Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

https://attheu.utah.edu/health-medicine/banning-lead-in-gas-worked-the-proof-is-in-our-hair/

by geox • 6 months ago

383 342 6 months ago

attheu.utah.edu

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525498123

wileydragonfly• 6 months ago

Explains a great deal, honestly.

yieldcrv2• 6 months ago

like what? are there more intelligent people? I've anecdotally heard this is a cause for crime reduction as people are less impulsive than they were, in conflict resolution? overall?

don't really know what takeaway I'm supposed to know about

nyc_data_geek• 6 months ago

Are you really calling into question the well documented developmental effects of lead in human cognition and behavior

defrost• 6 months ago

The punchline being:

  The findings, which appear in PNAS, underscore the vital role of environmental regulations in protecting public health.

  The study notes lead rules are now being weakened by the Trump administration in a wide-ranging move to ease environmental protections.

  “We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is those regulations have been very important,”

russdill• 6 months ago

Hopefully next we can help fix mercury in fish, the number one contributor right now is burning coal. Seems like it would be a easy decision.

vpShane• 6 months ago

We live in opposite-world where the way it is, is the exact opposite of how it should be

epistasis6• 6 months ago

Coal is mostly sticking around in the US because of federal overreach to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators going long after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.

Last week, a Colorado utility was "respectfully" asking to be able to close a plant:

TTri-State Generation and partner Platte River Power Authority had a “respectful” but emphatic response late Thursday to the Trump administration ordering them to keep Craig’s Unit 1 coal-fired plant open past the New Year:
They don’t need it, they don’t want it, and their inflation-strapped consumers can’t afford the higher bills. Plus, the federal order is unconstitutional.

https://coloradosun.com/2026/01/30/craig-tri-state-petition-...

TVA has also been begging to close a money losing coal plant for a while now, writing letters to FERC about it, but I can't find the link now.

New coal is far too expensive to build anymore too. Handling big amounts of solid material is expensive, and big old unresponsive baseload is undesirable for achieving economic efficiency.

Even China, which is still building new coal plants, is lessening their coal usage. Personally I think they'll keep some around to continue economic influence on Australia, which is one their primary countries for experimenting with methods to increase their soft power.

There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

prodigycorp• 6 months ago

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. There's politics that gets flagged on this site, and there's politics that makes me think about things with more clarity. Yours is obviously the latter.

gwd2• 6 months ago

There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

For anyone wanting a slightly ranty but also informed description of why, I enjoyed this Hank Green video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfvBx4D0Cms&pp=ygUPaGFuayBnc...

prasadjoglekar• 6 months ago

There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

A quick look at the PJM interconnect data would disagree with you. About a quarter of the live power is coal.

https://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx

That serves 65+ Million people in the north east and is keeping them from dying of cold this past week, including today (Temp outside in the mid-hudson valley is 15F / -9C), and overnight will be 8F / -13C).

Just for context - electricity somehow powers everything in most homes. Your oil or propane furnace needs a power hookup to ignite.

throw900912• 6 months ago

to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators going long after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.

In EU 90% of expenses of running coal plants are taxes, yet it can still compete with subsidized green energy! It would be in everybody best interest, to allow building modern coal plants, to replace toxic inefficient stuff from 1960ties.

But with the overregulated and overtaxes industry, we have the worst from all options.

MengerSponge• 6 months ago

Burning coal is a huge and easy win. Artisinal and small scale gold mining should be high on the list too, even though it's a much harder problem:

https://www.unep.org/globalmercurypartnership/what-we-do/art...

Paracompact• 6 months ago

You do mean banning rather than burning, right?

hydrox24• 6 months ago

I'm skeptical that it's easier. On the numbers alone, artisanal and small scale gold mining (apparently) accounts for 15-20% of global gold production. But coal accounts for 35% of total electricity generation.

dyauspitr3• 6 months ago

Not with Captain Planet tier cartoon villains in power.

dnautics• 6 months ago

you mean like the german environmentalists who singlehandedly kicked up german atmospheric mercury emissions?

edm0nd• 6 months ago

Did you know that Captain Planet was straight up created to be pro environmentalist and anti-oil propaganda?

Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990–1996) was a pioneering animated series designed by Ted Turner and producer Barbara Pyle as environmental, pro-social "edutainment" to influence children towards ecological activism. It aimed to combat pollution and encourage environmental stewardship, often using over-the-top, stereotypical villains to represent corporate greed and ecological destruction.

Our parents let us get brainwashed by hippies and corporations as kids haha

UltraSane2• 6 months ago

We could have and should have replaced all coal with nuclear but no, we couldn't do that.

danlitt3• 6 months ago

It could have been replaced by almost anything, there is nothing particularly special about nuclear in this context (except its extremely high price).

vintermann2• 6 months ago

The Utah part of this is so interesting because of the way people keep track of their family history.

Definitively interesting that they could get so many old hair samples with good provenance.

munificent8• 6 months ago

It's interesting that the paper doesn't mention this, but the answer here is Latter Day Saints. They have a very strong culture of genealogy and preserving family history. The study authors are all in Salt Lake City, which is the Mormon capital of the world.

vintermann2• 6 months ago

Yes, I guess they assumed it went without saying.

