If lead was really that important, you’d expect to see a discontinuous Flynn effect, with much larger jumps since lead was outlawed and started being abated, not a linear change or even a decrease.
I wonder if the "lead caused the crime wave" argument doesn't have a bias towards data rather than historical evidence, and towards the secular trend rather than peaks and character of the phenomenon. I don’t know that you can build a case for historical revisionism based solely on this approach. In fact, it seems too tempting: if we can just focus on this data set, then we can all stop feeling uncomfortable about our recent history and its failures and put them away in our past because we use unleaded gasoline now. We can absolve everyone of the fault that has been found over the years. We can let go of the painful racial division and conflict that we suffer from. But it is a recipe for being doomed to repeat history.
White flight, as it is called, was a historical fact of large social importance, with implications all through society down to today. If you’re on the left, this historical event is attributed purely to racism. If you’re on the right, it is attributed to soaring, racialized crime. So knowing the fact and nature of this kind of crime is really very important in the discussion of how we got here. Lead could explain why there were more crimes, but can’t explain why there were these kinds of crimes. I don’t think available data can ever tell us anything about this, if nothing else because when white people escaped to the suburbs, the city criminals couldn’t get at them. How much more of these kinds of crimes would have occurred, if the victims couldn’t have moved away?
This is not the only story going on, but it is a very important one that tends to be neglected as the Seventies recede in time, for political reasons. I’m not denying the influence of suburban incentives and subsidies, of housing discrimination, or the failure of the American mobility machine. I am only asking for recognition of *all* the history. It conflicts with, but also informs, the other narratives for a more complete picture that we can use going forward.
"If you saw a little kid about to swallow a small piece of metal, you’d try and stop her."
I hope you don't mind me suggesting that you use the standard "try to" instead of the faddish "try and." The former is English and makes logical sense; the latter ... well ... isn't and doesn't.
One thing I've noticed as a homeowner is the disincentives to test for things like lead. The previous owner of my house put "don't know" on the paperwork when it asked if they knew if the house contained lead paint. There's clearly a penalty on the value of a home if the answer is yes. Same goes for asbestos. I want to know if my house has these health hazards, but I also don't want to feel like I have to put yes on that form when I sell the house, and I'm sure I'm not alone feeling that way.
It seems like there should be clear incentives pushing home and property owners to have some testing regime take place. Does anything like that exist?
I'm sort of repeating myself but the argument both in the post and the comments ignore the presumably highly heterogeneous dispersion of costs and benefits of lead damage vs equally heterogeneous costs and benefits of other infrastructure investments that a municipality might carry out. I think an infrastructure bank that could finance a wide variety of projects has a better chance of raising aggregate net present value of our investments.
So I am going to stand up for highways as a form of transportation. Women get sexually assaulted on public transportation more than in their own cars. Wen the public discusses public transportation vs driving and parking we don't talk about this. personal safety from crime is always worse on public transit than in cars. Yes I have read the stories that adding more highways doesn't help traffic because it just encourages more economic activity by allowing people do things when they want to do then rather than after 7 pm. Highways increase economic activity. And with electric cars it is entirely possible that they will as green as public transportation.
I think road building is a lot like taxation - it doesn't make sense to be generically in favour of more or less of it, rather, it's more a case of - what is the right amount of high quality roads (Freeways / expressways) relative to area and population.
America, Germany and Spain probably have enough high-quality roads. The UK, for example, definitely doesn't, to the point where it probably harms the economy.
I think this just means that we should make public transportation safer and more enjoyable. You're right, people aren't going to take public transportation if it's an unpleasant experience. That probably means more police and safety workers on public transit, especially at night, and also better lighting, etc.
Yeah but we are not. No one in SF will say BART has gotten better over the last 30 years. The Bay Area has gotten richer extra taxes have been passed for Bart but the experience still sucks.
The new trains are better and so are the new stations! BART sucks if you’re in SF but the rest of the network is better. And I mean, the rest of SF not having BART is worse.
So I assume you're plumping for replacing all rail with aircraft? ;)
Safety in automobiles has increased radically over my lifetime, and seems likely to continue to improve in the future. At what point do we call cars "safe enough"?
Not at all! Cars, mass transit and planes all have their pros and cons, I was just pointing out that personal safety concerns on public transit are at least partly offset by lower risk of injury/death in an accident. Given current development patterns and limited housing supply/high prices in areas well-served by transit, cars and the roads to support them are essential. Even in cities with serious rail transit, the "funnel everyone to downtown and back" setup of rail lines still makes commuting and other activities really really hard without a car.
Fair but the experience on public transportation sucks. You get your stuff stolen, if your a woman you get sexual assault. I am not saying it is better in all circumstances. I am
Just standing up for it as a legitimate infrastructure to be invested in. Highways are really the only way to connect rural areas. Where housing costs are low.
