting. And once that lead sinks cools down, it's gonna it's called a pig. It's just a big mesa lead basically.
Yeah, like pig iron.
Yeah, it's it's delicious. And then you have slag, which is the non metallic byproduct of the smelting process. Yeah, and you siphon and cool that down and it's waste product.
Yes.
And like I said, recycling your car battery is important because there's also a process called secondary extraction where they get that lead out of your battery. You can keep using it exactly.
That's the other good thing about lead It is extremely reusable because again, it has a lot of staying power. So you're not going to use lead up right, you know, which means you want to reuse it. Yes, we should get to the point where we don't need to mine any more lead or process any more lead. Just reuse the lead we've got, yeah, or maybe find some great substitute that isn't so toxic.
You know, you melt down those tiny Civil war figurines.
Oh yeah, those guys?
Are those lead?
Sure?
Okay I thought they were. Yeah, So handling and painting those with lead paint it's dangerous.
Right, yes, yes, yes it is.
Is that why we're losing so many war figurine buffs? I think so at an alarming rate.
That's why they all have like spittle and drool around the corners of their mouths and like zone out while they're painting.
Well, there's other reasons for that, but sure it contributes.
So okay, Chuck, you mentioned or we mentioned lead refining and processing, smelting, roasting, that kind of stuff, right, that does create emissions of not just carbon dioxide but also lead vapor, which is not good stuff, and you want to control that kind of stuff, but it is emitted, and it used to be. Well, these days, lead emissions from refining and processing are actually the number one source of lead vapor emissions in the environment. Right but forty yeah, about forty years ago, forty five years ago, that was not the case. The case was all those cars driving around on the streets emitting lead vapor.
Yeah, you used to account for about seventy eight percent if it came from your automobile, and since the phasing out and reversal, we know have fifty two percent coming from the processing. And what is it down to road sources? It's thirteen thirteen percent fuel combustion.
Yeah, not bad, No, not bad. Still again, you basically wanted it like zero. As we're finding, like the as we'll see that that lead exposure in any amount is not good and it gets it goes from not good to really bad very quickly. Apparently.
Yeah, and you know, let us know good. We mentioned kids chewing on something with lead pain is not good. If you're redoing your house and it's pre nineteen seventy eight, you want to get a piece tested. You can't just be like let me sand off, No, the paint on this molding.
No, because again, even if you think you've cleaned it up, there's still in there's lead right there, buddy. Yeah, that you're not going to get rid of it. Apparently, Also, open and closing your windows in a pre nineteen seventy eight house can create lead dust.
Yeah, if you're lucky enough to be able to open your windows. Sure that's a point minor sealed shut.
Yeah, or a nail chot or what have you.
Yeah, yeah, just from years of painting basically with probably.
Lead paint guaranteed.
No, it's not. Actually we had it tested, Oh did you? Yeah? I mean it wasn't one hundred percent lead paint, but.
You had to test it like all the way through, like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, But what I'm saying is pre nineteen seventy eight, it's not like the only paint that was used. I know you're saying that's why you get it tested, right, But did.
You get like all the layers underneath tested well for any Yeah? Okay, that was my all the layers sound effect.
Like we hired a lead person.
I gotcha. Good good good. That makes me feel better. Yeah.
And if you want to if there is lead and you want to get the lead out. You're going to have to hire someone that knows what they're doing, and oh yeah, they'll come in with their hazmat suits on to do so.
Right. So you can also get it from plumbing, although apparently with lead plumbing it's not quite as much of a thread as you would think. You know, doesn't that make you just want to like never drink water again? Knowing that you have lead pipes in your house. You shouldn't necessarily be worried because over the years, water sanitation experts have figured out that if you have good water that's non corrosive, it actually is not only non corrosive, the water will leave behind a protective coating that coats the inside of the pipes that it runs through. Over the lead, Yes, nice, over whatever it is, but yeah, it's going to leave a protective coat of other substances that aren't toxic. It's going to form a barrier for later water and the pipes. Right, And so you shouldn't necessarily be freaked out if you have lead pipes coming to your house, although I mean, you got the money, there's definitely worse things you could spend your money on than replacing those pipes.
