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Broke: lead everywhere
Woke: microplastics everywhereI’ve read theories that part of the… let’s call it “general cognitive decline” among certain populations in the US is due to widespread chronic lead poisoning. I don’t know if any studies have ever been done but it kind of makes sense on the surface. If paint and fuel contained lead, it would have been nearly impossible to avoid exposure to it.
And out big wet boy is going to make sure they never take our lead https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-plan-to-make-america-healthy-again-continued-exposure-to-lead-in-water/
Point of use filtration, i.e. distilation, or RO (reverse osmosis), will remove heavy metals, and other things you don’t want to be consuming.
Too expensive for the average family. Can we not just get safe drinking water to everyone through the tap? What would it cost, one more fighter jet?
The last tranche of investment in clean water infrastructure was some $35 billion. Cost of an F-22, from development all the way to production, over the course of 20+ years, is about 350 million per unit.
So for slightly over half of all current-gen F-22s in the USAF, you could get a one (1) time investment of insufficient size and scale of the kind we had during the Biden years.
Where that leaves the number for a successful investment in clean water is probably quick gruesome.
Fair enough, but I’m curious about your numbers for clean water to every home and business. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the majority of tap water in the country already safe? New York City has some of the cleanest trap water in the world.
https://www.epa.gov/infrastructure/water-infrastructure-investments
Despite that massive investment, we still have, and are projected to remain having, problems in many parts of the country supplying clean water to marginalized communities. Plumbing ain’t cheap.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the majority of tap water in the country already safe?
Yep. Which goes to show just how expensive uprooting and replacing the remainder is - not to mention maintaining the existing infrastructure.
Edited: Some OF the cognitive decline you are seeing more recently is from long term inflammation caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, and PASC “LongCovid”. Cognitive decline can last for a year or more after infection, even mild cases. The average in the US is 4+ cases per person. Someone might take a hit to their cognitive function, start to make progress on recovery, and then gets a second infection which takes them down further.
Decreases in frequency-dependent intrinsic activity of the default mode network are associated with depression and cognition in patients with postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39869209/
[Cognition and Long COVID: A PRISMA Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies] (Spanish) - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/pmid/39910970/
So according to wikipedia, the US banned lead paint in 1977, while Europe didn’t implement such a ban until 2003 (though some EU countries had such laws before 2003). Additionally several countries are just now beginning to ban lead paints (Turkey, Ukraine, and Georgia didn’t implement bans in after 2020).
While catchy, this argument feels tired.
Lead paint is fairly low on the scale, though obviously not great; leaded gasoline puts much more lead into the human body. Leaded gasoline was banned in both the US and EU in the 1990s.
Iirc the argument wasn’t about paint so much as leaded gasoline, which gets in the environment and exposes everyone to high levels of lead.
It’s a shame some of these elements are so toxic. I mean lead paint became popular for a reason, it’s a great paint! If not for the toxicity.
I once met an old fighter pilot who let me play with his asbestos glove. I held burning coals in my hand! It was the most amazing material I’ve ever felt. Blew my mind, an almost perfect insulator. But of course we know asbestos to be awful stuff.
Makes me wonder if modern materials engineering could make asbestos safe? It’s either not financially viable or the fear of asbestos is too great for society.
Most asbestos is safe, until you need to dispose of it. You could make a glove that is encased in another material so you get the insulation with no health hazard, but once it gets worn or thrown in a landfill it will be a problem.
Little does he know that his lead will lead to MAGA.
How hard would it be to convince conspiracy brained people that lead being called dangerous is a government operation to keep people sick. It’s actually a cure-all, like ivermectin.
Oh man this makes me think of the bleach drinkers. They think everyone is infected by terrible parasites that make them vote for democrats or whatever. So they drink bleach. Eventually they take photos of the “worms” they expelled into the toilet. These are actually pieces of their intestinal walls that have been burnt off.
I don’t really care anymore if these people poison themselves, or deny themselves life saving medicine, but I fear for their children and the immunocompromised people they put in danger.