There are negative externalities associated with sprawl and highways (long commute times, pollution, crashes, etc.). There are are positive externalities associated with density. If your main concern is housing costs, making dense areas cheaper is much better than making rural areas more accessible.
Yes but I think critics of all that overstate their point.
I often hear things like "it's a failed model".
Given that driving is the way most Americans (and even, contra to what most Americans believe, most Europeans) get around, it's not really clear what they mean.
Cars are the way most people in the developed world (even Japan I believe) make a majority of a plurality of their journeys, and the way they travel a majority of their miles / kms.
If it didn't work, people wouldn't get to work, to the supermarket, or whatever.
Yea but those are getting better, electric cars better podcasts. Frankly I have not seen US public transportation get better crime is up service is as unreliable as ever. I don’t know local governments are incapable of making the trains nice but can keep the roads clear of debris but that is our life.
You can have density without subways. San Francisco is the second most densely populated city. And we had a BART strike and the Bay Area still functioned with worse traffic. I was commuting from Walnut Creek to Palo Alto at the time.
I agree that subways are overrated relative to dedicated bus lanes, and raising bus speeds and route density. But whatever the form, the payoff comes from lower congestion/higher density of development.
When did you make the switch from "infrastructure booster" to "infrastructure skeptic"? I think I haven't used the latter term to self-identify, but I feel like I and many others (including organizations like Transportation for America) have made that switch over the past decade or so. I'd like someone to write a history of this transition that a lot of us made!
I’m going to send this to my congresspeople. Seriously, the lead issue is so critical, and I can’t believe it’s just allowed to continue poisoning kids and just straight-up damaging society, especially when it would cost so little (comparatively) and have such huge benefits.
I *can* believe it, because it disproportionately affects poor and minority kids, but it’s appalling. Also, even if someone doesn’t care about poor and/or minority kids, lead abatement would benefit everyone by leading to lower crime and higher productivity! Even the most callous politician should ostensibly care about that.
Also, while my congresspeople certainly KNOW lead is bad, I want their staff to know that their constituents know and care. One nice surprise of the past four years for me has been how much attention district staff really do pay to constituent calls and emails. And how relatively few people (even in the Trump era) bother to do that kind of activism.
I understand that it's hard to get things through Congress because of the multiple veto points, because things proposed by the President activate opposition by the other party, and because the Republican party is predisposed to oppose new non-defense/homeland security spending.
I still don't get why lead abatement legislation has not sailed through Congress. Who is opposing it and why?
Lead abatement is expensive, and extremely awkward (you have to evacuate buildings for at least a few days to scrape off all the paint), and won't yield any measurable benefits within the decade. It would be remarkable if it manages to get *any* traction.
I think that's a lot for something where no one ever notices the benefit, until someone looks at a chart 40 years later and claims there's a bend starting 20 years from now. The usual sorts of things people like to spend money on give someone a nice photo op as soon as the project is done. But here, the direct beneficiaries have to put up with a period when their home is being scraped clear of paint and their pipes are being ripped out, and then at the end their house looks maybe kinda new, but there's nothing really directly obvious to them.
Oh dear. This is going to be one of those cases where your goal is correct but your cited science is extremely suspect. Or bullshit. I don't believe in homeopathy. What is true is that there is no safe lower limit for lead exposure. What is also true is that the higher the level present in a human the worse the effects. And what we have population wise is whole generations of humans exposed to relatively high historical levels of lead. My generation to be exact. Boomers were exposed to very high levels of lead. Before any abatement strategy was implemented and leaded gasoline was essentially universal, when no pollution controls were applied to heavy metal distribution systems like coal fired stack exhausts, lead solder was used in water systems, lead was still available in paint, exposure levels were through the roof.
So I ask, where was the giant inter-generational leap in IQ or any other measure that should have taken place when lead was abated. What we have are a bunch of studies that show extremely pronounced sensitivity to very low lead levels. Why is there a surge in cases of diagnosed ADHD at lower exposure levels than high exposure levels? The effects of lead are long term. So we should have even higher levels of diagnosed ADHD in adult populations that had much higher exposure levels. And we don't. Nor was there any surge in IQ when lead was abated. I don't believe these correlations make any sense at all.
Still lead is bad. And the reason there is so much of it still around is that its presence was grandfathered in as regulations were eliminating it from paint or plumbing. Where there were roads when lead gasoline was in use there is residual lead near them. No one made anyone replace their plumbing for the simple reason that if you tried you couldn't get elected dog catcher never mind governor. And about 99 percent of this plumbing lies on private property. The only place you find it in municipal systems is some antique lines connecting those properties to the mains. And their responsibility ends at the property line. (There aren't that many of those antique lead connections remaining but they are always found in older housing. Find and fix those.)
