lead

In about 1970, at school, we had a lecturer from the local university give a talk about lead in petrol...

...of course, we didn't give a rat's arse at the time, but he was obviously passionate about this.

I see he's not mentioned in the BBC article.

Cheers

--
Syd

Perhaps lead free solder really is better for us after all - even if it does tend to produce whiskers from time to time.

Although correlation does not imply causation the trend away from tetraethyl lead does seem to be followed about two decades later by a reduction in crime. Ultratrace studies of environmental lead back in the

1980's required clean rooms because lead was so pervasive in dust.

It could easily be correct if the effects of low level lead poisoning are to decrease empathy or increase demand for instant gratification. Until they can demonstrate an actual mechanism it is only a hypothesis but it is a plausible one and the correlation is undeniable.

Interestingly some old Octel spoil heaps which are so toxic that you need to wear disposable overshoes on the site are an amazingly good habitat for rare orchids that don't like being disturbed.

A more immediate effect on violent crime can be had by increasing the unit price of the cheapest alcohol as has happened recently in the UK. (actually wages going down in real terms)

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Cosmos this week was all about lead,

And the scientist that first did Uranium/lead dating.

An interesting story.

George H.

I suspect that lead in electronic solder is a minor hazard. It's insoluble and doesn't come into contact with the public much. Production people should be careful, especially about solder paste.

I used to chew on resistor leads, and hold wire solder in my mouth, when I was a kid. No criminal tendencies so far, but no Nobel prize, either. Lead compounds are probably much worse than metallic lead.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

The proverbial grain of salt went quite well with that one. I had to just s kim it because, well just because.

Partly because correlation is not causation. I would call what I engage in measured skepticism. For example, I do not deny anthropogenic global warmin g because it would be foolish. Every damn thing we do burns something. We e ven burn things to run air conditioners, which only move the heat, not elim inate it. I question the scope and severity and the assertion tha tit would not have happened anyway.

And so this, a nice hypothesis. Certainly plausible and possibly true, but while the numbers don't lie, they really don't say much. As with many thing s, I believe there are too many factors that are either disregarded, or no t weighted properly in considering the hypothesis.

As such, I don't believe it. I don't disbelieve it either. Understand ?

Another thing to note is that the lead was not taken out of the gasoline fo r public health. It was taken out because it is incompatible with the carta lytic convertors used in cars.

Interesting about these catalytic convertors as well, they actually have to detune the engine to make them work. Seriously. You have to have the gas s till burning practically as it comes out of the manifold.

If an engine is in perfect tune with a stoicometric fuel ratio and proiperl y calibrated compression and valve timing, there is no need for a catalyti and also notning to keep it "lit". Catalytic convertors basically cover up shodddy manufacturing and possibly even design, so that the shitty running cars also pollute alot less.

Care to refute this ? Think about this - newer cars have an O2 (or lambda f or y'all over there) sensor after the cat. The idea is that it can detect i f the cat is actually working by the fact that there is less oxygen in the exhaust when it comes out than when it went in.

If there is less oxygen that means something burned. In my lowly opinion, I think it would be better burned in the cylinder, no ?

Another thing at which I scoff is the thimerosal issue. Think lead's bad ? Try some mercury. I don't believe all the hype for the same reasons I ddon' t believe alot of shit. Shit and foremost, you don't want to get mercury on an open wound. At the same time they are trying to tell us it is OK to inj ect it into the bloodstream ? I only believe that substance to be harmful t o SOME PEOPLE because of the data gathered by a doctor concerning his own k ids, one of which was autistic. All the kids had gotten the usual vaccinati ons, and all their hair samples tested positicve for mercury. The autistic kid's hair dod not. Obviously the others' bodies were disposing of the toxi n through skin and hair while the unlucky one's body did not, and apparentl y the mercury remained in the blood and organs, and in the brain and nervou s system. These kids were full sibling as far as they indicated, so this is about as close to a double blind study as it gets.

Of course it is so harmless that they took it out. Yup, they decresased the use of thimerosal greatly, and they had a good reason to use it, to save m oney. It is a preservative that lengthens the shelf life of the vaccine(s). They spent money for no good reason ? I think their legal department told them there might be a gargantuan lawsuit on the horizon. This is the type o f thing to which they respond.

