April 19, 2016 • 49 mins
The people of Flint, MI were horrified to find their drinking water was poisoned with lead. As we learn more about lead's effects and realize how persistent it is, the more worrying it becomes. What makes lead so toxic?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by squares Space. Start
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percent off Squarespace. Set your website apart. Welcome to you
Stuff you should know from house Stuffworks dot com. Hey,
(00:24):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chub Bryant and Jerry's to my right. So this stuff
you should have. It's right recording in a new pop
up restaurant called Jerry's Burrito Check. Yeah, Jerry's eating a
burrito right now, A frozen one. I guess right. You
didn't make that from scratch fresh Jerry frozen burrito is
(00:44):
fine with me, though, yes, some of them. Nothing wrong
with any frozen burrito ever created. Yeah, I mean there's this.
They're very specific, you know. I mean, it's not like
a fresh burrito, but it's its own thing that's still good.
This you call it like a re tet or something
weird like that. It's something that differentiate it, you know.
I agree with you, man. Yeah, but man, sometimes when
(01:06):
that reef read bean pops out and burns your mouth,
that's just the best you have a hole in your
in your on your gums for a couple of days. Yeah,
alfa a little cheese on top too, to cool it
in the oven. No, to melt on top o. That's
an antilada then, Uh not really, I think the antilada
makes the it's the sauce, right, Yeah, okay, that's what
(01:29):
I'll say, swimming and saucel, right, antilata sauce. This may
be your best intro yet, Chuck. We're talking about lead today,
that's right. Do you know much about UM the Flint,
Michigan lead poisoning scandal that happened, would say blemish. Yeah.
(01:50):
I posted about it on our Facebook call UH a
couple of months ago and sort of was a part
of a lively discussion there. But UM only from that
and in this research same here. I mean I was
aware of it, kind of. I didn't understand the details.
But for those of you who don't UM, who don't
know about the Flint, Michigan water poisoning. But Flint, Michigan
(02:10):
UM has faced a lot of problems since the auto
industry went away, UM, but one of them wasn't poor
water quality. They actually the people of Flint actually paid
I think the highest radar, among the highest rates in
the country. To get their water, their water was pumped
from Lake Huron through Detroit, and Flint brought their water
from Detroit. Get that good, clean Detroit water, right, You
(02:33):
know you're in a pickle when you're buying water from
Detroit and that's the healthy water. So um, they're building
a new pipeline from Lake Huron that goes around Detroit,
and Flint said, we're going to get in on that action.
And Detroit said, oh yeah, well, we're canceling our contract
rather than pay for a short term contract with Detroit.
The emergency manager, the basically the the emergency mayor appointed
(02:56):
by the governor himself, UM said, we're just and tap
into the Flint River. Not not a good idea, as
it turned out. No, it's not because in Flat Michigan,
there were, among other places, something called Buick City. Buick
City was a four plus acre um car manufacturing plant
that made buicks, and um it really heavily polluted the river,
(03:19):
so much so that people in Flint, after just a
few months of drinking this water from the tap, started
losing their hair. Um. Well, right away they said this
looks and taste awful, right, it's taste of chlorine. And
the reason it tasted of chlorine is because there were
e coal I break outbreaks that they had to like
treat the water with chlorine. And then it also to
(03:41):
some people, um, it smelled like sulfury as well. It
looked terrible. But people started losing hair, started getting rashes. Um.
There's there was one kid who had an autoimmune disease already.
He just stopped growing. Um, and it was it was
bad news. But the people of Flint, the Flint government,
and the the Michigan Environmental Protection Division basically said no,
(04:04):
we're following all the laws. Um, everything's fine with the water.
Just go back to sleep. Flint and Flint did something different.
A bunch of them taught themselves the science of like
water and sanitation and um, the drinking water laws. They
became basically citizen scientists, and they took it back to
the Flint government and the state government and said, you
(04:26):
guys are wrong. This is toxic water and we're being
poison and you have to do something about it. And
they finally did well. And I think the issue was
don't play dumb. We know you know why, why are
you making us tell you exactly, and they kept the
apparently the company line was no that here's the science,
here the here the results of the tests. But the
(04:46):
tests were terrible. And if you want to know all
about it, there's a really really great um article on
five dot com called what went Wrong in Flint and
um it just really chronicles everything very well. But the
big problem with Flint isn't that there was chlorine in
the water. It was that there was a bunch of
lead in the water. And the reason why there's a
(05:07):
bunch of lead in the waters because there's lead pipes
going to a lot of houses in Flint and the
water that was being pumped through those pipes was so
corrosive that it was bringing a bunch of lead with
it and poisoning the city of Flints for months. Yeah.
