The Impact of Lead Exposure on Intelligence and Development

As we sit here today, it's hard to believe that the average American child born between 1966 and 1975 had childhood blood levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter, making them clinically concerned. This is not a new issue, however. According to the CDC, no safe blood level in children has been identified, and even at concentrations below this threshold, lead can still cause significant harm.

In fact, research suggests that any amount of lead in your blood is a bad thing. Lead is a neurotoxin that damages the brain and nervous system, which is particularly important for children as it can slow growth and development, cause learning and behavioral problems, hearing and speech problems, and even IQ point losses. A recent study out of Duke and Florida State found that half of the US population had been exposed to adverse levels of lead in early childhood.

So, why are we still using leaded fuel in our small planes? The answer lies in a bit of circular logic. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has no regulations in place for emissions from aircraft that use leaded fuel, and commercial jet engine manufacturers have responded to existing emission standards by improving jet engine designs and efficiency. In other words, we've come full circle – we ingested lead which made us dumb, which meant we couldn't figure out why we were dumb, which means we wouldn't do anything about what was causing us to be dumb.

The Circle of Dumb

This is where it gets particularly interesting. The FAA is currently evaluating and considering a plan to eliminate leaded emissions from general aviation by the year 2030. This is a step in the right direction, but one can't help but wonder – why did it take so long for us to realize the harm caused by lead? After all, we've been aware of its dangers since the 1970s.

A Study with Consequences

But wait, there's more. A study from 2005 looking at blood lead levels and over 300 children across the world found that IQ was significantly lower if you had higher levels of lead in your blood. The graphs show a clear correlation between lead exposure and decreased intelligence. This is not new news; research has been warning us about the dangers of lead for decades.

The Consequences of Lead Exposure

The consequences of lead exposure are real and far-reaching. It's estimated that 10 million people alive in the US in 2015 had blood lead levels above 25 micrograms, which is seven times the current CDC level of concern. This means that a significant portion of our population has been affected by lead exposure, with some studies estimating that the average American lost 2.6 IQ points purely from lead exposure.

The Duke Study

The Duke study estimated that as of 2015, the total loss in IQ points due to lead exposure was staggering – 824 million, or approximately 97.69 IQ points, have been wiped from American citizens. This is a staggering number, and it's clear that lead has had a profound impact on our intelligence and development.

The Current State of Affairs

So, what can we do about it? The FAA is taking steps to eliminate leaded emissions from general aviation by 2030, but more needs to be done. We need to continue to research the effects of lead exposure and develop new technologies that can reduce its impact on our environment and our health.