Now onto Flint, most of what was written about that is pure bullshit. No the water in the Flint river was not heavily contaminated with lead. If it had been everyone in Flint would have been affected and no corrosion inhibitor could prevent that since it wouldn't have got there by plumbing corrosion. It just isn't the source. The plumbing is the source and mainly on private property. People really need to understand this next fact. Corrosion inhibitors are not corrosion preventers. They slow the process they do not prevent it. If you leave lead in the system, on private property or not, you will still have a leaching problem. You are right about this. The problem people think is specific to Flint is actually everywhere. And when you look you will find it.
Now, the timing on this particular rise doesn't line up with the lead abatement, but this effect is larger than the one that the whole lead theory predicts, so there could *also* be a rise due to lead abatement that has just been hidden by the Flynn effect.
And on the Flint thing - Matt was careful to phrase it correctly. It's all about lead pipes in old houses, that the change in the water supply triggered to release, rather than the water supply itself. And Matt was also quite clear that the talk about Flint obscured the fact that it's everywhere.
My back up plan for subsequent generations who want to blame boomers for everything is to use the lead excuse. We handed you a bag of crap? Sorry. We were exposed to lead and are collectively idiots. Not our fault.
Matt does not mention ongoing atmospheric sources for lead, other than perhaps inferring lead sequestered in soils and house paint may be released as dust when disturbed. General aviation (GA) aircraft are the largest ongoing source of atmospheric lead. While lead as an anti-knock compound was finally eliminated from auto fuel in the US in the 1990’s, most folks don’t realize that aviation gasoline (avgas) continues to contain tetraethyl lead (TEL). Avgas is used in the GA piston-engine driven fleet, consisting of about 200,000 registered aircraft in the US. In 2019, GA aircraft consumed 200 million gallons of leaded gasoline. To put that into perspective, this annual total is but half what the US automobile fleet consumed in a single day in 2019. Still, given the concentration of TEL in avgas is ~2 grams per gallon, I calculate that over 900,000 lbs of TEL was injected into the atmosphere in 2019 by GA aircraft. There’s no reason to believe this will decrease in the near term, as efforts to replace leaded avgas have been underway for decades, but have yet to yield a viable product.
It’s worth noting that about half the GA fleet is powered by lower-compression engines that don’t require the TEL anti-knock properties. Regulatory approval is available for these aircraft to use unleaded, ethanol-free automobile gas (mogas) of at least 91 octane. However, as leaded avgas (100LL) is the only gasoline routinely available at most airports and many pilots are resistant to change, only a small percentage of the eligible aircraft actually use ethanol-free mogas. (See Options for Reducing Lead Emissions from Piston-Engine Aircraft (https://www.nap.edu/download/26050)
I hadn't realized this! Does this mean that there's higher lead concentration in the air around general aviation airports? Do lead emissions at aviation altitudes sink to create patches of high concentration under popular flight routes, or is there sufficient mixing that there's tiny bits everywhere?
Yes, the highest TEL-related lead particulate concentrations are near GA airports, especially near where engines are operated at high power output, including during run-up checks, takeoff, and climbout. At altitude, the particulates are widely dispersed, but may become cloud condensation nuclei and wash out over a wide area, albeit at very low concentration.
You beat me to it. I own a '76 Cardinal RG, for which no alternative to 100LL is currently available. I hate the fact that I'm spewing lead over the suburb where my plane is based every time I take off. At least, for noise reasons, schools and houses generally aren't built near GA airports any more.
What needs to happen first is for the EPA to issue a Finding of Endangerment, which will put everyone on notice that the clock is ticking. Then there are basically two paths:
(a) someone comes up with an unleaded drop-in replacement that can serve ~100% of the fleet with no modifications, or some very simple and cheap mods to planes' fuel systems; or
(b) we decide that's not feasible, and take an incremental approach, progressively phasing out 100LL, by installing infrastructure for mogas or 94UL at public-use airports that sell appreciable amounts of 100LL.
There's also supposedly a "100VLL" spec fuel with 20% less lead coming down the pike, that would be a drop in replacement. But 20% is a long way from 100%.
Option (b) isn't hard in principle. The FAA gives out grants to small airports all the time for paving/lighting/state-of-good-repair purposes. We could just add new tankage/new trucks for unleaded gas to the list of eligible purposes, and have congress put a bit more money into those grants programs, earmarked for this purpose.