I have a lot of respect for LDS genealogy efforts. It clearly goes beyond the baptizing the dead thing. Many of them take it very seriously, and they don't shy away from things that challenge the Mormon narratives (mainly DNA evidence not giving support for their peculiar American settlement theories).

jmward016• 6 months ago

I remember going to LA in the late 80's and my eyes watering (I also remember the pants-less man on the side of the strode but that is a different story). Environmental regulations are a win. Unfortunately there is a large segment of the population that doesn't believe something until it happens to them directly. That makes it a challenge to maintain environmental, or any regulations for that matter, over generations. It isn't practical, but it would be interesting to create 'pollution cities' where the regulations were loose so long as the entire company drew its workforce (including management) from the local population (like within a mile) and a significant portion of their drinking water and foods must also be sourced locally. Go ahead, pollute your own drinking water. I bet cities like this would be cleaner than ones with stricter regulations.

gedy2• 6 months ago

Environmental regulations are a win. Unfortunately there is a large segment of the population that doesn't believe something ...

You aren't wrong, but let's be honest that a lot of that is manufacturing just moved to China and moved the pollution. Specific to lead in gas, yes it's great we no longer do this.

ZeroGravitas3• 6 months ago

Manufacturing output hit an all time high in the US in 2024.

There's less manufacturing jobs and it's less of the total economy as other sectors grew but it would presumably need to be genuinely cleaner in order to offset that growth if industrial pollution just remained flat.

The switch from coal to gas would be a major cleanup for any process that uses electricity, for example.

yellottyellott• 6 months ago

In Louisana there’s a stretch around all the refineries nicknamed Cancer Alley. The locals work the plants. Everyone gets sick. And they vote for expansion because it brings in more jobs. You need the regulations.

xp84• 6 months ago

Yeah, but I bet the executives and lawyers don’t live anywhere near there, and they probably visit those sites as little as possible. In the thought experiment that wouldn’t be allowed.

zhshsha• 6 months ago

You need the regulations.

This is fixing the symptom instead of the problems. Elites are allowed to be rich because the cost of failure is supposed to be extremely (historically, their life) expensive to them. We got rid of the latter without the adjusting the former.

_DeadFred_6• 6 months ago

In the bay area you can throw a rock from one super fund site and hit another yet it's full of libertarians saying 'stop over regulating'.

317070• 6 months ago

I bet cities like this would be cleaner than ones with stricter regulations.

I would almost always take the opposite side of this bet. Once responsibility becomes diffuse enough, people would actively poison themselves as they see no alternative.

cassepipe2• 6 months ago

Did you intend to write "stroad" (street + road used to decry car-centric city design) ?

jmward016• 6 months ago

yep. If any city embodies the strode it is LA.

alistairSH• 6 months ago

Yet, there are ample cases of the workers living near a factory and constantly getting cancer. PG&E in Hinckley, CA comes to mind as the most well known, due to the media/movie about Erin Brockovich.

jmward016• 6 months ago

But their CEOs don't live next to the factories. My, completely impossible, thought experiment would have all management living near the plant. I bet if the CEO lived with the water near the factory they would make sure it was clean.

wat100004• 6 months ago

There was a pretty substantial length of time between the beginning of the industrial revolution and the development of transportation infrastructure that allowed people to live far from where they worked, and get most of their food from distant lands. Your experiment was done many times. The result was not clean cities.

mulmen• 6 months ago

I also remember the pants-less man on the side of the strode but that is a different story

Is it though? How much lead can you breathe before you totally lose your mind?

t1234s2• 6 months ago

You used to be able to buy leaded 110 gas as Sunoco in the early 2000's. It would make your exhaust tips turn white and had a sort of candy like smell when combusted.

grubbs• 6 months ago

I remember people with various "tunes" at the racetrack would run this stuff. It definitely smelled like candy!

Faaak• 6 months ago

AFAIK that's why leaded paint is bad for children: it tastes sweet so they continue licking it/eating the chips of paint that fall off the wall

latexr• 6 months ago

You’re conjuring an image of children licking walls, but just the dust from the flaking paint chips is harmful.

https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/prevention/paint.html

t1234s2• 6 months ago

Water from lead pipes must have tasted amazing

ljlolel• 6 months ago

It’s why they added it to wine

myself248• 6 months ago

Wait 'til you learn about avgas!

bluedino• 6 months ago

You can buy it online from Sunoco

https://petroleumservicecompany.com/sunoco-supreme-112-octan...

I think they only sell the unleaded race gas at the pumps now but I may be wrong.

justin663• 6 months ago

You can still buy the same stuff at an airport or race track.

mistrial9• 6 months ago

no one has mentioned "The Secret History of Lead" published by The Nation in March 2000. The long and detailed article exposed the deliberate and long-standing cover-up of leaded gasoline's dangers by major corporations. Villians include General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon).

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.

Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.

Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights. It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped. Clearly, banning leaded gasoline has that kind of justification, and therefore I'm strongly in favor of maintaining that ban and extending it wherever it isn't in place yet. The same reasonable standard should be applied to other regulations across the board.

AdamN• 6 months ago

Basically everybody agrees with what you're saying which is what makes this an insidious comment.

In general the pressure against regulation comes from narrow winners (oil industry for instance) whereas the pressure for regulations generally comes from people focused on the greater good (even if they are misled by other narrow winners, for instance compliance firms).

gosub100• 6 months ago

There are valid reasons to oppose regulations. They can be used to create barriers of entry for small businesses, for example. They constantly affect the poor more than the middle class.

throwway1203854• 6 months ago

It's really easy to sit and demand evidence before regulating something. But consider that if we waited for hard evidence to accumulate before banning lead in gasoline, we likely never would have banned it because the hard evidence wouldn't exist.