Another thing that gets me is about the lead based paint. they claim kids w ere eating the paint off the walls. the first thing comes to mind, why not feed the kid some real food ? Of course they put everything in their mouths , but swallo it ? Maybe. But why ? Are they cribbing like farm animals that need a salt lick ? That hypothesis has been put forth by someone with lett ers after their name. I consider it reasonable, and while I would not base a life's work on it, it is plausible enough to consider.

Whatever the reason, what are these kids' Parents doind as they attampt to eat the house ? Maybe these kids grow up stupid because nobody paid them an y attention and taught them things ?

Correlation is not causation. You want to isolate the factors ? Do they tes t affluent A students for excessive lead ? Who knows they aren't loaded up with it as well, and we have been barking up the wrong tree for the last fe w decades.

Wouldn't be the first time. Ever since that Ptolemy/Kopernikus thing the hu man race has proven one thing. It ain't come very far from the time of burn ing heretics at the stake.

As far as lead free solder goes, count me out. You take the lead out of the solder bevcause the destination of the product is the environment, more sp ecifically the dumpster, landfill, or skip for our friends across the pond. In other words they are building JUNK.

Of course that applies chiefly to consumer electronics, so quaintly dubbed "brownwares" by many in the industry. Brown. I couldn't have thought up a b etter name at gunpoint. Seriously, make it cheaper and cheapr intil it eith er doesn't work or kills somebody. Keep taking parts out until it doesn't w ork, then put the last one back in. My Uncle used to say that, and he had n o background in electronics, but he was not stupid.

Anyway. When the almighty buck rules, the rules don't always make sense. An other thing to ponder is why was there lead in the pain in the first place. I mean, Glidden's people didn't sit there and say "Now what are we going t o do with all this lead we got laying artound". there was a reason, and the re was a reason the mercury was in the vaccines and there was a reason the lead was in the gasoline as well. Each time something like this is taken ou t there is a cost.

In the case of tetraethyl lead, they had to find another additive for the g asoline to slow down the burning. Some said the lead lubricated the valves, I am not so sure just how significant that effect was, you really don't ha ve burnt valves in cars all that much, do you ?

But then, what is in the replacement additives ? Cyanide and arsenic ? You think not ? Did anyone ever check on that ?

They said sugar was bad. Now we got HFCS and aspartame which are alot worse . We had inefficient lightbulbs using too much power and cluttering up the landfills when they burn out, but now we found a place to put all the mercu ry now that people don't like it in the vaccines. We put it in the lightbul bs !

What was that about "Ford has a better idea" and there's like a lightbulb a bove the guy's head ? Not no more.

Intriguing. I have seen correlations between violent crime and Lithium in the water supply - studies in Texas locales. To help make me believe the lead-crime hypothesis, (more about that in a moment), I would like to see several things. First, I would like to see any other peaks in exposures and their correlations. For instance, aluminum pans were being replaced by teflon: was there a peak in Aluminum? Also DDT, etc.

These association studies are tricky, because they don't prove anything in a strong way, scientifically. Yet they are useful guides, often. The Surgeon General in the U.S. declared smoking bad for your health in 1965. Yet there was no "scientific" proof at the time beyond association.

Many association studies come up with crazy results. One recent was Israeli researchers reported that vitamin D made prostate cancer more deadly. This was reported on webmd. So I emailed a researcher in that field, and he told me: "The subjects in that study were all diagnosed with that cancer. In desperation, those with serious forms of the cancer began taking vitamin D." Voila: Vitamin D makes prostate cancer turn deadly.

I suppose the way to disprove the lead idea is to look at places like Alaska. Since they are more rural, and lead exposure is less, we should see less crime there.

A simplistic version of that evaluation wouldn't tell you much at all, because there are so many differences between Alaska and other states. Long/severe winters, short days, "cabin fever", different levels of alcohol consumption, etc... so you can't just assume that any differences in crime rate over time are due to lead exposure (or lack of it).