I am a boomer with a '46 Taylorcraft with an 85-hp engine for which a autogas STC is available. I burn 93-octane, unleaded, ethanol-free autogas for all local flights, only burning 100LL when on cross-country flights. As there is no autogas available on the field, like most airports, I have to transport autogas from miles away in 5-gallon containers. It's well worth the effort and a small price to pay. (Burning autogas is better for the engine, but that's a minor consideration.) It bothers me greatly that the owners of over half the GA fleet can legally burn autogas with few or no adverse consequences, but choose not to deal with the hassle or believe the hoary tales from other pilots (and mechanics) that they will ruin their expensive engines. The FAA is a big part of the problem, but explaining the myriad reasons for their intransigence on this and many issues would take hours. I agree that migrating to 100VL is hardly satisfactory, as it doesn't come close to eliminating lead. As GA fuel represents 0.13% of overall US gasoline production, there's little economic incentive for the petroleum industry to address it. It will take aggressive action by the EPA, FAA, probably instigated by Congress. It is not likely to be high on the Biden administrations to-do list.
This brings me to a hobby-horse of mine: Shooting guns w/ in indoor ranges causes lead exposure! And cops do it frequently. And cops are just about the worst people I can imagine to give lead exposure to.
At least on the federal level, there is regular blood testing available, and it's actually required for firearm instructors and others working at range facilities (I believe a friend had to participate when on an FBI SWAT team that shot weekly).
As you say, lead is bad, and its removal is good, and one of Biden's priorities should be to further reduce lead exposure. But your history may be a bit revisionist. Lead in gasoline has been one of the most severe heavy metal contaminants since maybe 1950, but back then there was very high lead exposure via other routes (e.g. paint). The tetraethyl lead story nicely fits the Evil Oil narrative but I think you oversimplify. Showing at the start of the 20th century that high levels of organic lead are neurotoxic is a far cry from showing that what were then perceived as "modest" exposures were also dangerous, in the context of the understanding of neurotoxins at that time.
Also, while no minimal threshold has been defined, it would be impossible to eliminate ALL lead from the environment. Policy wonks need to continue to work out the cost/benefit relationship.
The argument for investments in lead removal having high returns is very strong. The question is why this needs to be financed by the federal government? If the fact that the benefits of city X investing in lead removal to produce cognitive gains in children will be reaped by other cities, then public education would similarly have to be federalized.
Maybe we need a federal infrastructure bank that would lend to states and localities for positive NPV projects like lead removal, with the evaluation reducing the risk enough to justify lending at only a small margin over the USG long term borrowing rate.
I like the idea of a federal infrastructure bank to pass on the federal government's low borrowing costs to states, but still make them responsible for managing (and keeping in check) infrastructure costs that primarily benefit the state.
One big reason for federal involvement is that the payoff for lead abatement seems to come decades after the investment. Cities and states can't run budgets on that sort of timescale.
An infrastructure bank could overcome that. Either way, there would need to be a project evaluation element in the federal response and a "bank" approach would remove it from the annual budget cycle and hopefully lead to better prioritization of investments across genre.
I get nervous when I read an article about environmental exposure where there is no consideration of relative risk and potential risk reduction (and relative cost of risk reduction). Maybe I missed it in my quick read. Lead exposure is clearly important, however exposure to other heavy metals, organic pollutants, pathogens, particulates in general, ... have significant health effects. How does the effect of exposure to lead compare to exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, to cadmium or arsenic. Where is our effort and money best spent. I expect lead is important, but be careful signaling out one exposure without acknowledging others and considering relative risk.
I think the biggest difference is that lead was actually *incredibly* prevalent in a way that no other heavy metal was. Lead oxide was the default white pigment until zinc oxide and titanium dioxide replaced it, and that's why it's in paint. Gasoline was also thoroughly prevalent everywhere people were in the developed world in the mid to late 20th century. Cadmium, chromium, and nickel definitely had niche uses in that period, but probably nowhere near as prevalent. Arsenic and mercury have probably been more prevalent than those - my suspicion is that even they were less prominent than lead (except in places where groundwater is high in arsenic).
Two things I learned from Green Thumb in NYC : make sure children have enough calcium in their systems because it prevents lead uptake in the blood, and plant lead absorbing plants to clean your soil.http://magicalchildhood.com/life/2017/07/17/seven-plants-weeds-and-flowers-that-naturally-remove-lead-from-your-property/
If lead was really that important, you’d expect to see a discontinuous Flynn effect, with much larger jumps since lead was outlawed and started being abated, not a linear change or even a decrease.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576
I wonder if the "lead caused the crime wave" argument doesn't have a bias towards data rather than historical evidence, and towards the secular trend rather than peaks and character of the phenomenon. I don’t know that you can build a case for historical revisionism based solely on this approach. In fact, it seems too tempting: if we can just focus on this data set, then we can all stop feeling uncomfortable about our recent history and its failures and put them away in our past because we use unleaded gasoline now. We can absolve everyone of the fault that has been found over the years. We can let go of the painful racial division and conflict that we suffer from. But it is a recipe for being doomed to repeat history.