For now, however, the circle of dumb remains intact – we ingested lead which made us dumb, which means we couldn't figure out why we were dumb, and so we wouldn't do anything about it. But perhaps, just perhaps, by acknowledging the harm caused by lead and taking steps to mitigate its effects, we can break free from this cycle of ignorance and start making progress towards a brighter future for all.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you were born in america before 1996 you've likely been exposed to lead because of leaded gasoline and as a result you're less intelligent wait a minute i was born before 96. i'm dumb but wait it gets better we still use it today so if you were born before today you're also done hello everyone and welcome in this video we are covering the infuriating story of leaded fuel and there are three main topics we need to cover first off we knew it was dangerous from the very beginning yet we've used it for an entire century so we started off with ethanol decided to poison ourselves with lead for 100 years then we went back to using ethanol genius second we are still using it today yes this air right here might have led in it because i'm not that far from a local airport can you hear that sound that's the sound of let it feel and third a new study indicates we're dumber because of it like all of us and you are especially at risk if you were born between 1966 and 1975. we'll get into that all right let's start at the very beginning ethanol actually was viable as not only a fuel but also an additive in the early 1900s even liked by folks like henry ford so when you take ethanol and you add it to gasoline it raises the octane level this allows engines to run more efficiently and make more power so raising the octane level is a good thing but we had crazy taxes on alcohol in 1864 a gallon was two dollars and fifty cents equivalent to about fifty dollars a gallon in today's money gasoline was not taxed as heavily you can probably blame this on politics so it was about 20 cents a gallon in 1906 about 6.50 in today's money so if alcohol is prohibitively expensive what can we do well in 1921 a research chemist for general motors named thomas midgley found that when he added tel a lead additive to gasoline it eliminated knock meaning the fuel now allowed engines to make more power and run more efficiently amazing so in 1923 it hit the market refineries would blend tel which they called ethyl fluid into gasoline before it was distributed to gas stations so we started using this stuff even though there were immediate signs that lead was a really really bad idea some examples tel exploded twice while midgley worked with it in 1922 and he suffered from lead poisoning in 1923. in september 1923 one worker died one month after dupont began tel production at its deep water new jersey facility three more workers died over the summer and fall of 1924 at the deepwater facility in january 1925 dupont started a different teal production process at its deep water facility and 4 workers died that winter okay so people who are coming into contact with this stuff keep dying and then here's a very telling anecdote workers at the deepwater facility experienced hallucinations so often they called the facility the house of butterflies people kept dying from tel so in 1924 the state of new jersey ordered the production of teo to be shut down so we stopped making teo for a hot second and the u.s surgeon general was like yo we need a committee to check out the safety of teo and in january 1926 the committee found quote no good grounds for prohibiting the use of ethyl gasoline so later that year leads back in our gas so let's summarize so far first we're like hey ethanol is pretty neat let's tax it out of existence so then we decide to put lead in our fuel oh a bunch of people are hallucinating and dying committee says that's fine so we kept using lead in the fuel for our cars until 1996 70 years later now there's two pieces of positive news that comes from all of this part of which helps explain why we were so dumb for so long well first of all we were all breathing lead so you know we were dumber because of that so how could we make a smart decision about lead but second we did eventually come to our senses and realize that lead was bad for us so we found an alternative which we started using in the 1970s called mtbe okay here's a great anecdote refiners began to use mtbe as an anti-knock additive in 1979. refiners knew of mtbe's effect on the environment as early as 1981. a shell oil company hydrogeologist testified that the ongoing joke inside shell was that mtbe really stood for among other things most things biodegrade easier so it turns out this mtbe stuff was contaminating water supplies and it was really difficult to get rid of so we stopped using it and once again switched back to ethanol so today we blend 10 ethanol into our gasoline partly because it helps raise the octane level which means our modern engines can run more efficiently and make more power all right summarizing again we were like hey this ethanol stuff's pretty cool should we use it nah so then we poisoned ourselves for 70 years heck yeah freedom baby and then we went back to using ethanol so that's it case closed right unfortunately i have more bad news leading us to the second part of this video we're still using lead today it's still floating around in the air maybe this air right here yes as of today we still sell something called avgas 100 ll which is used by small piston engine planes of which there are an estimated 170 000 of these planes in the u.s air fleet the rationale for continuing to use this fuel is aircraft safety which like yeah i don't want planes falling out of the sky either but why are we using safety as an excuse for the pilots but not for the millions of people being poisoned by the fuel folks your captain speaking in the event of an emergency oxygen masks will be dropped for the pilots due to the extreme lack of oxygen passengers will likely pass out and sustain permanent brain damage this is normal if you're flying with children today and it's worth noting every other form of transportation including of course all