#lead poisoning
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U.S. people, if you bought cinnamon from Dollar Tree, Dollar General, or other discount stores, throw it out. It's got lead
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"Lead is a neurotoxin; it causes premature deaths and lifelong negative effects. It’s said “there is no safe level of lead exposure” — as far as we know, any lead causes damage, and it just gets worse the more exposure there is.
After a 20-year, worldwide campaign, in 2021 Algeria became the final country to end leaded gasoline in cars — something the US phased out in 1996. That should make a huge difference to environmental lead levels. But lots of sources remain, from car batteries to ceramics...
Bangladesh phased out leaded gasoline in the 1990s. But high blood lead levels have remained. Why? When researchers Stephen Luby and Jenny Forsyth, doing work in rural Bangladesh, tried to isolate the source, it turned out to be a surprising one: lead-adulterated turmeric.
Turmeric, a spice in common use for cooking in South Asia and beyond, is yellow, and adding a pigment made of lead chromate makes for bright, vibrant colors — and better sales. Buyers of the adulterated turmeric were slowly being poisoned...
But there’s also good news: A recent paper studying lead in turmeric in Bangladesh found that researchers and the Bangladeshi government appear to have driven lead out of the turmeric business in Bangladesh.
How Bangladesh got serious about lead poisoning
The researchers who’d isolated turmeric as the primary cause of high blood lead levels —working for the nonprofit International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh — went to meet with government officials. They collected samples nationwide and published a 2019 follow-up paper on the extent of the problem. Bangladesh’s Food Safety Authority got involved.
They settled on a two-part approach, starting with an education campaign to warn people about the dangers of lead. Once people had been warned that lead adulteration was illegal, they followed up with raids to analyze turmeric and fine sellers who were selling adulterated products.
They posted tens of thousands of fliers informing people about the risks of lead. They got coverage in the news. And then they swept through the markets with X-ray fluorescence analyzers, which detect lead. They seized contaminated products and fined sellers.
According to the study released earlier this month, this worked spectacularly well. “The proportion of market turmeric samples containing detectable lead decreased from 47 percent pre-intervention in 2019 to 0 percent in 2021,” the study found. And the vanishing of lead from turmeric had an immediate and dramatic effect on blood lead levels in the affected populations, too: “Blood lead levels dropped a median of 30 percent.”
The researchers who helped make that result happen are gearing up for similar campaigns in other areas where spices are adulterated.
The power of problem-solving
...When the Food Safety Authority showed up at the market and started issuing fines for lead adulteration, it stopped being a savvy business move to add lead. Purchasers who were accustomed to unnatural lead-colored turmeric learned how to recognize non-adulterated turmeric. And so lead went from ubiquitous to nearly nonexistent in the space of just a few years.
That’s a better world for everyone, from turmeric wholesalers to vulnerable kids — all purchased at a shockingly low price. The paper published this month concludes, “with credible information, appropriate technology, and good enough governance, the adulteration of spices can be stopped.”
There’s still a lot more to be done. India, like Bangladesh, has widespread adulteration of turmeric. And safety testing will have to remain vigilant to prevent lead in Bangladesh from creeping back into the spice supply.
But for all those caveats, it’s rare to see such fast, decisive action on a major health problem — and impressive to see it immediately rewarded with such a dramatic improvement in blood lead levels and health outcomes. It’s a reminder that things can change, and can change very quickly, as long as people care, and as long as they act."
-via Vox, September 20, 2023
#lead#lead poisoning#turmeric#bangladesh#south asian food#south asia#public health#public safety#government#good news#hope
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About two-thirds of children younger than 6 years old in Chicago are exposed to lead in their drinking water, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The researchers developed artificial-intelligence models that made citywide estimates of the number of children under 6 living in homes with lead-contaminated drinking water. They also used simulation models to estimate the increase in the children’s blood lead levels from drinking that water. The findings were extrapolated from census data and 38,385 household lead tests collected from 2016 to 2023.
Continue Reading.
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#woops#fall of rome 2#every older generation must be lead poisoned#this is the inevitable law of empires#shitpost#lead poisoning#stanley cup#memes
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IF Meghan Markle's doing it, YOU do the opposite!