And the reason people use lead in pipes is because
it's not corrossive. Corrosive, that's how corrosive the water. Yeah, exactly.
That really says something. It really does. Uh. And I
(05:30):
guess we'll look back later and talk about the lawsuits
and all that stuff. That sound good. Yeah, I think
that's a great idea, kind of bookend it. But let's
talk about lead itself, like what's the problem with lead?
Where did it come from? And that that whole idea
of um using lead pipes is nothing new either. It's
actually pretty old, to tell you the truth. Yeah, lead um. Well,
(05:50):
the Romans, of course were the the first to do
almost everything, either Asians or Romans. Um. Well, I don't
know Africa. Oh that's true. So basically everybody excepts he said,
Europe as the migration expanded exactly. And don't forget all
of the innovations going on in Mesoamerica as well. Shout
(06:12):
out to anyone who came before us. But it's been
going on since ancient times. Romans using lead as lead
piping for sewage draining and carrying water, even stored water
and containers lined with lead. Uh. And in fact, this
is pretty interesting. I think the English word for plumbing
and the chemical symbol pb that is lead, comes from
(06:33):
the Latin word plum bumb. Now a plumb bumb is
is that plumbers crack? Oh? Nice? If it wasn't it
is officially now. You know. My friend Eddie he his
young daughter, asked him what plumber's crack? What's the other day?
And he said, said what did you tell her? And
he said, well, you know, I told her what it was.
He said, sometimes plumbers they've bent over a lot because
(06:54):
pipes are below you, and sometimes their pants sag a little.
Then you see their butt crack. And she went, oh,
the only thing I take issue with is the use
of the words sometimes right all the times. Other than
that's a great explanation. So the Latin plum bumb, which
means lead. Yeah, which that that has been mysterious to
(07:15):
me for many decades. P B doesn't make any sense,
Like why would they call it p B because peanut
but head right, and p B is uh. You'll find
it on the periodic table. And the reason you'll find
it on the periodic table is because lead is an element,
a heavy metal um, and it has all sorts of
properties that make it very desirable, Yeah, really unique to
although super super toxic, as we'll find. Yeah, it's not
(07:38):
often you can find something that is super malleable and
soft but also strong in dense exactly um, which makes
lead perfect for water pipes because it's also it also
resists corrosion, like you said, so you can run water
through it and as long as the water is not
super bad. Uh. The the lead won't rust. It will
(08:01):
leach lead into the water, but it still won't rust,
right right. So um it's also uh, not very good
at conducting electricity, which makes lead very useful for other
things like um soldering electrical connections. The electrical connection will
remain the thing that transmits the current, the lead won't.
It's pretty awesome. Did you say soldier solder? Solder? Yeah,
(08:26):
I never heard of pronounce How do you say, solder solder?
You gotta say that l. I think the silent unless
it's regional, regional, regional. To my brain, I think solder.
You said that because you're from Toedo, right. So the
use of the use of leg goes back even before
(08:46):
the Romans. Actually, but it first appeared mostly in art
like lead paint. Yeah, it wasn't like um they described
in the articles and novelty. Uh. And it was apparently
it makes colors more vibrant and it's less erosive, which
is why you still, even in the United States, see
lead paint on street signs because it's less corrosive. Yeah,
(09:09):
that's what they say. It's still used on signs supposedly
up until as recently as the nineties, and it may
still be going on depending on the country that it's produced.
In The ink on the outside of a plastic bread
bag frequently has lead in it, or it used to,
and it wasn't a problem unless the somebody kept the
(09:31):
bread bag and turned it inside out to store food in.
Then that food leached the lead out of the ink.
It was actually like a big problem for a while. Well,
I'm not sure that it is anymore. I couldn't find
anything in recent the most recent thing I saw saying that, yeah,
it still happens, right, Well, it's less expensive as a paint,
which is another reason, uh in the in the colors
(09:52):
and more vivid apparently. But um, this hasn't been a
problem in the US for a while, but in China
they still use a lot of lead head um in paint.