Yeah, you know move to what copper PBC.
Well, copper can be a problem as well. There's actually a copper lead rule that dictates how non corrosive city's water has to be right to follow this rule, and it's protecting not just against lead but copper. You don't really want copper either, although it's not nearly as bad for you as lead.
Interesting, So, if you have lead in your system, I mean, it goes, it goes into your blood stream, doesn't matter how it gets in there. If you inhale it, it'll be absorbed through the capillaries and the lungs into the blood. Or if you if you lick it, touch it, if you lick it, yeah, it's gonna find its way into your blood and you can. I mean it's really easy to find out if you have lead in your blood. You just get a blood test. I don't know why they would do this other test. I don't either, And not just a blood test unless it's like prohibitively expensive or something.
So yeah, the other test is called the zinc protoporphyn test, and that's a byprop of red blood cells as they break down in the presence of lead. So rather than directly testing and it's not finding lead either. You're like going around to see excuse me, lead, I want to see if your shadowy is detectable.
And don't get it.
It makes zero sense because you.
Got to take your blood for that too. Write sure, and it's not as accurate.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. But the lead blood test is so easy that companies like three AM and plenty of others sell home lead blood tests.
Oh that's nice.
Yeah, it is nice unless you're the parent who is freaked out giving one to your kid.
Well, that's true. You know, anything over equal to or greater than five micrograms per desolet is bad if you're a kid. If you're an adult, you can tolerate a little bit more, but it's still distressing.
Right, And that's how it's expressed. So a microgram to a desolader, which is what a tenth of a leader, right, and so five is not good. Ten programs in a destin leader is where demonstrable like behavioral and cognitive problems start to develop.
Yeah, that's serious trouble.
But the EPA has said that there's quote no demonstrated safe concentration of lead and blood, like you shouldn't have any in it. Right.
The problem is it's nothing but toxic to humans. There is no benefit.
Yeah, and we'll talk about it in just a second. But the problem with lead is that we're figuring out that we shouldn't be exposed to it at all, while we're also simultaneously figuring out that we have washed our planet in it. Yeah, from the last like couple hundred years.
Basically, Yeah, you want to take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about all kinds of fun stuff. All right, So before I left it, Tea is that there is no function for lead in the body. It is nothing but toxic, and it the way it behaves in your body in a negative way is really interesting your body. And this happens a lot if youel like we covered the body mistaking something for something else quite a bit. Yeah, there should be a word for.
That case of mistaken identity.
I guess that's it. But the body treats lead like calcium, So it's going to go where calcium goes in the body, including your bones, which is super scary.
Yeah, lead settles in very comfortably into calcium receptors and it's not just bones, like that's what I always think of when I think of calcium, like, well, you need calcium because your bones will break, or you get rickets if you don't have it or whatever. But calcium comes in handy throughout your whole body. And one of the big places that shows up is in calcium ions in your neuronal activity. Right, Yeah, So when your neurons fire, one of the ways that they fire is because the neurons or the calcium ions get them all excited and then boom, your neurons is fired. If lead is in that calcium ion channel instead of calcium, that boo doesn't happen, and all of a sudden, your neurons aren't firing as much as they would if the lead wasn't present. And now we have a big problem here.
Yeah, and it's especially big problem with children because children's little brains are you know, we talked about plasticity before. They're constantly forming these new neural connections, and any kind of lead and the mistaken for calcium is going to disrupt those connections. And so your child is literally their brain isn't going to advance like it should.
Right exactly. Intellectually, the apparently emotional centers like the amygdala can suffer. Yeah, it's been found to produce hyperactivity, antisocial behavior, attention deficit disorder, all sorts of problems from the presence of lead, right, And like you said, it's worse for kids because their brains are still developing and forming. It's bad for anybody, but it's definitely worse for kids. And the other way that it affects kids is that so the regions of their brains aren't developing correctly. But then simultaneously, calcium is also important in the formation of myelin, which is that protective sheath around the synapses between neurons. So that's kind of like flimsy, which means that the neurons aren't firing efficiently. So not only do you have brain regions affected, but the communication between brain regions are affected too in little kids. And the upshot is is that it promotes all sorts of problems with cognitive and emotional and behavioral development in children.
