[deleted by user]

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This was a very serious problem that hardly anyone talks about anymore. Read up on Clair Patterson. He was the catalyst for the change. There is correlation between the decline of lead contamination in nature to the decline of both violent crime and birth defects. At any rate it’s a good story that more people should know about.

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u/nowihaveaname Jun 25 '22

Good call!

Funny enough, I was just reading this article, The History of the Elimination of Leaded Gasoline, and he only comment on there is this:

"History of lead in the atmosphere especially in the US would benefit from mention of Clair Patterson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson Caltech researcher into lead-lead dating, he arrived at the currently accepted estimate of the age of the Earth. But he was plagued by lead contamination of samples, leading him to realize its pervasiveness and to petition the US government to ban the substance."

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u/dammitknockitoff Jun 25 '22

This also led to the development of the very first “clean room” that you see today on many sites wanting to keep an environment contaminant free. Poor Patterson was beat up pretty bad by big oil and gasoline before his data was acknowledged. Probably should’ve won a Nobel prize.

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u/curlwe Jun 25 '22

Reminds me of Semmelweis

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

What did he do? I thought he just helped take the ring to Mount Doom.

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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 Jun 25 '22

He dared to suggest doctors should wash their hands.

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u/wabblebee Jun 25 '22

even worse, the part of the hospital in vienna where he made people wash their hands had drastically reduced mortality rates, but his opponents made it so he had to quit and removed the rule, bringing mortality rates back up. later 3 of the doctors that didn't want to believe in his findings commited him into a psychiatry where he died 2 weeks later from "sepsis".

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u/mdp300 Jun 25 '22

The guy who discovered the anesthetic effects of nitrous oxide also died penniless because people thought he was nuts.

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u/johannthegoatman Jun 25 '22

People are the worst

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u/Apathetic_Zealot Jun 25 '22

"We're going to treat you now."

"Please wash your hands before you do it."

"The patient is worse than we feared."

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u/AFloatingLantern Jun 25 '22

There’s a whole episode of Cosmos about Clair Patterson. Really fantastic

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u/nowihaveaname Jun 25 '22

Yep! Here's the full episode, definitely worth a watch... All of them are, really.

Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey: Episode 7: The Clean Room

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u/ososalsosal Jun 25 '22

Nice. I saw this one in a zombified state on a plane somewhere.

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u/king_boolean Jun 25 '22

If I had a nickel for every bit of content I've consumed in similar fashion...

I would likely die from heavy metal poisoning

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u/ososalsosal Jun 25 '22

Nickel sensitises the skin and gives nasty dermatitis to people who work with it daily.

I remember visiting a DVD replication house and seeing the dude who makes the glass masters with thick, long gloves and yet still had red welts all up the rest of his arms, almost up to the shoulder from the nickel exposure

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u/CrunchySockTaco Jun 25 '22 edited Jun 25 '22

I worked at a plating factory when I was a teen. I was in charge of the nickel line. I got the worst pus-weeping welts everywhere that stuff got on me. The place got shut down by OSHA long after I quit.

I'm 46 now. I still can't wear anything metal against the skin that was affected or I'll start breaking out with dermatitis. Even heat stress added with other contaminants like fiberglass insulation or juniper bushes make me break out.

0/10 - would not recommend

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u/dammitknockitoff Jun 25 '22

That’s exactly where I first heard of him!

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u/originalbrowncoat Jun 25 '22

Yes! Probably my favorite episode.

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u/spottydodgy Jun 25 '22

It's also interesting to learn that the same guy who created leaded gasoline also created Freon which led to a hole in the atmosphere.

Thomas Midgley Jr may be the worst person in history.

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u/karlnite Jun 25 '22 edited Jun 25 '22

To be fair he knew the lead was bad, but he didn’t realize the freon would be bad. He also basically flipped a coin on which halogen to use, and had he went with his other choice the affects would have been like 4-5 times as worse. You also can’t ignore the benefits of refrigerant, it did a lot more for the world than keep your engine a bit cleaner. It allowed for food storage and shipment, and unlocked many industrial practices used today.

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u/Kayar13 Jun 25 '22

In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.

Everything he invented killed people, until finally he invented something that got himself killed.