Amazon Reviews Markle's Liquid Mushrooms🤢:
#Clevr#meghan markle#markled#megxit#oprah winfrey#NOprah#Sparry#spare us#cringe not clever#gross#liquid mushrooms#cancer#buyer beware#lead poisoning
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Also, Google Books is making abundantly clear to me that… The Victorians did in fact know about lead poisoning
They just
Were sort of at a loss to do anything about it, given the technology of the time
Attempts were made- I found a number of newspaper articles, especially from the end of the century, discussing the possibilities for new lead-free glazes in ceramics, for example
But a lot of it is just like
“Welp. Our world is full of lead. Someone should. Maybe do something about that?”
(it seems to have been primarily an occupational hazard at the time. Which makes sense– workers would be the ones exposed to the largest quantities of lead, eg in glaze dust from ceramics, over the shortest period)
#History#Victorian#Social history#Lead poisoning#it’s really interesting how much of their advice for precautions against lead toxicity are similar to the ones I found online#‘ don’t store tomatoes in cans with questionable solder!’#yep seems to check out with what modern experts are saying
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Hello: In the post with a picture of vintage pyrex I thought I remembered a website that said there was lead in that pattern so I replied with a link, but then google showed Snopes saying it is unproven, so I deleted my reply. I had googled lead paint pyrex amish butterprint. I read an article in the Guardian recently about lead on vintage glassware and it got me worried.
Hey, thanks for letting me know! FWIW it didn't even pop on my activity feed so you must have deleted pretty fast :D
I'd honestly rather people let me know if they've heard of something like that; of course it's best to look up the facts first but usually if someone's like "Oh Sam no that's the Leaded Cookware" I'll still go investigate for myself. I appreciate that you were looking out for me because lead poisoning truly is awful. It's one of my huge fears in life, the idea of consuming something that slowly starts to degrade my cognition and I don't notice because it's degrading.
I do take comfort in the fact that it takes a lot of specific exposure over a long period of time, generally, to absorb lead from cooking/serving vessels; you definitely shouldn't just throw caution to the wind, like maybe don't drink from the Tainted Garfield Glasses, but you have to cook and eat a LOT of food from a very high-lead pan before you start having issues.
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The US bringing back lead poisoning
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i'm giving lead poisoning to a horse. what did YOU do with your friday night??
#horse#lead poisoning#humor#shitpost#apartmentofawesome#r/196#196#rule#shitposting#:3#funny#txt#/r/196#she'll really just say anything these days
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he got that lead poisoning stare
#arthur morgan#rdr2#rdr2 arthur#rdr2 community#red dead fandom#red dead redemption 2#red dead redemption community#red dead redemption two#lead poisoning#stare
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Video
this happemed weeks ago and im still reeling
#video#tiktok#tiktoks#story time#wtf#lead#lead poisoning#mother#mothers#mom#moms#parent#parents#tattoo#tattoos#jaythegay4
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Children living in racially segregated neighborhoods have higher levels of lead in their blood, a new study shows.
The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, underscore the negative health effects of policies stemming from systemic racism.
The study is the latest from the University of Notre Dame’s Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI), which examines the adverse and disproportionate environmental burdens experienced by communities in racially segregated areas.
Continue Reading.
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A reminder to all USAmericans that we still have lead in our water infrastructure.
Source
186 million people were served by 18,694 drinking water systems with 90th percentile lead samples above 1 ppb—the AAP recommended limit for schools.
Map of the 186 million people (roughly 56% of the US population) affected, pictured below.
61 million people were served by 4,949 drinking water systems with 90th percentile lead samples above 5 ppb—the FDA limit for bottled water.
Map of the 61 million people (roughly 18% of the US population) affected, pictured below.
7 million people were served by 1,085 drinking water systems with 90th percentile lead samples above 15 ppb—the EPA action-level exceedance.
Map of the 7 million people (roughly 2% of the US population) affected, pictured below.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the systems that don’t even correctly test for lead.
Close to 4 million ( Americans get their water from small utilities that skipped required lead tests or did not conduct the tests properly, violating federal safe drinking water laws. Source
I’ve noticed many people are very unaware of our persistent lead problem, which is understandable given how much is going on, but people deserve to know this information
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Oh to be a baroque artist (going absolutely insane due to lead poisoning from the white paint)
#and they looked hot doing it#art history#art#baroque#dark academia#artist#painter#paint#lead poisoning#lead white#lead paint
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In the conservative mindset, money spent on the public in general is wasted. If the peons want safe water, they should buy commercially filtered and bottled, like Kobach does. And if they can't afford it, then they don't deserve it - the brain damage caused by lead poisoning will make them more suited to the menial tasks they are meant to do.
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