I also don't agree on the principle that regulations are "harmful" or "helpful." Rather, you have to define who the regulation harms, and who it helps. For example antitrust enforcement harms shareholders and some employees of very large firms, but it helps many employees and arguably improves the landscape for competition between many smaller firms. So whether a regulation is preferable comes down to values.

In the case of leaded gas, it harms basically everybody, but it helps fuel companies, so it was an easy thing to change.

rayiner7• 6 months ago

We had research to support the EPA phase down of lead.

Also, your assertion that lead “helps fuel companies” is fundamentally mistaken. Gasoline is a mass-produced commodity. Oil companies have single digit profit margins. These companies aren’t making Big Tech profit margins where they can absorb higher costs without passing them along to consumers. Cost savings from things like gasoline additives accrue to consumers at the gas pump.

Hikikomori• 6 months ago

It's really easy to sit and demand evidence before regulating something. But consider that if we waited for hard evidence to accumulate before banning lead in gasoline, we likely never would have banned it because the hard evidence wouldn't exist.

We already knew lead was toxic before we started putting it in gasoline. Even the guy that invented it got sick from exposure and people died from exposure in their plants in the first years of operation. The problem is that we somehow require evidence that something is unsafe but don't require any evidence that its safe in the first place.

colechristensen2• 6 months ago

So we should legislate evidence free based on the vibes of whichever tribe is currently in power?

We're doomed.

mktk1001• 6 months ago

Who is proposing for environment regulation without proper scientific evidence? You both sided the argument without giving any claims about environment regulation that turned out to be not helpful.

lingrush4• 6 months ago

Maybe ten comments below you there is someone stating "environmental regulations are a win."

No qualifiers whatsoever. All environmental regulations are good as far as this person is concerned.

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

Are you aware of scientific evidence that supports mandating paper drinking straws?

andychase• 6 months ago

Note that the current administration closed its research and science office.

https://www.science.org/content/article/blow-environment-epa...

diego_moita• 6 months ago

some environmental regulations work [...] while other [..] do more harm than good

You are (deliberately?) overlooking the elephant in the room: lobbies with money can distort the discussion.

Big tobacco knew for decades that smoking was bad but still managed to block restrictions in smoking. Oil companies knew lead was poisoning. Purdue knew Oxycontin was addicting. Facebook knows their product is toxic.

rayiner7• 6 months ago

Lead is a textbook example of a good regulation. It’s something where the industry was doing something very harmful-aerosolizing lead and pumping it into the air—which had quite small economic benefits and was relatively easily replaced.

Some regulation achieves this kind of improvement, and we’re probably under regulated in those areas. Particulate matter, for example, is extremely harmful. But many regulations do not have such clear cut costs and benefits.

cassepipe2• 6 months ago

Can you tell more about particulate matter ? You mean small particles in the air right, so air pollution right ?

GeoAtreides• 6 months ago

was relatively easily replaced.

It wasn't easily replaced. For many decades there weren't any alternatives for anti-knock additives.

ZeroGravitas3• 6 months ago

Your tone suggests you think they are generally not based on science and given cost benefit analysis. Probably a reflection of your media intake.

In 1981 Reagan made cost benefit analysis a requirement for EPA.

For example in 1984: the EPA " estimates that the benefits of reducing lead in gasoline would exceed the costs by more than 300 percent.... These benefits include improved health of children and others"

Trump has just scrapped the requirement to cost in human health.

I wonder if removing lead would meet the new standard.

LorenPechtel14• 6 months ago

Reagan got it half right. The problem is the cost of figuring out the cost/benefit doesn't get considered.

FatherOfCurses• 6 months ago

It should be uncontroversial that introducing shit into an environment where it doesn't belong is a bad idea, yet many people remain unconvinced that dumping tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere or tons of fertilizer by-products into the oceans is a bad idea.

nxm2• 6 months ago

It's less that but rather the hypocrisy of promoting burdensome regulations and bans implemented in one county (e.g. Germany) which hurts domestic industry and raises costs for its citizens, all while being silent on countries like China and India continuing to massively build more and more coal fired power plants

recursive• 6 months ago

You've just shifted the disagreement into a debate about whether the particular shit does or does not belong in the particular place.

css_apologist• 6 months ago

give me an example of EPA regulation that needs to be eliminated

breakyerself13• 6 months ago

Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated.

The worst environmental crisis in human history is going largely unchecked. I find it hard to take seriously any argument that environmental regulation has gone too far as opposed to not nearly far enough.

If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good I'm cool with revisiting anything, but the common sense wisdom around environmental regulation has been corrupted by corporate public relations campaigns.

davidw4• 6 months ago

There's certainly some "environmentalism" out there that's using the banner of the environment for other ends.

Here's one example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-02/california-...

I mostly agree with you, but it is worth paying attention to the details.

lacunary• 6 months ago

what kind of common sense wisdom are we talking about here, can you give an example? understanding the impact of regulation designed to impact both the environment and the economy, two incredibly complex systems our experts are only beginning to understand, isn't generally a matter of common sense

an_account• 6 months ago

CEQA in California is very often used to block apartments in existing urban areas.

So, instead, California continues to mostly build single family housing sprawl into natural habitats.

A clear example of environmental regulation hurting the environment and the climate. And of course the affordability of housing.

nokcha• 6 months ago

I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since Chernobyl.

busterarm3• 6 months ago

How do you explain the bug up its ass that the EPA has about auto racing?

coob• 6 months ago

Nah some environmental regulation is batshit.