the major airline jets in the sky managed to use fuel that doesn't have lead in it it's a problem we can solve but choose not to and to be fair there are alternatives in development but it feels like without some sort of regulatory pressure we're just going to keep pretending it's not a real problem now as mentioned this airplane fuel is called avgas 100 ll in which the ll stands for low lead which is ironic i'm guessing it's sort of some fun inside joke within the industry because are you ready for this the legal limit for lead in automotive leaded gasoline in 1986 was 0.1 grams per gallon today avgas 100 ll allows for 2.1 grams per gallon in other words over 20 times what was allowed for automotive use in 1986 i guess because like it's from a plane not a car so like the lead couldn't possibly get into the air we breathe i mean that air is like way up there and we're like way down here whoa dang it turns out it doesn't work like that a study from 2021 looking at a regional airport found that quote children living downwind from the airport had higher blood lead levels with increases of 0.4 micrograms per deciliter over children living upwind from the airport for context lead levels detected during the peak of flint water crisis were between 0.35 and 0.45 micrograms per deciliter over baseline meaning it could be just as problematic as flint michigan wherever you have these regional airports so yeah it's a problematic amount of lead in the air that we're talking about which lends us excuse me leads us to the final segment of this video the impact lead has had on our intelligence look maybe the jokes could have been better if my developmental years were during the time of tick-tock rather than the time of toxic metals interesting question tick-tock or lead what's worse for your brain all right just a little additional context on why lead is such a big problem two quotes starting with the cdc no safe blood level in children has been identified and second from the national academies of sciences lead does not appear to exhibit a minimum concentration in blood below which there are no health effects in other words to the best of our knowledge any amount of lead in your blood is a bad thing lead is a neurotoxin it damages the brain and nervous system which is particularly important for children because it can slow growth and development cause learning and behavioral problems and hearing and speech problems it makes us like we are today dumb and i mean that literally a recent study out of duke and florida state found that half of the u.s population had been exposed to adverse levels of lead in early childhood okay so here's where things are slightly confusing so allow me to clarify to the best of our knowledge any amount of lead in your blood is a bad thing but the cdc defines a blood lead reference level of 5 micrograms per deciliter basically this is cause for clinical concern so remember when i mentioned things being particularly problematic for those born between 1966 and 1975 this duke study found that 100 percent of the u.s population born between those years had childhood blood levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter this is insane from 1951 to 1980 three decades of u.s history the vast vast majority over 90 percent of children had high enough lead levels to cause clinical concern above five micrograms per deciliter oh and several months before this study came out the cdc revised that number to 3.5 micrograms there is some good news in that today it's estimated that only 2.5 of us children are above that threshold thanks to effort like taking the lead out of our gasoline but it's still a very real problem around 10 million people alive in the u.s in 2015 had blood lead levels above 25 micrograms 10 million people at seven times the current cdc level of concern that's a real problem because as i mentioned lead impairs development making us less smarter than we should have been the duke study estimated that as of 2015 the average american was down 2.6 iq points purely from lead exposure that's the average american if you're in these higher exposure groups like the 1970s children that's closer to six iq points higher exposure correlated to higher iq point losses the study estimates a total of 824 million 97 690 iq points have been wiped from american citizens because of lead it's no wonder that one news channel actually has an audience and so maybe you're thinking well this is just one study and it's very new we need some time to figure this all out well actually this isn't at all a new idea a study from 2005 looking at blood lead levels and over 300 children across the world found that iq was significantly lower if you had higher levels of lead in your blood pretty graphs that show you more lead more dumb okay but like we don't have a fuel that these small planes can run on so we have to keep using it right i mean there's no other possible reason other than we just don't have the technical capability to create a fuel that would make these planes work cue the federal aviation administration or the faa at present there are no regulations that apply to emissions from aircraft that use leaded fuel no regulations none hear me out for a second do you think no emission regulations might play the slightest role in why we continue to use leaded fuel in these planes if your answer is no not only have you ingested far too much lead but you'd also be disagreeing with the faa literally the next sentence faa enforces existing emission standards for commercial jet aircraft and engines through the certification process of engines commercial jet engine manufacturers have responded to requirements for emissions reductions through technology changes by improving jet engine designs and efficiency so we've come full circle we ingested lead which made us dumb which meant we couldn't figure out why we were dumb which means we wouldn't do anything about what was causing us to be dumb ensuring that future generations would also become dumb so that they wouldn't do anything about the thing that's also making us dumb the circle of dumb the faa is currently evaluating and considering a plan to eliminate leaded emissions from general