And in two thousand seven there were massive recalls for
everything from Dora the Explorer toys to Sesame Street toys
due to the fact that they had lead pain on them.
And little kids put everything in their mouths, including their toys,
(10:16):
because they're big dummies, and they end up eating lead,
which is a big problem. So there was a massive
recall of Chinese products in because of this. Now it
was two thousand seven. What I say seven, Yeah, you're
harkening back and to the Urban Dance Squad day. Did
you look them up? Man, you're missing out. I don't
(10:38):
think that's true. Really, Yeah, why just because I like
them remember them vaguely? Oh yeah, it wasn't like I've
never heard of the Urban Dance Squad. No, you have
a good taste of music. Mental philosph for the Globe, great,
like a legitimately great album that I'll look it up.
I'll look it up. It's just weird that you say
you think you're not missing out. It's for no know,
(11:00):
because I mean, again, I remember Urban Nant Squad for
some reason. I put them in line with like Spin
Doctors in three eleven. No, no, well, you know what
I mean. Three eleven could be slightly compared because they
were kind of a rock rap group, but they were Dutch.
Urban Dance Squad was okay, so that that makes them
cool in here right automatically? Yeah. Uh, but if you
(11:23):
just picked this up as like, what are they talking
about Enchilada's Urban Dance Squad, um so lead paint in
the United States is uh, well, it's still an issue.
In some ways because older houses still have it. But
as of UM nineteen seventy eight they said no more,
get the light out. That's right, and they define it
(11:43):
as any paint or surface coating that contains lead equal
or exceeding one milligram for a square centimeter. Yeah. So
basically um In said, if you're going to manufacture something
for somebody's home that people are generally going to come
in contact with, most people don't come in contact with
street signs, UM, right, then you can't have lead in it.
(12:06):
But again, any house built pre there's plenty of them
out there, very likely has lead paint in it. It
also probably has lead pipes. Um. And there's a lot
of lead around us all over the place in places
you wouldn't even think, like there's lead. And uh, leaded
glass like really like a glass you like you might
(12:28):
be using you conceivably could be drinking lead out of it. Oh,
but you don't drink out of leaded glass. Sure. Yeah,
they use it to make regular plain old dumb glass
into more like crystal. It gives it like a ping
when you when you tap it. It makes it, uh,
the the reflection a lot sharper. It also UM lowers
(12:50):
the melting point. So you know, if you put it
in the oven, it doesn't like, but it's conceivably bad
for you. You know, who was on it long but
for the United States government. Federal government was the city
of Baltimore. In one they banned lead pigment for interior paint,
very smart for their housing. And since the fifties had
(13:13):
kind of been phased out in different parts of the country.
And then ine, we finally got the Federal Lead Poisoning
Prevention Act, and then it took seven years after that
to fully ban the paint the paint lead paint. Right.
There's another big source of lead that was all over
the place in the twentieth century. Uh, and that was
(13:35):
in gasoline in cars. There was an additive in gasoline
that was added to gaso link called tetra ethyl lead, right, yeah,
you remember that, like, uh, you know, fill it up
with unleaded or or or fully leaded. And the reason
that they added lead to gas was because there was
a problem called knocking right where um, the in a
(13:57):
high performance engine, when the gas entered the ignition chamber,
the combustion chamber, it it may just get so amped
up that it would combust it would ignite before it
was supposed to, and this would basically disrupt the movement
of the pistons. Right, they knocked the pain that did
(14:18):
all sorts of bad stuff. The lead kept the gas
from combusting or igniting before it was meant to, so
it was a pretty great additive. The thing is, we
already knew that lead was not good for you at
the time, but we added it to gas anyway, and
it was finally phased out in the seventies. Starting in
the seventies, I should say, um, because we started adding
(14:42):
catalytic converters to our cars. Yeah, that helped that, and um,
just are are the process of the chemical process of
refining petroleum just advanced, so we no longer needed it. Right,
So it wasn't just crumby gas. It was pretty good gas.
It didn't need lead. If you run leading gas through
catalytic converter, it totally messes it up. And the catalytic
(15:03):
converters there to prevent emission, so you take lead out
of gas. The problem we found is that during these
few decades from like the twenties till actually was the
last year you could have lead in your gas in
the United states, Um that during this period, basically all
the cars on the road were spewing lead, lead vapors
(15:26):
into the atmosphere that would just go into the air
and then come back into the ground and settle in
the soil and water and your face. Yeah, I had.