Literally, in the UK you can’t build if there’s a protected bat species in the area.

loeg3• 6 months ago

Except, you know, NEPA.

BurningFrog2• 6 months ago

CEQA is pretty universally considered a disaster.

The alternative is not to have no environmental regulation. California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other states and be much better off.

gwbas1c3• 6 months ago

If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good

In Massachusetts you can't clear shoreline. Specifically, if you buy waterfront property on a pond / lake, you can't clear the shoreline to make a beach in your backyard. You can only use what used to be there before the law was passed. There's even restrictions on building close to shorelines, so if you want to build, you need to find an existing building and renovate.

Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation.

colechristensen2• 6 months ago

Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated.

Ok, strong example here: the long term efforts to stop forest fires caused build up of fuel that should have burned up in small fires which then instead burned up ecosystems which evolved for small forest fires and instead were destroyed in large ones.

That's a well intentioned environmental policy that had terrible effects.

Fuel efficiency programs with the goal of reducing emissions with exceptions for work vehicles killed small trucks and meant a ton of people who do approximately 0 work drive around enormous vehicles that were designed big to match the exception criteria.

That's another one.

Ethanol to replace gasoline is also an enormous negative consequence waste that started as an environmental program.

Things don't just work because you want them to and programs aren't automatically right because of what they intend to do.

Far too many people argue for things they don't understand at all because of the surface intention of them and treat discussion about them blasphemy. (I chose uncontroversial negative examples because I don't want to get sidetracked into arguments about my examples with zealots)

LorenPechtel14• 6 months ago

You are acting as if they are somehow equal. Unfortunately, environmental regulations have three huge problems:

1) They become political. Rules are made (or not made) to appeal to voting blocks rather than by evaluating the science.

2) There is a strong tendency not to destroy that which exists. By any reasonable standard coal filed powerplants should not exist.

3) (Could be considered part of #2) There is a strong tendency to look at risks in isolation rather than in the marketplace. We should not be aiming to make industries as safe as practical, we should be aiming to make the outcome as safe as possible. These are very different things! The extreme example of this is electricity. Coal is ~10x as dangerous as oil which is ~10x as dangerous as natural gas which is ~10x as dangerous as nuclear. The risk to society is measured in deaths (or other harm) per terawatt-hour, not by whether any given generator is as safe as it reasonably can be.

stinkbeetle2• 6 months ago

The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power under the guise of saving the environment has been probably the most environmentally destructive initiative ever to come about, and the largest self-imposed contributor to "the worst environmental crisis in human history". The coal industry loves it though.

Needless to say, I disagree with your assessment. Every [action by governments and bureaucrats] is motivated by the desire for personal gain or to perpetuate the power of the state or both.

Environmental regulation, workers rights, drilling for oil in Alaska, making up stories about WMDs to invade Iraq, domestic spying are all fruit of the same tree. Don't let them fool you, the good of these things is never the primary goal, and in many cases does not even exist. And "environmental regulation" is a big culprit.

Braxton19805• 6 months ago

Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.

I'm aware of political parties and politicians who make statements similar to "We have too many regulations" or "stop big government" I'm not aware of opposite.

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

You've never heard a politician say, "When I'm Mayor/Governor/President, we're going to make [x] [stop/start] doing [y]"?

soperj2• 6 months ago

while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.

Prove it.

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

I have proven it to my own satisfaction. It's a pretty trivial proof. I'm sure you could derive your own, if you tried.

How's this: if, at some point, it seems to me that your agreement would benefit me or advance something I care about, I promise I'll consider trying to convince you.

loeg3• 6 months ago

Put more broadly, we should, you know, enact good laws and repeal bad ones. No major political party has a monopoly on good, or bad, legislation.

jcattle• 6 months ago

It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped

Here is a strawman for you: studies for regulation A show that it is successfull in improving habitat for endangered species. Studies also show that the regulation increases tax burden and decreases competitiveness of national agriculture.

Should the regulation be chopped?

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

Frankly, that's a question of values, not of process.

I'm not championing any particular set of values here (except, perhaps, that I'm implying the values of doing impartial science and of inclusive, rational public discourse).

I'm saying that public debate ought to be had to litigate that question, and that hard data should feature prominently in that debate. That is not something we'll do if we assume in either direction that "environmental regulation is always good" or "environmental regulation is always bad." I'm saying both kinds exist, and that apart from hard data we can't confidently know one from the other, which means we have to assess and re-assess. I'm not pre-registering an opinion on which side of any particular debate should win, or why I think that instead of the opposite.

MisterTea2• 6 months ago

while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.

Which "other" regulations are harmful and what harm are they doing?

wat100004• 6 months ago

This sounds nice, but in the context of actual politics it's completely meaningless.

It's like saying that some people are dangerous criminals who need to be locked up, and other people are upstanding citizens who should be free to live their lives. Everybody would agree with this. The disagreement is in how you sort people. What category encompasses someone who belongs to the opposing political party? That sort of thing.

Regulation should definitely be justified by scientific data. Who gets to determine what's enough? Who gets to determine what counts? Leaded gasoline is a great example. It was pretty well understood when it was introduced that lead was hazardous and dumping a bunch of it into the atmosphere was unwise. But this was evaded, denied, and suppressed for decades.

Even today, it's not settled. Lead is still used in aviation gasoline in the US. It's being phased out, but it's been in the process of phasing out for a couple of decades and there seems to be no urgency in it.