White flight, as it is called, was a historical fact of large social importance, with implications all through society down to today. If you’re on the left, this historical event is attributed purely to racism. If you’re on the right, it is attributed to soaring, racialized crime. So knowing the fact and nature of this kind of crime is really very important in the discussion of how we got here. Lead could explain why there were more crimes, but can’t explain why there were these kinds of crimes. I don’t think available data can ever tell us anything about this, if nothing else because when white people escaped to the suburbs, the city criminals couldn’t get at them. How much more of these kinds of crimes would have occurred, if the victims couldn’t have moved away?
This is not the only story going on, but it is a very important one that tends to be neglected as the Seventies recede in time, for political reasons. I’m not denying the influence of suburban incentives and subsidies, of housing discrimination, or the failure of the American mobility machine. I am only asking for recognition of *all* the history. It conflicts with, but also informs, the other narratives for a more complete picture that we can use going forward.
Here is something from the "wrong'"side:
https://www.city-journal.org/truth-about-white-flight-from-cities
"If you saw a little kid about to swallow a small piece of metal, you’d try and stop her."
I hope you don't mind me suggesting that you use the standard "try to" instead of the faddish "try and." The former is English and makes logical sense; the latter ... well ... isn't and doesn't.
Thanks for all of your superb work.
One thing I've noticed as a homeowner is the disincentives to test for things like lead. The previous owner of my house put "don't know" on the paperwork when it asked if they knew if the house contained lead paint. There's clearly a penalty on the value of a home if the answer is yes. Same goes for asbestos. I want to know if my house has these health hazards, but I also don't want to feel like I have to put yes on that form when I sell the house, and I'm sure I'm not alone feeling that way.
It seems like there should be clear incentives pushing home and property owners to have some testing regime take place. Does anything like that exist?
I'm sort of repeating myself but the argument both in the post and the comments ignore the presumably highly heterogeneous dispersion of costs and benefits of lead damage vs equally heterogeneous costs and benefits of other infrastructure investments that a municipality might carry out. I think an infrastructure bank that could finance a wide variety of projects has a better chance of raising aggregate net present value of our investments.
So I am going to stand up for highways as a form of transportation. Women get sexually assaulted on public transportation more than in their own cars. Wen the public discusses public transportation vs driving and parking we don't talk about this. personal safety from crime is always worse on public transit than in cars. Yes I have read the stories that adding more highways doesn't help traffic because it just encourages more economic activity by allowing people do things when they want to do then rather than after 7 pm. Highways increase economic activity. And with electric cars it is entirely possible that they will as green as public transportation.
I think road building is a lot like taxation - it doesn't make sense to be generically in favour of more or less of it, rather, it's more a case of - what is the right amount of high quality roads (Freeways / expressways) relative to area and population.
America, Germany and Spain probably have enough high-quality roads. The UK, for example, definitely doesn't, to the point where it probably harms the economy.
I think this just means that we should make public transportation safer and more enjoyable. You're right, people aren't going to take public transportation if it's an unpleasant experience. That probably means more police and safety workers on public transit, especially at night, and also better lighting, etc.
Yeah but we are not. No one in SF will say BART has gotten better over the last 30 years. The Bay Area has gotten richer extra taxes have been passed for Bart but the experience still sucks.
The new trains are better and so are the new stations! BART sucks if you’re in SF but the rest of the network is better. And I mean, the rest of SF not having BART is worse.
By better i me a lower crime rate fewer people yelling. the trains are better but still just as unsafe.
15 times as many people die per mile traveled in passenger vehicles vs. public transportation, that's a big safety issue. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
So I assume you're plumping for replacing all rail with aircraft? ;)
Safety in automobiles has increased radically over my lifetime, and seems likely to continue to improve in the future. At what point do we call cars "safe enough"?
Not at all! Cars, mass transit and planes all have their pros and cons, I was just pointing out that personal safety concerns on public transit are at least partly offset by lower risk of injury/death in an accident. Given current development patterns and limited housing supply/high prices in areas well-served by transit, cars and the roads to support them are essential. Even in cities with serious rail transit, the "funnel everyone to downtown and back" setup of rail lines still makes commuting and other activities really really hard without a car.
Fair but the experience on public transportation sucks. You get your stuff stolen, if your a woman you get sexual assault. I am not saying it is better in all circumstances. I am
Just standing up for it as a legitimate infrastructure to be invested in. Highways are really the only way to connect rural areas. Where housing costs are low.