I used lead of gas in my Um. I had
to put it in. My early VW Beatles that I
drove had a couple of old you know, vented well vintage.
They bought theom new Oh yeah, yeah, my mom she
(15:47):
bought a sixty eight Beetle brand New. Wow, that's when
I drove. When I turned sixteen, I think it was
still around. Huh yeah, yeah, you know those things they
never die if you take care of them. Did you
like ever use duct tape or anything like that on? No,
but I did. Uh. Funny you mentioned I had a hole,
sizable hole in the rear floorboard. Um that we my
(16:09):
friends call it the Flintstones car because you could, like
you put your feet down and run. So I did
have a board, a running board. Um no, just a
board over the whole. But I mean you can remove
the board and run while you're sitting in the backseat.
That's right. Great car. Yeah, lead has been added to
cosmetics over the years. Uh, jewelry, jewelry, Uh, pottery, and
(16:33):
then uh today because everyone knows let is so uh
such a jerk. One of the only places you're gonna
find it in the u S at least as in
your car battery your car, Yeah, your car battery or
your laptop actually, yeah, which is why it's really important
to recycle that car battery, don't or that laptop. Don't
throw it in the woods. Yeah, responsibly recycle your electronics
(16:54):
and batteries. Yeah. If there's one thing that we've learned
since the twentieth centuries that lead has some serious staying
power and it has a very pesky tendency to get
out of wherever we put it, right, And yeah, if
you put it in just a regular landfill that's not
designed to accept things like lead, um, it will just
leach into the groundwater and um. Same thing with your
(17:15):
e waste, your your laptops, and the reason that they're
used in laptops, um is because the lead actually protects
you from the radiation that would shoot out of your
laptop screen into your face if it weren't for the
toxic lead in there. That's right. Glass cathode ray tubes
like you find in your computer laptop screen. Yeah. Well
(17:37):
I don't know about your laptop, but your computer, yeah,
your monitor. But there's but you should let in there.
You should responsibly recycle your laptop too, for sure, for
a number of reasons. I know you did a what
was it called electronics recycling? Yeah? What was it? Like?
Just a thought or I have no idea what you're
talking about. You did a video series where you like, no, sure,
(17:59):
deep thought. No, I can't even remember I created the series. Yeah,
but you do one on e recycling. Yeah, but nobody
cared or watch. So the world was not saved. Everyone said, Chuck,
quit doing it. All right, Well, let's take a break.
I'm gonna go cry tire for man. What was the
name of that series? I don't know. We'll go get
(18:19):
forties and pour them out on the curb Forum. All right,
we'll be back in a second. All right, Josh, we've
(18:40):
talked a lot about lead so far and enchiladas in
Dutch rock rack rap rock bands. It comes from the earth, though,
let's let's take it underground. Yeah it's not actually, I mean,
it is naturally occurring, but it doesn't naturally occur in
its pure form. Yeah, you don't just like dig down.
You're like, hey, there's a big hunk of lead, let
(19:00):
me pull it out. Instead, lead atoms have um I
think four unpaired uh electrons maybe, and it's outer shell um.
So it likes to form connections with other things. So
when you find lead in the earth, you're gonna find
it in the form of a ox side or a
sulfide or something like that. Frequently it's combined with silver,
(19:23):
and so that means it has to be separated. And
even the Romans back in the day, which by the way,
these Roman um lead pipes that they used for baths
and for sanitation and stuff still intact today. You can
still dig those up and beat people with them. You could.
That's the other place you'll find a lead pipe is
in the hand of some dude coming after you, or
(19:44):
a game of clue. Oh yeah, that's right. That was bent.
Even the guy was hit so hard with it, Colonel Mustard,
he was not to be trusted, he was not. But yes,
the Romans they had a pretty us man. They were
so smart. They had a pretty ingenious process called coppellation. Uh.