You'll find plenty of people disagreeing with pretty clearly beneficial environmental regulations because in their view those regulations are not supported by the data. They would completely agree with your statement, while saying that pollution from coal power plants is no big deal, climate change is a myth, etc.

tjohns6• 6 months ago

There definitely is urgency to phase out leaded aviation gasoline. The FAA is proposing that we phase it out by 2030 - just 4 years from now - even though we still haven't agreed on which of the 3 competing gas blends to standardize on, the pumping infrastructure only exists at a small number of airports, and even though there's still open concerns about them causing engine damage.

They just published a draft version of the transition plan here: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/draft_unleaded_avgas...

wolvoleo8• 6 months ago

Yes when I was flying I really hated having to walk around in lead fumes :( The problem is the whole GA industry stopped innovating the single engine piston market. The engines we used were literally from the 1950s. But nobody cares about certifying modern engines because it's so costly.

Only in the ultralight market they have some newer ones that can run on normal unleaded car gas because regulations are much lighter. In this case I do really think the regulations are holding back innovation and environment.

epistasis6• 6 months ago

In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.

This would be a reasonable centrist opinion, if there existed environmental regulations that do more harm than good!

Actually, I do know of one, in California, that does both harm and good and the harmful parts need to be reigned in. CEQA in California was expanded by courts after it was passed to cover all sorts of things that weren't intended by the authors. CEQA is not so much an "environmental" law as it is a "perform some massive studies law" as it doesn't really regulate anything in particular.

Mostly it serves as a route to use the courts to delay projects, largely housing in already-built-out areas. By delaying a project's approval with a court lawsuit for 2-3 years, the preliminary financing runs out, the cost of owning land without doing anything with it runs out, so projects can be scuttled without the validity of the lawsuit every being evaluated by courts.

Instead of this sort of legal courtroom process that takes long and indeterminate amounts of time, CEQA should be replaced with strict and very clear definitions of harm, or at least move the more subjective parts into a science-based regulatory body that provides answers an a short timeline that can not be dragged on indefinitely.

Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights.

This is a very weird turn of the phrase "corporations aren't people," because there actually are highly influential politicians that made the case that corporations are people. Nobody is saying that regulations are people. That's silly.

The regulations we need to get rid of are not "environmental" regulations, they are "rent seeking" regulations that allow entrenched interests to prevent disruption by smaller interests. CEQA is not a problem because its an environmental regulation, it's a problem because it's a tool NIMBYs use to get results that are worse for the environment.

LorenPechtel14• 6 months ago

But you are showing an example of an improper regulation.

lo_zamoyski3• 6 months ago

It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped.

This sounds good as a general default, but there are differences of approach. The US, for example, tends to be more permissive with new chemicals while the EU tends to take a more precautionary approach. Which is better on the whole, weighing the various competing goods, I don't know. I generally favor health over economic prowess, however.

a manipulative political maneuver

Yes, under the pretext of concern for the environment. There are well-known cases where the political opposition will commission a bogus ecological studies to stifle construction projects they either don't agree with or as a petty way to simply make the ruling party appear less successful. And naturally, the ecological study will find something, as virtually no major construction project will leave the environment unaltered, which is not to say seriously or irretrievable damaged.

tracerbulletx• 6 months ago

That's why the people that would rather policy be based on their personal interests work so hard to discredit all data and the scientific method so that you can't even have that conversation.

nayuki• 6 months ago

some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated

You're right. Off the top of my head, the stupidest environmental regulation I can think of right now is the banning of plastic straws. It's such a minuscule amount of plastic used compared to the mountains of bags and packaging used in general commerce and industry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting our environment. I just believe in evidence-based policy and setting priorities correctly. After all, money, labor, and attention are finite resources.

anigbrowl• 6 months ago

Aren't you just waving a flag for less regulation by rushing to align yourself with this inarguable example of regulatory success? Rather than discussing the issue of what impact lead had, or how we might apply this longitudinal method to other other problems (making hair archives into a general environmental data resource), or develop longitudinal methods in general, You've chosen to issue a clarion calla gainst 'bad regulation'.

Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.

....nobody was arguing this. It's a classic straw man fallacy. Further, you're leveraging a lot of emotional terms while providing zero examples, inviting potential sympathetic readers to just project their feelings onto any regulations they happen to dislike rather than establish any sort of objective criteria or lay out any map/model of regulatory credibility that could be subject to challenge or criticism.

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

I'm not rushing anywhere or arguing for or against anything at all in concrete detail. I'm trying to refuse the "all or nothing" fallacy that, yes, some people are arguing, and no, is not a straw man (you can see sincere examples of that viewpoint expressed in this very thread).

If I'm doing anything (and I'm self-consciously and intentionally doing next to nothing here), it is suggesting or reaffirming an extremely basic rational grid that, in my opinion, ought to apply across all aisles as universal, table-stakes context within which people who disagree with one another can try to reach rational, reality-informed compromise.

If I'm issuing any clarion call, it is this and only this:

Some environmental regulation is good, and some environmental regulation is bad, and we should use science to figure out which is which and then legislate based on the best good-faith interpretation of that science that we have access to.

That's it. Re-read my parent comment, if you don't believe me. That's literally all it says.

The reflexive contrary reaction, in this thread, against what I see as an extremely mild proposal justifies the (frankly quite minimal) effort I made in articulating it. This is not a universally accepted starting point for public policy discourse, though I think it should be (which is why I said so, in so many words).

Rational people, like both you and me I hope, have to voice this perspective and insist upon its acceptance and application if it is to survive the political polarization we're enduring as a society right now.

enaaem• 6 months ago

It's better to over regulate than under regulate, if you look at it in terms of utility. The damage of under regulation can be catastrophic, like people getting cancer or irreversible loss of species. Based on examples I read here, overregulation is much easier to solve. For example, the weaponisation of environmental regulation to block new development is a political problem not a technical one, which is solvable if people really want to.

Ma8ee5• 6 months ago

It is fair and reasonable to demand that releasing a substance with new and unknown effects into the environment justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data that it is safe, or else get chopped.

I think people's health is more important than corporate profits. If corporations played fair, I'd be more tempted to agree with your formulation than with mine, but history has shown that that isn't the case. Take a current example like PFAS, where as soon there is enough evidence to prohibit one variety because it is harmful, the industry just starts using a very similar one that the legislature hasn't had time to collect evidence against.

cfiggers10• 6 months ago

I don't disagree at all in principle with what you're saying.

And, some people think that over-regulation on the insecticide use of DDT (which, to be perfectly fair is a nasty chemical and pretty much confirmed carcinogen, also was having negative effects on birds who were eating the poisoned insects and thereby getting unintended higher doses of the stuff) directly facilitated a rebound in mosquito populations in Africa, downstream from that a rebound in mosquito-borne malaria, and downstream from that a death toll debatably as bad or worse in terms of loss of human life than might've been had DDT use been more controlled and less banned outright.

Or think about how the banning of sulfur from cargo ship fuel in 2020 led to an 80% decrease in SO2 emissions... which is great for cutting harmful pollution around ports and such... But caused a measurable RISE in global temperatures because the sulfate aerosols had been reflecting sunlight off of the atmosphere, delaying global warming.

I don't know man, I don't have all the answers and I'm not trying to shill for mustache-twirlingly evil corporations who would turn us all into Soylent Green if it meant ten basis points more profit this quarter. I am just saying that there's gotta be a balance, and we have to recognize that there's no automatic, turn-your-brain-off safe side to default to. We always need science to verify that what we thought would happen happened, and that nothing we didn't intend to happen did, and in cases where the unforseen second-order effects should cause us to revisit the policy decisions we've made, even if just to revise and improve them rather than completely reverse course, we should actually do that rather than let political momentum override scientific validation and feedback.

ck2• 6 months ago

unless you live next to an airport or even remotely close to it

then lead is being sprayed all over you, your car and home, daily

for THREE DECADES NOW

no rush, not like it's poison or does permanent damage to your health/IQ

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...

ryandrake• 6 months ago

Acknowledging that there is no safe amount of lead exposure, the amount of lead that "is being sprayed all over you" from a tiny handful of piston airplanes is minuscule compared to what we were all exposed to prior to the mid 70s. Like many orders of magnitude. I'd be concerned if I worked at the airport pumping gas or something.

moffkalast5• 6 months ago

Yeah it's absurd how aviation is somehow exempt from these rules, especially since piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun. There have been viable alternatives for a long long time now.

I guess people who have money for personal airplanes also have the money to lobby when it matters for their interests. Pricks, I hope they die of dementia.

mfkp• 6 months ago

Wow, very angry and uninformed comment. No airplane owners are lobbying for lead. As a pilot with a personal airplane that runs on avgas, we all want lead to go away too. But it's a problem with FAA regulations, and an infrastructure problem where every airport nationwide needs to have separate fuel tanks/trucks with leaded fuel and the newer lead-free alternatives simultaneously, which is a massive expense. Plus, there is no consensus on which lead-free alternative is safest for old engines, so we're still waiting on data.

California has a few airports that are stocking the lead-free alternatives, but that's about it.

But yes, blame the small aircraft owners if it makes you feel better.

"piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun"

I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.

tjohns6• 6 months ago

Piston aircraft are vital to training new pilots. Without the piston fleet, you wouldn't have anybody flying anything larger.

Not to mention they're frequently used for air ambulance flights, survey work, and law enforcement. The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston aircraft.

Also, the current proposed plan is to migrate off of leaded gasoline for most of the country by 2030, which is actually quite ambitious given that acceptable alternative fuels didn't exist until literally a few years ago.

filleduchaos3• 6 months ago

Piston-engine aircraft both have much more vital roles than people flying them for fun (for example they form practically all of "last mile" air service as well as pretty much all of ag flying) and very much do not have viable alternatives as far as both cost and operational efficiency go.

zzo38computer• 6 months ago

There is unleaded airplane fuel, although leaded fuel is still used. What I have been told is that it would take some time for the unleaded airplane fuel (which is compatible with the existing airplanes that use leaded fuel) to be distributed to enough places to be commonly available enough, which it isn't yet.

lenerdenator• 6 months ago

I really want to see elimination of lead (projectiles, lead styphnate primers, etc.) in firearms next.

When I go to the range, every once in a while, I'll see one of the older marksmen who's there with his squirrel hunting rifle, chambered in .22 LR. I've noticed that he seems to have a tremor in his hands when he's loading his magazines. Essential tremor is linked to lead exposure [0]

Most .22 LR projectiles are either just lead or have a copper "wash" over the lead, not a proper jacket like you see on other rounds.

I wonder, if you shoot those loads for long enough, and breathe in enough gunsmoke, do you get that problem?

As for the proof being in our hair... well, not mine. Chrome dome over here XD

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1241711/

bikelang• 6 months ago

I completely agree. I do everything I can to avoid leaded ammunition. I do not want lead touching the meat I harvest. It can be really tricky to find lead-free ammo of certain sizes. I mostly use waterfowl ammo for upland bird and rabbit - and it works fine. But even ordering ammo online it is quite hard to get .270 solid copper. And in a store? Forget about it

1970-01-012• 6 months ago

Why would lead be in the gunsmoke? Everything leaded should be coming out the business end of the firearm, and it should be coming out with some gusto.

jabl3• 6 months ago

Because the heat and pressure from the propellant and rifling vaporizes or rubs off some of that lead. A very small percentage, granted, but still.

Particularly for unjacketed bullets like 22LR. Even jacketed bullets tend to not be jacketed at the base.

vel0city• 6 months ago

The material that burns in primers is often lead styphnate. This burns and sends lead particles throughout the air.

With rounds that aren't well jacketed like those 22s that are just bare lead, you also get some of the round scraping in the barrels that comes off as dust.

There's tons of lead in the air at shooting ranges.

buildsjets• 6 months ago

Are you proposing that the base of the bullet which is exposed to the burning propellant magically remains at room temperature, and none of the lead in the base of the bullet is vaporized? What about the process of forcing the projectile into the barrel's spiral grooves at very high speed, leaving grooves in the side of the bullet. Where do you suppose that displaced and/or vaporized material ends up? What about the lead styphante that is combusted in the primer? I am not aware of any firearm that has a muzzle filter that removes primer residue from the combusted gunsmoke.

justin663• 6 months ago

The base of the bullet is lead (with jacketed pistol rounds, that's often true even if it's a "full metal jacket" and some brands are trying to draw a distinction there with "total metal jacket" branding) and it's exposed to the explosion when the round fires. There's some vaporized lead, most if it will move downrange and some of it won't. Airborne lead is potentially more of a problem at an indoor range.

Copper, polymer-coated, or total metal jacket rounds will also result in less lead on the firearm, I'd think, and less on the user's hands. One old guy I know who had lead poisoning at one time believes the real risk is getting the lead on one's hands and then handling a cigarette.

adrianN5• 6 months ago

There was a big case in Berlin where policemen got sick after shooting at a range with insufficient ventilation.

gambiting• 6 months ago

Fun fact - leaded petrol isn't actually banned in the UK, you can legally buy it and use it. The legislation at the time of bans just made it so that leaded petrol could only be a small % of overall petrol sales by any given fuel station, arguing that it allowed time for owners of unleaded-incompatible cars to purchase it.

And....it worked pretty much exactly as designed - initially only the largest stations carried it because they could justify the storage costs, and eventually it disappeared from almost everywhere. Just before covid there were still 3 small garages selling leaded petrol by the drum, but afaik they all stopped doing so.

And regardless - you can stil buy actual real Tetraethyl Lead fuel additive which turns your petrol into actual real 4-star leaded petrol, just like in the old days:

https://www.demon-tweeks.com/tetraboost-e-guard-15-fuel-addi...

jabl3• 6 months ago

I recall there's one factory on the planet still producing TEL, so once they decide it's no longer profitable it's over.

Aviation gasoline is probably the one market that still keeps it afloat, when/if piston aviation switches over the remaining market is small and insignificant.

tjohns6• 6 months ago

At least in the US, the current proposed plan is to phase out leaded avgas by 2030: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/draft_unleaded_avgas...

tim333• 6 months ago

Light aircraft still run on leaded avgas.

Sounds like the government is being lax. From the aircraft owners and pilots association:

So the Government's indifference is not going to help us in the UK if the *supply of leaded AVGAS is stopped, the UK CAA have not appoved new fuels, there is no infrastucture or supply chain in the UK. We keep beating the doors at the CAA and DfT...

krunck• 6 months ago

Also: Preserved hair reveals just how bad lead exposure was in the 20th century (livescience.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46872282

lysace3• 6 months ago

During the past year I have discovered that almost all retailers here in Sweden have voluntarily replaced their usual Teflon/polytetrafluoroethylene/PTFE frying pan coatings with something called 'ceramic'. (This includes IKEA globally, I assume.)

The thing is - it's simply not as good. The worst case is probably frying frozen gyoza. They will get stuck when they get gelatinous on that 'ceramic' surface.

I ended up looking up some slightly offbrand stores to get the pan that I wanted.

munificent8• 6 months ago

Humans were able to successfully fry food for hundreds of years before Teflon was invented.

I still like non-stick pans for eggs, but for almost everything else, I prefer stainless steel, cast iron, or enameled cast iron. You do have to pay a little more attention to technique (knowing what temperature to heat the pan to before you put food on, etc.), but the end result is just about as good as a non-stick pan with many advantages:

* You don't have to be obsessive about never letting a metal utensil scratch the pan. (I hope you aren't using a metal spatula or fork with your non-stick!)

* You can scrape the hell out of the pan while you cook and get all that delicious crispy fond into what you're making. If I'm doing a pan sauce, it's always in the Dutch oven so I can get that fond into the gravy.

* They last a lot longer. Even if you are careful, a non-stick pan will lose its coating and need to be replaced after a handful of years. I got my cast iron skillet for $15 at an antique store. It's older than me and will outlive me.

* You're not, you know, eating forever chemicals.

lysace3• 6 months ago

I remember seeing a bunch of research showing that any teflon you ate was just pooped out, so to speak.