Are there people with ideas about how to make housing in dense areas cheaper? Maybe there's a substack from someone who writes about that a lot
I think that is part of the solution but better highways does allow for more affordable housing
There are negative externalities associated with sprawl and highways (long commute times, pollution, crashes, etc.). There are are positive externalities associated with density. If your main concern is housing costs, making dense areas cheaper is much better than making rural areas more accessible.
Yes but I think critics of all that overstate their point.
I often hear things like "it's a failed model".
Given that driving is the way most Americans (and even, contra to what most Americans believe, most Europeans) get around, it's not really clear what they mean.
Cars are the way most people in the developed world (even Japan I believe) make a majority of a plurality of their journeys, and the way they travel a majority of their miles / kms.
If it didn't work, people wouldn't get to work, to the supermarket, or whatever.
Yea but those are getting better, electric cars better podcasts. Frankly I have not seen US public transportation get better crime is up service is as unreliable as ever. I don’t know local governments are incapable of making the trains nice but can keep the roads clear of debris but that is our life.
The argument for "public transportation" is to reduce congestion costs and permit much more dense city cores.
You can have density without subways. San Francisco is the second most densely populated city. And we had a BART strike and the Bay Area still functioned with worse traffic. I was commuting from Walnut Creek to Palo Alto at the time.
I agree that subways are overrated relative to dedicated bus lanes, and raising bus speeds and route density. But whatever the form, the payoff comes from lower congestion/higher density of development.
When did you make the switch from "infrastructure booster" to "infrastructure skeptic"? I think I haven't used the latter term to self-identify, but I feel like I and many others (including organizations like Transportation for America) have made that switch over the past decade or so. I'd like someone to write a history of this transition that a lot of us made!
I’m going to send this to my congresspeople. Seriously, the lead issue is so critical, and I can’t believe it’s just allowed to continue poisoning kids and just straight-up damaging society, especially when it would cost so little (comparatively) and have such huge benefits.
I *can* believe it, because it disproportionately affects poor and minority kids, but it’s appalling. Also, even if someone doesn’t care about poor and/or minority kids, lead abatement would benefit everyone by leading to lower crime and higher productivity! Even the most callous politician should ostensibly care about that.
Also, while my congresspeople certainly KNOW lead is bad, I want their staff to know that their constituents know and care. One nice surprise of the past four years for me has been how much attention district staff really do pay to constituent calls and emails. And how relatively few people (even in the Trump era) bother to do that kind of activism.
I understand that it's hard to get things through Congress because of the multiple veto points, because things proposed by the President activate opposition by the other party, and because the Republican party is predisposed to oppose new non-defense/homeland security spending.
I still don't get why lead abatement legislation has not sailed through Congress. Who is opposing it and why?
Lead abatement is expensive, and extremely awkward (you have to evacuate buildings for at least a few days to scrape off all the paint), and won't yield any measurable benefits within the decade. It would be remarkable if it manages to get *any* traction.
I'd like to see some evidence that those concerns are driving congressional inactivity/opposition.
Also, we're talking $2.5-$5 billion/year. Does the Congress think that's too expensive?
I think that's a lot for something where no one ever notices the benefit, until someone looks at a chart 40 years later and claims there's a bend starting 20 years from now. The usual sorts of things people like to spend money on give someone a nice photo op as soon as the project is done. But here, the direct beneficiaries have to put up with a period when their home is being scraped clear of paint and their pipes are being ripped out, and then at the end their house looks maybe kinda new, but there's nothing really directly obvious to them.
Oh dear. This is going to be one of those cases where your goal is correct but your cited science is extremely suspect. Or bullshit. I don't believe in homeopathy. What is true is that there is no safe lower limit for lead exposure. What is also true is that the higher the level present in a human the worse the effects. And what we have population wise is whole generations of humans exposed to relatively high historical levels of lead. My generation to be exact. Boomers were exposed to very high levels of lead. Before any abatement strategy was implemented and leaded gasoline was essentially universal, when no pollution controls were applied to heavy metal distribution systems like coal fired stack exhausts, lead solder was used in water systems, lead was still available in paint, exposure levels were through the roof.
So I ask, where was the giant inter-generational leap in IQ or any other measure that should have taken place when lead was abated. What we have are a bunch of studies that show extremely pronounced sensitivity to very low lead levels. Why is there a surge in cases of diagnosed ADHD at lower exposure levels than high exposure levels? The effects of lead are long term. So we should have even higher levels of diagnosed ADHD in adult populations that had much higher exposure levels. And we don't. Nor was there any surge in IQ when lead was abated. I don't believe these correlations make any sense at all.