What you can do, is track the changes in lead exposure in Alaska and plot this vs. the violent-crime rate, and do the same sort of correlation test.

"There is a substantial causal relationship," [Wolpaw-Reyes] says. "I can see it in the state-to-state variations. States that experienced particularly early or particularly sharp declines in lead experienced particularly early or particularly sharp declines in violent crime 20 years later."

You can see the state-by-state figures in her 2007 paper.

According to the figures shown here, lead exposure in Alaska due to its presence in gasoline (per-capita lead, and lead levels in air) was similar to that in other states. In some cases it's actually at the higher end of the range.

Yes, and after some associations are studied, you have enough information to declare lead or smoking dangerous. You seem to be knowledgeable about some of the ins and outs of these studies. I saw recently a series of studies showing that food cooked at high temperatures (300 F) is strongly associated with cancer. If you eat a roasted meat meal several days a week, then a man's chance of getting prostate cancer goes up 50%, roughly. Similar studies with women show a 540% increase in breast cancer. So this sort of thing, as well as dietary associations showing a protective effect, indicate that if you avoid 5 things, and do another 5 things of positive nature, it can have a major positive impact on your health. These studies show that your (one's) lifestyle is killing you. It's a bunch of associations, like smoking and cancer, but the results are dramatic. The question is how to add the results together, and get good ones. Are you a statistician?

The Freakonomics guys pointed out that the real decrease in crime, in the late 80s, occurred when all the underclass babies aborted starting in 1973 would have become teenagers. Horrifying, for sure, but at least as good a bet as lead.

:(

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Every sentence in the above is either incomplete, wrong, or not-even-wrong.

It's out of date, more than wrong. It was certainly true back in the

1970s--EGR and catalytic converters came in in the 1974 model year in North America. Try driving 1972 and 1974 models of the same car if you don't believe me.

The reason it isn't still true is mainly software.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Eating steaks and getting prostate cancer are both highly correlated with being a guy. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

Den onsdag den 23. april 2014 21.23.31 UTC+2 skrev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

skim it because, well just because.

n measured skepticism. For example, I do not deny anthropogenic global warm ing because it would be foolish. Every damn thing we do burns something. We even burn things to run air conditioners, which only move the heat, not el iminate it. I question the scope and severity and the assertion tha tit wou ld not have happened anyway.

t while the numbers don't lie, they really don't say much. As with many thi ngs, I believe there are too many factors that are either disregarded, or not weighted properly in considering the hypothesis.

for public health. It was taken out because it is incompatible with the car talytic convertors used in cars.

lead was the cheapest way to increase the octane level, increasing milage

to detune the engine to make them work. Seriously. You have to have the gas still burning practically as it comes out of the manifold.

rly calibrated compression and valve timing, there is no need for a catalyt i and also notning to keep it "lit". Catalytic convertors basically cover u p shodddy manufacturing and possibly even design, so that the shitty runnin g cars also pollute alot less.

for y'all over there) sensor after the cat. The idea is that it can detect if the cat is actually working by the fact that there is less oxygen in th e exhaust when it comes out than when it went in.

the sensor after the cat is there to see if the cat is working

modern cars have a three-way catalytic converter, the engine alternate between slightly lean and rich so the cat can both oxidize CO/HC and reduce NOx

-Lasse

This or something like this could explain the middle east??

Ther was no Cat on the 74 Duster ;) Or was it Ruster...

Cheers

Den onsdag den 23. april 2014 18.25.41 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

interesting guy Thomas Midgley, he seemed to have thing for inventing dangerous things not only did he come up the lead in fuel later invented freon

and he died getting strangled by a device he made to get help him out of bed

-Lasse

The abortion movement was all about eugenics. It worked.

I believe it was '75, not '74. Not all cars had them, immediately. Several, mainly rice-burners, got away without them for several years.

Appears to work in the US but doesn't explain the different timings in other countries.

Correlation isn't causation.

Freakonomics didn't see it as eugenics, but rather as deleting children whom their mothers would have seen as a burden, and probably wouldn't have liked very much.

That's more nuture than nature, but that's too complicated an idea for krw's tiny thinking organ.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney