General Question

rexpresso's avatar

What is the reality about lead poisoning?

Asked by rexpresso (922points) June 12th, 2009

I just read this, and it made me think. What do you think?

“Have you ever seen antique toys from 100 years ago? They were coated, covered, slathered in lead paint. Houses were painted, inside and out, with lead paint. Water flowed through lead pipes. How did society survive when children were exposed to massive amounts of lead paint?”

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10 Answers

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

We didn’t thrive as much as a society – same with when sewage flowed through our waters, there were no antibiotics, people contracted all kinds of things without any medical cure – we are resilient but lead poisoning is quite real

gooch's avatar

Yes lead poision is very real. Don’t doubt thatcit takes it toll on your life. Do a little google search it’s down right scarey.

casheroo's avatar

Lead poisoning is serious. They even test babies at 9 months old (could be 12 months, I might be mixing it up) to make sure their lead levels are not high. The fact that they even have lead levels sounds scary though.
Here’s just one article on it. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4950a3.htm

seekingwolf's avatar

Just because society “survived” being exposed to lead doesn’t mean that people didn’t die from it or suffer the bad affects from such exposure.

Lead poisoning can cause serious illness and death for people, and (perhaps more alarming) neurological damage to children and infants so that they’ll have developmental disabilities when they grow older.

hearkat's avatar

I worked in an inner city Children’s Hospital, and worked with kids who had lead poisoning… it’s no joke.

Darwin's avatar

One of the things that has changed since 100 years ago is that the rate of child mortality has dropped and the overall expected lifespan has soared.

You still think lead poisoning could have no effect?

crisw's avatar

Intelligence has also risen; a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect that is believed to be caused, at least in part, by the decline in lead exposure.

fundevogel's avatar

Franklin’s expedition to chart the Northwest Passage ended badly in part because of lead poisoning. The ships got stuck in the ice and after months of eating nothing but food from cans sealed with lead solder the crew went nuts and were unable to approach their problem with anything even remotely resembling reason.

They all died.

And the Northwest Passage doesn’t actually make it to the Pacific. But now that we have airplanes nobody cares.

rexpresso's avatar

I just want to say how amazing Fluther is, the depth of knowledge that can be summoned, is just amazing. Thanks everyone — this subject is pretty much clear to me right now. Lead poisoning is real. Thanks!

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