Still lead is bad. And the reason there is so much of it still around is that its presence was grandfathered in as regulations were eliminating it from paint or plumbing. Where there were roads when lead gasoline was in use there is residual lead near them. No one made anyone replace their plumbing for the simple reason that if you tried you couldn't get elected dog catcher never mind governor. And about 99 percent of this plumbing lies on private property. The only place you find it in municipal systems is some antique lines connecting those properties to the mains. And their responsibility ends at the property line. (There aren't that many of those antique lead connections remaining but they are always found in older housing. Find and fix those.)
Now onto Flint, most of what was written about that is pure bullshit. No the water in the Flint river was not heavily contaminated with lead. If it had been everyone in Flint would have been affected and no corrosion inhibitor could prevent that since it wouldn't have got there by plumbing corrosion. It just isn't the source. The plumbing is the source and mainly on private property. People really need to understand this next fact. Corrosion inhibitors are not corrosion preventers. They slow the process they do not prevent it. If you leave lead in the system, on private property or not, you will still have a leaching problem. You are right about this. The problem people think is specific to Flint is actually everywhere. And when you look you will find it.
There has actually been a pronounced and obvious rise in worldwide IQ scores over the past several decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Now, the timing on this particular rise doesn't line up with the lead abatement, but this effect is larger than the one that the whole lead theory predicts, so there could *also* be a rise due to lead abatement that has just been hidden by the Flynn effect.
And on the Flint thing - Matt was careful to phrase it correctly. It's all about lead pipes in old houses, that the change in the water supply triggered to release, rather than the water supply itself. And Matt was also quite clear that the talk about Flint obscured the fact that it's everywhere.
I dunno. My kids are waaaaay smarter than I am. They tell me so daily.
My back up plan for subsequent generations who want to blame boomers for everything is to use the lead excuse. We handed you a bag of crap? Sorry. We were exposed to lead and are collectively idiots. Not our fault.
Matt does not mention ongoing atmospheric sources for lead, other than perhaps inferring lead sequestered in soils and house paint may be released as dust when disturbed. General aviation (GA) aircraft are the largest ongoing source of atmospheric lead. While lead as an anti-knock compound was finally eliminated from auto fuel in the US in the 1990’s, most folks don’t realize that aviation gasoline (avgas) continues to contain tetraethyl lead (TEL). Avgas is used in the GA piston-engine driven fleet, consisting of about 200,000 registered aircraft in the US. In 2019, GA aircraft consumed 200 million gallons of leaded gasoline. To put that into perspective, this annual total is but half what the US automobile fleet consumed in a single day in 2019. Still, given the concentration of TEL in avgas is ~2 grams per gallon, I calculate that over 900,000 lbs of TEL was injected into the atmosphere in 2019 by GA aircraft. There’s no reason to believe this will decrease in the near term, as efforts to replace leaded avgas have been underway for decades, but have yet to yield a viable product.
It’s worth noting that about half the GA fleet is powered by lower-compression engines that don’t require the TEL anti-knock properties. Regulatory approval is available for these aircraft to use unleaded, ethanol-free automobile gas (mogas) of at least 91 octane. However, as leaded avgas (100LL) is the only gasoline routinely available at most airports and many pilots are resistant to change, only a small percentage of the eligible aircraft actually use ethanol-free mogas. (See Options for Reducing Lead Emissions from Piston-Engine Aircraft (https://www.nap.edu/download/26050)
I hadn't realized this! Does this mean that there's higher lead concentration in the air around general aviation airports? Do lead emissions at aviation altitudes sink to create patches of high concentration under popular flight routes, or is there sufficient mixing that there's tiny bits everywhere?
Yes, the highest TEL-related lead particulate concentrations are near GA airports, especially near where engines are operated at high power output, including during run-up checks, takeoff, and climbout. At altitude, the particulates are widely dispersed, but may become cloud condensation nuclei and wash out over a wide area, albeit at very low concentration.
You beat me to it. I own a '76 Cardinal RG, for which no alternative to 100LL is currently available. I hate the fact that I'm spewing lead over the suburb where my plane is based every time I take off. At least, for noise reasons, schools and houses generally aren't built near GA airports any more.
As this article discusses, https://www.avweb.com/insider/going-to-the-moon-was-easy-compared-to-100ul/, the response from the FAA and industry has been dithering and sclerotic. The GA owner demographic is wildly skewed towards boomers who don't seem to understand or care much about the issue.
What needs to happen first is for the EPA to issue a Finding of Endangerment, which will put everyone on notice that the clock is ticking. Then there are basically two paths:
(a) someone comes up with an unleaded drop-in replacement that can serve ~100% of the fleet with no modifications, or some very simple and cheap mods to planes' fuel systems; or
(b) we decide that's not feasible, and take an incremental approach, progressively phasing out 100LL, by installing infrastructure for mogas or 94UL at public-use airports that sell appreciable amounts of 100LL.