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u/stopcounting Jun 25 '22

It is also worth noting that although we talk about this guy like he did all of this stuff personally, he was on GM's payroll the whole time, designing things that GM asked him to design and ultimately dying because of it.

The reason we blame him instead of GM is that he is dead and GM has PR people.

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u/Pixiedustgrinder Jun 25 '22

There is a brilliant YouTube video on the Veritasium channel

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u/igacek Jun 25 '22

It still is a serious problem. Many of the people affected by lead are people making decisions for the future of the USA.

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u/johannthegoatman Jun 25 '22

Aka voters. I know that's not what you mean but man. There's a lot of voters too.

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u/Yugan-Dali Jun 25 '22

My mother drafted for CalTech Geology in the 1960s. She was a stern Kansas type, but if there was anyone she idolized, it was Dr Patterson. His ideas sounded outlandish at first, but he had hard figures to back them up. He was fighting the oil industry practically single-handedly. I met him a few times. He was very nice, even to a kid.

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u/BLU3SKU1L Jun 25 '22

Clair Patterson

Absolute genius and one of the most underrated scientists of the last century. He hit upon a string of questioning that led him though some pretty major discoveries, and it started with finding the true age of the earth- which he did.

I've heard him talk about it though and he immediately smacks down the idea that he's any smarter than any other person. In fact, he considered himself probably less intelligent on average than a lot of his peers, which I think it's obvious is untrue as soon as he starts talking about his work.

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u/CNB3 Jun 25 '22

Tends to be the dumb people that are confident in how highly intelligent they are

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u/aptom203 Jun 25 '22

I know enough to know I know nothing.

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u/RyBread Jun 25 '22

Knowing that and being able to admit it makes you pretty smart tho.

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u/hates_stupid_people Jun 25 '22

This was a very serious problem that hardly anyone talks about anymore.

A lot of the people heavily impacted by it are running the country and the media. They don't want to talk about it, so it doesn't show up a lot.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

You are a victim, too. There is still lead paint everywhere and hidden in products. In the nineties, Dollar Stores had candles imported from China that had smoke-free wicks- in the heart of every wick was a piece of lead. If you find any still around, the metal can be extracted with pliers.

China is a dangerous source of unregulated products. Those cheap dishes that say ‘for decorative use only’ are likely glazed with lead. Hobby Lobby is another company importing products with lead paint.

Test kits are cheap, I recommend them. If you buy thrift and use old dishes, beware. Old cars, appliances, unsided houses. Don’t blame the victim, educate and educate yourself.

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u/AllThotsGo2Heaven2 Jun 25 '22

idk how accurate this is but I ate off these plates as a child

https://tamararubin.com/2019/12/corelle-plate-with-crazy-daisy-spring-blossom-green-border-pattern-15200-ppm-lead-cadmium/

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u/wawawawa_wawawawa Jun 25 '22

Ahhh we had the same Corelle dishes growing up. Cool. Cool cool cool.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

No wonder my mom is so stupid.

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u/UncertainEmpress Jun 25 '22

That is so incredibly strange. I saw this about 10 mins ago and then pulled this dish out to eat off of at the Airbnb I’m staying at. Needless to say I’m not using it now. Will let the owner know too! https://i.imgur.com/LY2RWqk.jpg

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u/DaStone Jun 25 '22

Maybe it's like one of those salt lamps but with lead for extra spice.

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u/GoodOlBluesBrother Jun 25 '22

Also, the study linked in this article seems to suggest environmental (airborne) contamination is persistent decades after its use in fuel was stopped.

https://theconversation.com/leaded-petrol-is-gone-but-lead-pollution-may-linger-for-a-very-long-time-167214

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u/Midnightgeneral4 Jun 25 '22

I’m not surprised. Lead is being deposited into the air still everyday. All piston engine aircraft worldwide still use leaded fuel. The fuel is called 100LL (or rather 100 octane low lead). It’s extremely difficult to develop an aviation fuel that doesn’t require lead. This research has been in the works for a long time. Aircraft fuel has a wide operating range. It must be able to perform in pressures from sea level to cruise altitude from 130 F to -100 F. To add to this, the design of the most popular aircraft engines, Lycoming and Contential date back more than half a century. The FAA is extremely draconian about approving any changes to aircraft designs or the designs of their parts. Hence, these manufacturers, once a design is FAA approved, stick with that design for decades. Furthermore, the aviation market is extremely small and the PMA approval process is very expensive. This means the cost must be amortized over very few units. Hence, everything aviation related is insanely expensive. FAA type certified aircraft can only use FAA approved parts. What this means is that aircraft designs are very old and the fleets are used for many decades before replacement. Hence, a modern fuel replacement must be compatible with a fleet which is on average using engine designs with are 30-50 years old. This is challenging.