aviation by the year 2030. i hope we do something thank you all so much for watching now if you'll excuse me i'm off to eat the paint off the walls of my old home it has this metallic flavor that just helps me forget thingsif you were born in america before 1996 you've likely been exposed to lead because of leaded gasoline and as a result you're less intelligent wait a minute i was born before 96. i'm dumb but wait it gets better we still use it today so if you were born before today you're also done hello everyone and welcome in this video we are covering the infuriating story of leaded fuel and there are three main topics we need to cover first off we knew it was dangerous from the very beginning yet we've used it for an entire century so we started off with ethanol decided to poison ourselves with lead for 100 years then we went back to using ethanol genius second we are still using it today yes this air right here might have led in it because i'm not that far from a local airport can you hear that sound that's the sound of let it feel and third a new study indicates we're dumber because of it like all of us and you are especially at risk if you were born between 1966 and 1975. we'll get into that all right let's start at the very beginning ethanol actually was viable as not only a fuel but also an additive in the early 1900s even liked by folks like henry ford so when you take ethanol and you add it to gasoline it raises the octane level this allows engines to run more efficiently and make more power so raising the octane level is a good thing but we had crazy taxes on alcohol in 1864 a gallon was two dollars and fifty cents equivalent to about fifty dollars a gallon in today's money gasoline was not taxed as heavily you can probably blame this on politics so it was about 20 cents a gallon in 1906 about 6.50 in today's money so if alcohol is prohibitively expensive what can we do well in 1921 a research chemist for general motors named thomas midgley found that when he added tel a lead additive to gasoline it eliminated knock meaning the fuel now allowed engines to make more power and run more efficiently amazing so in 1923 it hit the market refineries would blend tel which they called ethyl fluid into gasoline before it was distributed to gas stations so we started using this stuff even though there were immediate signs that lead was a really really bad idea some examples tel exploded twice while midgley worked with it in 1922 and he suffered from lead poisoning in 1923. in september 1923 one worker died one month after dupont began tel production at its deep water new jersey facility three more workers died over the summer and fall of 1924 at the deepwater facility in january 1925 dupont started a different teal production process at its deep water facility and 4 workers died that winter okay so people who are coming into contact with this stuff keep dying and then here's a very telling anecdote workers at the deepwater facility experienced hallucinations so often they called the facility the house of butterflies people kept dying from tel so in 1924 the state of new jersey ordered the production of teo to be shut down so we stopped making teo for a hot second and the u.s surgeon general was like yo we need a committee to check out the safety of teo and in january 1926 the committee found quote no good grounds for prohibiting the use of ethyl gasoline so later that year leads back in our gas so let's summarize so far first we're like hey ethanol is pretty neat let's tax it out of existence so then we decide to put lead in our fuel oh a bunch of people are hallucinating and dying committee says that's fine so we kept using lead in the fuel for our cars until 1996 70 years later now there's two pieces of positive news that comes from all of this part of which helps explain why we were so dumb for so long well first of all we were all breathing lead so you know we were dumber because of that so how could we make a smart decision about lead but second we did eventually come to our senses and realize that lead was bad for us so we found an alternative which we started using in the 1970s called mtbe okay here's a great anecdote refiners began to use mtbe as an anti-knock additive in 1979. refiners knew of mtbe's effect on the environment as early as 1981. a shell oil company hydrogeologist testified that the ongoing joke inside shell was that mtbe really stood for among other things most things biodegrade easier so it turns out this mtbe stuff was contaminating water supplies and it was really difficult to get rid of so we stopped using it and once again switched back to ethanol so today we blend 10 ethanol into our gasoline partly because it helps raise the octane level which means our modern engines can run more efficiently and make more power all right summarizing again we were like hey this ethanol stuff's pretty cool should we use it nah so then we poisoned ourselves for 70 years heck yeah freedom baby and then we went back to using ethanol so that's it case closed right unfortunately i have more bad news leading us to the second part of this video we're still using lead today it's still floating around in the air maybe this air right here yes as of today we still sell something called avgas 100 ll which is used by small piston engine planes of which there are an estimated 170 000 of these planes in the u.s air fleet the rationale for continuing to use this fuel is aircraft safety which like yeah i don't want planes falling out of the sky either but why are we using safety as an excuse for the pilots but not for the millions of people being poisoned by the fuel folks your captain speaking in the event of an emergency oxygen masks will be dropped for the pilots due to the extreme lack of oxygen passengers will likely pass out and sustain permanent brain damage this is normal if you're flying with children today and it's worth noting every other form of transportation including of course all the major airline jets in the sky managed to use fuel that doesn't have lead in it it's a problem we can solve but choose not to and to be fair there are alternatives in development but it feels like without some sort of regulatory