There's also supposedly a "100VLL" spec fuel with 20% less lead coming down the pike, that would be a drop in replacement. But 20% is a long way from 100%.
Option (b) isn't hard in principle. The FAA gives out grants to small airports all the time for paving/lighting/state-of-good-repair purposes. We could just add new tankage/new trucks for unleaded gas to the list of eligible purposes, and have congress put a bit more money into those grants programs, earmarked for this purpose.
I am a boomer with a '46 Taylorcraft with an 85-hp engine for which a autogas STC is available. I burn 93-octane, unleaded, ethanol-free autogas for all local flights, only burning 100LL when on cross-country flights. As there is no autogas available on the field, like most airports, I have to transport autogas from miles away in 5-gallon containers. It's well worth the effort and a small price to pay. (Burning autogas is better for the engine, but that's a minor consideration.) It bothers me greatly that the owners of over half the GA fleet can legally burn autogas with few or no adverse consequences, but choose not to deal with the hassle or believe the hoary tales from other pilots (and mechanics) that they will ruin their expensive engines. The FAA is a big part of the problem, but explaining the myriad reasons for their intransigence on this and many issues would take hours. I agree that migrating to 100VL is hardly satisfactory, as it doesn't come close to eliminating lead. As GA fuel represents 0.13% of overall US gasoline production, there's little economic incentive for the petroleum industry to address it. It will take aggressive action by the EPA, FAA, probably instigated by Congress. It is not likely to be high on the Biden administrations to-do list.
This brings me to a hobby-horse of mine: Shooting guns w/ in indoor ranges causes lead exposure! And cops do it frequently. And cops are just about the worst people I can imagine to give lead exposure to.
I don't know why I don't see this covered, ever.
(This can obviously be avoided if no one is using bullets with lead, but that's not how it be)
At least on the federal level, there is regular blood testing available, and it's actually required for firearm instructors and others working at range facilities (I believe a friend had to participate when on an FBI SWAT team that shot weekly).
As you say, lead is bad, and its removal is good, and one of Biden's priorities should be to further reduce lead exposure. But your history may be a bit revisionist. Lead in gasoline has been one of the most severe heavy metal contaminants since maybe 1950, but back then there was very high lead exposure via other routes (e.g. paint). The tetraethyl lead story nicely fits the Evil Oil narrative but I think you oversimplify. Showing at the start of the 20th century that high levels of organic lead are neurotoxic is a far cry from showing that what were then perceived as "modest" exposures were also dangerous, in the context of the understanding of neurotoxins at that time.
Also, while no minimal threshold has been defined, it would be impossible to eliminate ALL lead from the environment. Policy wonks need to continue to work out the cost/benefit relationship.
The argument for investments in lead removal having high returns is very strong. The question is why this needs to be financed by the federal government? If the fact that the benefits of city X investing in lead removal to produce cognitive gains in children will be reaped by other cities, then public education would similarly have to be federalized.
Maybe we need a federal infrastructure bank that would lend to states and localities for positive NPV projects like lead removal, with the evaluation reducing the risk enough to justify lending at only a small margin over the USG long term borrowing rate.
I like the idea of a federal infrastructure bank to pass on the federal government's low borrowing costs to states, but still make them responsible for managing (and keeping in check) infrastructure costs that primarily benefit the state.
One big reason for federal involvement is that the payoff for lead abatement seems to come decades after the investment. Cities and states can't run budgets on that sort of timescale.
An infrastructure bank could overcome that. Either way, there would need to be a project evaluation element in the federal response and a "bank" approach would remove it from the annual budget cycle and hopefully lead to better prioritization of investments across genre.
I get nervous when I read an article about environmental exposure where there is no consideration of relative risk and potential risk reduction (and relative cost of risk reduction). Maybe I missed it in my quick read. Lead exposure is clearly important, however exposure to other heavy metals, organic pollutants, pathogens, particulates in general, ... have significant health effects. How does the effect of exposure to lead compare to exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, to cadmium or arsenic. Where is our effort and money best spent. I expect lead is important, but be careful signaling out one exposure without acknowledging others and considering relative risk.
I think the biggest difference is that lead was actually *incredibly* prevalent in a way that no other heavy metal was. Lead oxide was the default white pigment until zinc oxide and titanium dioxide replaced it, and that's why it's in paint. Gasoline was also thoroughly prevalent everywhere people were in the developed world in the mid to late 20th century. Cadmium, chromium, and nickel definitely had niche uses in that period, but probably nowhere near as prevalent. Arsenic and mercury have probably been more prevalent than those - my suspicion is that even they were less prominent than lead (except in places where groundwater is high in arsenic).