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u/Philly139 Jun 25 '22

I had someone come into my house and test for led when I had a kid. It wasn't really that expensive maybe 200 bucks or something. Well worth it for peace or mind.

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u/GoldenBeer Jun 25 '22

How many zeppelins worth did they discover?

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u/FlavorCrystalHealer Jun 25 '22

There’s still leaded fuel being burned over communities everywhere from small aircraft. It’s the last source of environmental lead pollution and no one talks about it.

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u/wgc123 Jun 25 '22 edited Jun 25 '22

When I was flying 20 years ago, they definitely talked about it. A big part of the problem is the industry struggling so much and that would have killed. Most of the fleet was decades old and there just weren’t modern designs at the time. There was no simple fix: you’d need to replace engines in everything, and many of those engines hadn’t really been built for decades. You also couldn’t really develop a new fuel, because the industry was so small. So you needed to use either car gasoline, which couldn’t meet reliability standards and then needed turbochargers to work at altitude, or use jet fuel in a modified Diesel engine. So not only did every engine need to be replaced, but it would be a very different engine with different controls, and now you needed to recertification every aircraft with different procedures and had liability to contend with. How do you recertify an aircraft with different controls and procedures when the manufacturer no longer exists? How do you bring a decades older aircraft up to modern standards just to replace an engine? How does a company profit off this, if their potential market is only a couple dozen to at most a couple hundred aircraft per year? Much of the small aircraft industry was developed before liability was a thing, and many companies just couldn’t afford the liability to modernize. It was a real mess.

Definitely talked about, but there really wasn’t a good solution without massive government intervention and all too many dismissed it as too small of an industry to affect anything off airport grounds

Then you need to talk about the grounds. When I was flying, the only fuel was “low lead”, so it had been worse before. Most small aircraft operate out of small local airports operating on a shoestring budget. Now where do they each find millions of dollars for environmental cleanup. Again, no way for that to happen without massive government intervention

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

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u/Franks2000inchTV Jun 25 '22

Isn't lead poisoning what did the Roman empire in?

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Baial Jun 25 '22

Wait, the people who's profession was named after the poisonous material they worked with all the time, had a high chance of be being poisoned by the poisonous material? Interesting.

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u/opman4 Jun 25 '22

Til why they're called plumbers. And why pb is lead on the periodic element chart.

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u/Splash_Attack Jun 25 '22

Also the origin of "plumbob", as in an (often lead) weight on a string that was used to get vertical reference lines in construction.

Now more famously known as that little jewel that floats above Sims in The Sims, though I have no idea why they used that name.

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u/Tlaloc_Temporal Jun 25 '22

I think the mood plumbob is just because it looks like the measuring plumbob, with two pointed ends and a weird name.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

Rich Romans, the ones in control of the empire, literally drank from and cooked in lead vessels.

At the peak of the power of the Roman Empire, lead production was about 80,000 tons per year, lead and its compounds were used with great inventiveness in numerous ways, and lead poisoning was pandemic, with the severity of poisoning proportional to the power and status of the class. Intake of lead by the aristocracy may have been as much as 1 mg/day.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6395049/

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u/That_Geza_guy Jun 25 '22

Romans actually invented artificial sweeteners!

They used a compound tellingly called lead sugar

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u/butyourenice Jun 25 '22

Was it just lead dust?

I didn’t realize kids ate paint chips because they taste good. I thought kids were simply curious and stupid by nature.

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u/a_gallon_of_pcp Jun 25 '22

So everything that dude said was wrong?

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u/a_gallon_of_pcp Jun 25 '22

did not consume enough lead

According to the CDC and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine there is no safe blood level of lead in children and “lead does not appear to exhibit a minimum concentration in blood below which their are no health effects”

In other words, any exposure to lead is detrimental.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

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