Yeah, and like literally lower IQ scores.
And we should say that's just like the most prominent, horrifying effective lead. There's a whole laundry list of other things that can happen to you, like kidney failure, pain in your bones and joints from all that lead settling into where the calcium is supposed to go.
Yeah, how about a decreased sex drive and sterility and infertility for both men and women? What else? Diarrhea, lack of appetite, constipation.
I think diarrhea is the least of your worries. If you have a life blood.
High blood pressure, enlarged heart. It affects virtually every system in your body basically.
And the reason why again is because it mimics or it takes the place of calcium. And calcium is incredibly vital. It's an extremely important mineral that you need found throughout your body. And if a leg goes in is like ooh, I'm here instead. Yeah, it's not going to do the stuff that the calcium is supposed to do, leading to all this cascade of horrific problems.
Yeah. And one of the other scary things is that they unless you have acute lead poisoning, you may not know, In fact, you probably won't know, yeah, that you're being slowly poisoned, and you might just think, oh, I have diarrhea and I don't feel like having sex much anymore, right, And you might be slowly getting lead poisoning.
Yeah, and you you just blame that on too many buffalo wings. But boom, it's lead poison.
Take scare of both. Sure you remember being a kid and like lead pencils, Like it was a big scare, Like you know you got lead poisoning if you got poked with a pencil.
Yeah, I remember that, But then I also remember learning that it's actually graphite used in pencils.
Yeah, we should have by our age, you should have David Reese on Oh yeah, how to sharpen a pencil? Man, he can school you on some pencils.
He wrote a whole book on it, literally wrote the book on pencil sharpening.
Yeah. I still have let or I guess, graphite somewhere in my hand from when I was jabbed very deep with a pencil that broke off. Wow, and it never left and there's still just looks like a little black freckle.
It's like you're in prison and got shanked.
I know, I can't find where it is shived.
I see it's right there.
No, this is scratch good. Try.
So we've talked about all the cognitive problems that can come about in behavioral and emotional This orders that can develop from lead. And this is like study after study after study has found this. It's one of the big reasons why there have been so many restrictions placed on lead exposure. And recently some people have some researchers, including a couple well, an economist I believe, and an epidemiologist have kind of taken that idea that lead can create all of these behavioral problems and any social behavioral problems and extrapolated to this idea that there is a big rise in the crime rate in the United States and actually around the world that followed about twenty years the same trajectory of the use of lead and gasoline.
Yeah, it was super interesting article, very controversial, like when it came well it still is, sure, but yeah, it's very interesting.
Yeah, it's called lead America's Real Criminal Element. It was in Mother Jones. It was written by Kevin Drum. He's one of the all time greats working today. And I think I've mentioned it before, but I strongly encourage anybody it doesn't even matter if lead's the most boring thing in the world to you go read this article. You will just be riveted by it. And Kevin Drum does a lot of he does a very good job of keeping his extrapolations down as low as possible, although anybody can see by the evidence that he lays out that this is it's pretty clear that lead is some sort of culprit in this, and it's been shot down in that there's this idea that the science isn't settled. I suspect that it's the same mechanisms that force with climate denial, Like, oh, unsettled science doesn't prove anything. If you look at all the studies associated with this, the correlation between lead use and gasoline and therefore led emissions in cars and criminal activity and its decline again, it just follows it like twenty years after. And the whole idea is that when we started emitting led into the atmosphere, kids started suffering these cognitive and antisocial behaviors. And then about twenty years after these kids were born, they started actually carrying out criminal activity, and we saw a tremendous rise and everything from like murder to rape, to muggings to everything. And the article is too long to really go into detail. Again, just i'd strongly urge anybody to go read it.
Yeah, the the backlash that I've seen on the article wasn't to me like it was all from scientists mainly. Yeah, I read a few of them. They weren't poopooing the notion. They said, what this means is it bears a lot more investigation, but as much as you want. If you can't replicate it, it's still possible confirmation bias or just sure correlation and not causation, could be a host of other issues into that.