pressure we're just going to keep pretending it's not a real problem now as mentioned this airplane fuel is called avgas 100 ll in which the ll stands for low lead which is ironic i'm guessing it's sort of some fun inside joke within the industry because are you ready for this the legal limit for lead in automotive leaded gasoline in 1986 was 0.1 grams per gallon today avgas 100 ll allows for 2.1 grams per gallon in other words over 20 times what was allowed for automotive use in 1986 i guess because like it's from a plane not a car so like the lead couldn't possibly get into the air we breathe i mean that air is like way up there and we're like way down here whoa dang it turns out it doesn't work like that a study from 2021 looking at a regional airport found that quote children living downwind from the airport had higher blood lead levels with increases of 0.4 micrograms per deciliter over children living upwind from the airport for context lead levels detected during the peak of flint water crisis were between 0.35 and 0.45 micrograms per deciliter over baseline meaning it could be just as problematic as flint michigan wherever you have these regional airports so yeah it's a problematic amount of lead in the air that we're talking about which lends us excuse me leads us to the final segment of this video the impact lead has had on our intelligence look maybe the jokes could have been better if my developmental years were during the time of tick-tock rather than the time of toxic metals interesting question tick-tock or lead what's worse for your brain all right just a little additional context on why lead is such a big problem two quotes starting with the cdc no safe blood level in children has been identified and second from the national academies of sciences lead does not appear to exhibit a minimum concentration in blood below which there are no health effects in other words to the best of our knowledge any amount of lead in your blood is a bad thing lead is a neurotoxin it damages the brain and nervous system which is particularly important for children because it can slow growth and development cause learning and behavioral problems and hearing and speech problems it makes us like we are today dumb and i mean that literally a recent study out of duke and florida state found that half of the u.s population had been exposed to adverse levels of lead in early childhood okay so here's where things are slightly confusing so allow me to clarify to the best of our knowledge any amount of lead in your blood is a bad thing but the cdc defines a blood lead reference level of 5 micrograms per deciliter basically this is cause for clinical concern so remember when i mentioned things being particularly problematic for those born between 1966 and 1975 this duke study found that 100 percent of the u.s population born between those years had childhood blood levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter this is insane from 1951 to 1980 three decades of u.s history the vast vast majority over 90 percent of children had high enough lead levels to cause clinical concern above five micrograms per deciliter oh and several months before this study came out the cdc revised that number to 3.5 micrograms there is some good news in that today it's estimated that only 2.5 of us children are above that threshold thanks to effort like taking the lead out of our gasoline but it's still a very real problem around 10 million people alive in the u.s in 2015 had blood lead levels above 25 micrograms 10 million people at seven times the current cdc level of concern that's a real problem because as i mentioned lead impairs development making us less smarter than we should have been the duke study estimated that as of 2015 the average american was down 2.6 iq points purely from lead exposure that's the average american if you're in these higher exposure groups like the 1970s children that's closer to six iq points higher exposure correlated to higher iq point losses the study estimates a total of 824 million 97 690 iq points have been wiped from american citizens because of lead it's no wonder that one news channel actually has an audience and so maybe you're thinking well this is just one study and it's very new we need some time to figure this all out well actually this isn't at all a new idea a study from 2005 looking at blood lead levels and over 300 children across the world found that iq was significantly lower if you had higher levels of lead in your blood pretty graphs that show you more lead more dumb okay but like we don't have a fuel that these small planes can run on so we have to keep using it right i mean there's no other possible reason other than we just don't have the technical capability to create a fuel that would make these planes work cue the federal aviation administration or the faa at present there are no regulations that apply to emissions from aircraft that use leaded fuel no regulations none hear me out for a second do you think no emission regulations might play the slightest role in why we continue to use leaded fuel in these planes if your answer is no not only have you ingested far too much lead but you'd also be disagreeing with the faa literally the next sentence faa enforces existing emission standards for commercial jet aircraft and engines through the certification process of engines commercial jet engine manufacturers have responded to requirements for emissions reductions through technology changes by improving jet engine designs and efficiency so we've come full circle we ingested lead which made us dumb which meant we couldn't figure out why we were dumb which means we wouldn't do anything about what was causing us to be dumb ensuring that future generations would also become dumb so that they wouldn't do anything about the thing that's also making us dumb the circle of dumb the faa is currently evaluating and considering a plan to eliminate leaded emissions from general aviation by the year 2030. i hope we do something thank you all so much for watching now if you'll excuse me i'm off to eat the paint off the walls of my old home it has this metallic flavor that just helps me forget things\n"