United States: Experts are concerned that the environmentally toxic metal lead has been harming our well-being.
A new study released on Wednesday reveals that American generations that grew up in the 20th century were significantly infected with lead, hence aggravating the ill health of their brains, further contributing to enhanced cases of mental diseases that were not there.
More about the prevailing danger
The experts estimated that children affected directly by lead – especially in the decades when it was present in gasoline – are to blame for worsening psychiatric disorders in the United States, including an extra 151 million cases over the past 75 years.
With this finding, the study reveals that lead has been even more hazardous to society than earlier estimated, gizmodo.com reported.
Use of lead in cars
Automakers started using it as a fuel additive in the early 1920s, containing lead to minimize engine wear.
Leaded gasoline proved to have a climax in the early 1960s, when it became the number one source of lead exposure to Americans.
But while scientists had long known that heavy lead exposure was bad for us, it became firmly established by the 1970s that even small amounts of lead could be damaging, especially to the brains of developing children.
However, eliminating lead as an additive in gasoline and other everyday commodities would take another half a century.
Study to quantify the impact
Scientists to determine just how much even the less dramatic but significant impact of lead on people’s health throughout the twentieth century has been, including the authors of this most recent study on the subject, gizmodo.com reported.
The team’s similar previous work conducted in 2022 estimated that 45 percent of the population of people in America alive in 2015 were probably affected by dangerous levels of lead in their childhood, relying on population survey data in combination with the known level of leaded gasoline consumption in the United States.
In addition, they said that this lead exposure had, together, caused average Americans to lose an IQ equivalent of 824 million points or 3 IQ points per person.