It could be. And Kevin Jrum makes the same point. He's like, there's also a rise in the use of vinyl albums that followed roughly the same trajectory as well. But yeah, you know, of course it needs more study for sure.
Well this is this one scientist said, what you really need to do is follow what he calls a cohort study, when you actually follow individuals right along a long timeline. Yeah, it's just a tough study. It's it bears a lot of to prove something like this just takes a lot more data than they have.
Right, And I think the guy you're referencing is Scott Firestone, who.
Is Yeah, that was a good artist who.
Wrote on the Discover magazine blog and you know he gives kudos to Drum, who definitely deserves it for basically saying every time he says, you know it's it's it's so obvious, you'd have to be just you know, have your head in the sand to deny this. He does say that yes, speaking scientifically, it does require more study.
Super interesting though, because the crime and Drum followed it all over the world. He didn't just go to the United States, and he saw the same thing in Canada and Australia and Great Britain. And the good news is if that is the case, then we should see crime dropping.
Well we have forever. Yeah, But the problem is is that it also should get us to basically mitigate the lead that is around, like in the soil and in the water and everywhere in people's houses. And the dollar amounts that he estimates it would cost are pretty prohibitive at least as far as like the public will goes from right now. But who knows. I mean, if enough science is done on it, and you get the scientific community vocally speaking about this, then maybe the public will will change.
Yeah. If you do have lead poisoning, you can get on meds. There's a prescription called Susimer s U C C I M E R.
That was beautiful.
Uh, it's that or Suckerer. I like how you said they can reduce blood lead. There of course always side effects with every medication. And if you work, if you've like if there's been a disaster and you get toxic lead in your body very quickly, right, they can use something called uh Kelson collation collation therapy. Uh. And that's when they use a collating agent. I'm not even going to try. That's called E T A.
I'm going to try it. Okay, ethyl lenidiamina tetricetic acid.
Hey, not bad if you like super quick.
I missed the last A. That's just a few letters off from super califragilistic XP.
It looks like the alphabet when it's on paper. But uh, we'll call it E D T A. And that's when it's infused into the bloodstream and actually binds basically says lead you're coming with me through the kidney out of your body.
Right. But they use that when it's just an acute toxic dose that that a person's been exposed to, if a kid's been found to be poisoned with lead. Actually, from what I read, one of the best treatments that they'll carry out there. There'll be other stuff too, depending on how bad it is, but a really good nutritious diet, getting the kid foods that are high in things like calcium and high in things like vitamin C that help the body absorb calcium so that they can go displace lead in the body. Because if you got lead and you got calcium fighting for the for the same place, if you can get the calcium in there, it's going to displace the lead and then hopefully leave the body like I'm going home.
That's gotta be hard on the kidney.
So I don't know, you, Yeah, I think if you have an acute lead poisoning or a serious lead poisoning, it's it's not good. But yeah, of course it'd be hard on the kidneys because one of the things is kidney fit.
Yeah, and anemia exactly. If lead is Lead is definitely invariably in the ground and the groundwater and in the soil around us. And that's a problem because it sort of works this way up the food chain in a weird way because what you have are these tiny organisms it gets in their body, like plankton and microscopic plants and they die, and then other things eat that their waste, right, and then it just sort of like bigger animals come along and keep eating these things.
Yeah, it's not just humans that suffer from lead toxicity, other animals too, even the small ones.
So should we talk about these Flint lawsuits a little? Yeah, and then enchilattis and that will fully yep, well non toxicatus.
I guess it depends on who manufactured it.
So I did some reading on the lawsuits. Right now, there's more than a dozen and probably growing. I'm sure a few of them are class action suits on behalf of tens of thousands of Flint residents. And you know, attorneys always look their chops when they hear stuff like this. But there's some concerns. One is that the state of Michigan is, like the city is broke, so don't even bother. The state of Michigan may be an route to go if you want to get a lot of money, but then they say that'll just get pack passed along to the taxpayer. And a lot of experts in the legal world say that compensation is unlikely to begin with as far as money goes, because of something couple of things. One thing called sovereign immunity, which basically means the government can say, you know, giving water to the citizens is a core government function, so we're shielded legally from liability for doing that improperly, so like you can't sue us, we're trying to give you water. And the other thing is specific causation has to be proved. So not only do you have to prove that the lead came from that water and not like the lead pipes in your house or other like the lead paint in your wall, maybe it has to come specifically from that Flint River water. And you also have to prove that that directly led to the problem that your kid is having, and not you know, other things.
Well, one of the things I read was that it's very possible that the lead came from the pipes in those people's houses, but that it's still on the provider of the water. Because they were supposed to be following corrosion protection techniques that they lied about following, they weren't following them, so it got rid of that protective coating that had been on the lead pipes before and was bringing all that lead into people's homes directly. So it may have been led from the people's homes, but it was the corrosive nature of the terrible drinking water that was being pumped through those that caused that lead to be brought into the people's homes. And then again, on top of it, the government was lying about using the techniques that they were supposed to be using to prevent that from happening. So now that they've switched back over to Detroit water, it's going to take a while for that protective film to develop on the pipes again. Right, So, even now that the different water is coming through, it's still lousy with lead. And the sad thing is that some people in Flint are too poor to do anything about it. They still need water, so they're still drinking leaded water even though they know that it's going to hurt them down the line.
Well, and it's sad that it sounds like getting real compensation is maybe unlikely.
Yeah, because a lot of these people who have kids, like if their kids suffer severe cognitive development problems, they're gonna need help like the rest of their lives.
Yeah. This one guy, he's a law professor specializing an environmental law named Noah Hall. He says what the probably the smart thing to do, if you really want to help these people is set up do what they did with the Deep Water Horizon spill and set up a victim's compensation fund instead of doing it via lawsuit like legislature. Maybe that would help.
I don't know, Yeah, I don't know.
He basically said what the state shouldn't do is fight this. He's like, that would be big trouble. He said they should set up some sort of fund so then they look like the good guy still. But then I think you don't get all the dirty details dragged out in public like you would with a lass.
Well, apparently they're already coming out anyway, like troves of emails have been released. The governor set up a task force to find out who is to blame, and they turned around and they were like you, and.
He said, fire the task for right.
Exactly, You're all fired. Yeah. I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's very scary public health scare.
Flint, I know, talk about a city that's been roughed up over the years.
I know. Well, we're there with you, Flint, hanging there. If you want to learn more about lead or Flint or criminal activity. You can check out all these different articles on the Internet and you can type lead into the search bar House of Works dot com. I'll bring up a pretty great article. Since I said pretty great article, it's time for a listener. Man.
I'm going to call this Finland Rules. Remember we did the Dark Money podcast and I was like, what's a good place that's not corrupt? I remember we heard from a lot of people in Scandinavia. Hi, I'm an American living in Helsinki for the last few years with my Finnish husband. Chuck, you were right on the money when you said there's very little political corruption here. Of course there are some, because there are humans, after all, but the level compared to the States is laughable. When I asked my husband about it, he thought for a second. Asked about corruption scandals, he said, a few years back, there was something about a prime minister who accepted lumber from a company to build his house. Huh, that was it. It seems comical to me considering the States in an election year. Also, the campaign season is a much shorter year, and it's done a little different. A party runs there at least five major parties. That's crazy in and of itself sure like crazy good Yeah. Party runs in whichever gets a majority, elects from its ranks the prime minister and makes a cabinet out of a coalition of the other parties which receive high numbers of votes. How about that, Like you came in second.
You're on board too, I mean, come on, and here's your participant.
Ribbon campaigns are paid for by disclosed donations and public funds. He also made a comment about the high taxes here. Many people, usually Americans, say that with distaste that the taxes are so high here. But I've come to think very highly of it. I've discovered that I don't really need another pair of jeans or a new jacket. What I need is an educated society around me, and access to quality healthcare and a truly equal society where everyone is safe and has her basic needs met. That is from Gabrielle. Wow, a lot of people hate your guts for saying that, Gabrielle.
That is so brave of you. Thanks Gabrielle for writing in. I don't know how they say audios in Finland.
No, she's American.
Well, goodbye. Thank you for writing in. If you want to get in touch with us, You can tweak to us at s ysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know if you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and has always joined us on the web at stuff youshould Know dot com.
You Know.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