This ceramic pan I bought from IKEA lasted like 3-5 months until I was unhappy with it. Historically, the teflon pans I have bought from there have lasted 12-18 months easily.

LorenPechtel14• 6 months ago

Yeah, the alternatives aren't as good. They're safer, though.

Teflon and it's relatives--so long as you don't expose them to enough heat to mess with the C-F bonds, they're probably safe. But Teflon only exists as a solid, it will decompose before melting, thus the problem becomes how to form it? You need a solvent--a solvent that dissolves that which is famous for being impervious. To date only one such solvent has ever been found: it's pretty close chemically but one bond doesn't have a F stuck on it so it will play nice with both Teflon (which is what most of the molecule looks like) and other things (the piece that isn't like Teflon.) Can you hope to recover all of the solvent from the finished product? No way. And that solvent will react in the body, it's not inert like the Teflon. Toxic down to the detection threshold.

They have played games, producing "different" solvents but they're all the same thing, the same reactive part connected to a chain of a different length that is fully fluorinated. The length of the inert chain doesn't change anything, the toxicity comes from the one reactive part.

j452• 6 months ago

The concerning thing is how lead, arsenic are being found in things they are not reported in or labelled as being safe.

_DeadFred_6• 6 months ago

I wonder how big a factor this is in creating podcast bros/tech bros. Is there actually a pipeline from 'get guy to start working out' to becoming a dumb bro?

https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-sha...

j452• 6 months ago

Seems to be a regularish occurrence far beyond the podcast/tech crowd in many areas.

Blind doubting of things can be as bad as blindly believing they're safe, if we don't know who's, or if anyone is keeping the safety honest. Capitalism can too often lean towards optimizing profit.

Testing for lead, etc can be done independently pretty easily and consistently enough to get a statistically high enough correlation of what's going on.

I get the stereotypes - but consuming anything in an unbalanced way will lead to being out of balance. Food, caffiene, alcohol, supplements.

WalterBright• 6 months ago

I am so grateful that much of my childhood was in a town rather than a city.

chhxdjsj• 6 months ago

I wish someone would do a large RCT of water fluoridation in pregnant women looking at long term cognitive outcomes if fetuses. It would be an easy study to do (just randomize each group to receive free deliveries of either fluoridated or not fluoridated water) and then look at their offspring’s scores on cognitive tests every few years. I think reputable scientists don’t touch this because they’re afraid of being labelled kooky.

LorenPechtel14• 6 months ago

Does the word Tuskegee mean anything to you? Because that's basically what you are asking for.

Nor is there any need for such a study as we have a natural one: some areas have more fluorine in the water than others. We started putting fluorine in the water because we noticed that the places with higher natural levels had better teeth. There comes a point where it's too much and downsides appear, but, again, we already knew that. Note that this is a completely normal thing--there is nothing which is not toxic in sufficient quantity. Including *everything* that is necessary for human life. What would be strange is if there wasn't some maximum safe level. Some things the body easily eliminates and the range between minimum and maximum is quite wide. Things which are not so easily eliminated have narrower ranges. Thus we have the situation where overdose of water-soluble vitamins is basically unheard-of, but overdose of fat-soluble vitamins very definitely happens.

FlyingBears• 6 months ago

Don’t worry, we can get our lead from spices and every food that includes them. Lead is cheaper to get than cinnamon and even cocoa, so it ends up being favored adulterant to increase weight at sale.

paulryanrogers• 6 months ago

Considering what lead does to people, there should be jail time for everyone involved. Even store managers should do time if products on their shelves turn up positive.

halamadrid• 6 months ago

If someone in the admin reads this, there is a chance this will be reversed and lead will be allowed in gas again :)

accidentallfact2• 6 months ago

That is expected. The problem is that people are not getting healthier, or more intelligent, quite the opposite.

Obviously there is an absolutely massive problem that you're missing as you're congratulating yourself on "succeeding" with a massive effort with no clear result.

SV_BubbleTime• 6 months ago

Good experiment… I guess turn the lead back on and we’ll see!

accidentallfact2• 6 months ago

Well, at the very least you need to agree that its effect was smaller than the harm done by whatever the actual problem is.

cyanydeez• 6 months ago

I would argue it worked, but not fast enough. I think the current American politics run by 50-80 year olds with significant lead poisoning.

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

It's definitely lead.

But when you do look at the details it doesn't look like the results point to the measured lead coming directly from gasoline itself.

Just as likely if not more so coming from the neighborhood lead smelter that operated over a period of decades where the phaseout probably overlapped from both mineral and gasoline sources, in step with the regulations.

These are rare samples but I wonder if it would be possible to determine how much lead was on the outside of the hairs which could be expected to settle from the atmosphere, compared to within the biological matrix itself which could have been incorporated metabolically?

And in a ubiquitous TEL-using environment, would that form of lead build up more so on the outside of the hairs or the inside?

With or without a lead smelter in the neighborhood?

Denatonium• 6 months ago

As if tetraethyl lead in gasoline wasn't bad enough, they also added ethylene dichloride and/or ethylene dibromide, which acted as a lead scavengers, preventing deposits of insoluble lead (II) oxide from forming and clogging up engines/exhaust equipment. Instead, water-soluble-at-high-temperatures lead (II) chloride and lead (II) chloride were blasted out the tailpipes of vehicles using tetraethyl lead. These are mildly soluble at ambient temperatures, allowing the lead to permeate even further than it otherwise would have.

Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

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