The extent of that is basically the idea is that
(20:05):
some precious metals, I'm sorry, precious metals. All precious metals
won't oxidize, but dumb metals will. So if you heat
that junk up, it's going to separate, right. And then
they used it mostly to separate from silver. But these
days we get most of our lead from something called galena,
where a lead sulfide is found, right. Yeah, And our
(20:26):
process is sort of similar. It is very like using
heat to separate things. And this this actually it very
much resembles Do you remember our waste gasification episode. Yeah,
I couldn't remember which one this it was that one,
because the process is very similar. So you take some
lead sulfide and you heat it up, uh in the air,
(20:46):
so there's the presence of oxygen and it converts into um,
lead oxide and sulfur dioxide, right, So you separate them
out a little bit. Then you take that lead oxide
and you egg carbon co and you again mix it
with some air and as that happens, the air combines
with the oxide into car you know, the carbon combines
(21:09):
with the air and becomes carbon dioxide. Takes all of
the um oxygen molecules from the lead atoms. So the lead,
basically what amounts of pure lead, becomes molten and goes
down to the bottom of the furnace and carbon dioxide
goes out into the atmosphere. It sounds like a very
safe process. Basically you're creating molten lead and carbon dioxide. Yeah,
(21:31):
that's called roasting and smelting. And uh. Once that lead
sinks cools down, it's gonna it's called a pig It's
just a big mess of lead basically. Yeah, like pig iron. Yeah,
it's it's delicious. Uh. And then you have slag, which
is the non metallic byproduct of the smelting process, and
(21:52):
you siphon and cool that down and it's waste waste product. Yes. Uh.
And like I said, recycling your car battery is important
because there's also a process called secondary extraction where they
get that lead out of your battery. You can keep
using it exactly. That's the other good thing about lead.
It is extremely reusable because again, it has a lot
(22:12):
of staying power, so you're not gonna use lead up,
you know, which means you want to reuse it. Yes,
we should get to the point where we don't need
to mind any more lead or process anymore lead. Just
reuse the lead we've got, or maybe find some great
substitute that isn't so toxic. You know, you melt down
those tiny civil war figurines. Oh yeah, those guys are
(22:33):
lead Okay I thought they were. Yeah, So handling and
painting those with lead paint, it's dangerous, right, yes, yes,
yes it is. Is that where we're losing so many
Civil war figurine buffs? I think so at an alarming rate.
That's why they all have like spittle and drool around
the corners of their mouths and like zone out while
they're painting. Well, there's other reasons for that, but sure contributes.
(22:58):
So uh okay, chuck um, you mentioned or we mentioned
lead refining and processing, smelting, roasting, that kind of stuff, right, Um,
that does create emissions of not just carbon dioxide but
also um lead vapor, which is not good stuff, and
you want to control that kind of stuff. But it
(23:19):
is emitted and it uh it used to be. Well,
these days, lead emissions um from refining and processing are
actually the number one source of lead vapor emissions in
the environment. Right, but um forty yeah, about forty years ago,
forty five years ago that was not the case. The
case was all those cars driving around on the streets
(23:41):
emitting lead vapor. Yeah, used to account for about seventy
if it came from your automobile. And uh, since the
phasing out and reversal, we know coming from the processing
and what is it down to, uh road sources, it's
a fuel combustion. Yeah, not bad, No, not bad. Still again,
(24:07):
you basically wanted like zero as we're finding, like the
um as, we'll see that that lead exposure in any
amount is not good and it gets it goes from
not good to really bad very quickly apparently. Yeah. And
you know, let us know good. We mentioned kids chewing
on something with lead pain is not good. If you're
redoing your house, uh and it's pre nineteen seventy eight,
(24:29):
you want to get a piece tested. You can't just
be like, let me sand off, no the paint on
this molding now, because again, even if you think you've
cleaned it up, there's still there's lead right there, buddy,
um that you're not going to get rid of it. Apparently. Also,
opening and closing your windows in a pre nineteen house
can create lead dust if you're lucky enough to be
(24:51):
able to open your windows. Sure, that's a that's a
point minor sealed shut yeah, or nailed chatter, what have you. Yeah,
just from years of painting basically with probably lead paint guaranteed. No,
it's not. Actually we we had it tested, Oh did you? Yeah?
I mean it wasn't lead paint, but you had it
tested like all the way through, Like yeah, yeah, yeah,
(25:12):
But what I'm saying is pre nineteen seventy eight, it's
not the only paint that was used. I know you're
saying that's why you get it tested, right, But did
you get like all the layers underneath tested well for
any Yeah? Okay, that was my all the layers sound
effect like we hired a lead person. I got too. Good.
Good good. That makes me feel better. Yeah. And if
you want to if there is lead and you want
(25:33):
to get the lead out, you're gonna have to hire
someone that knows what they're doing and they'll come in
with their has mat suits on to do so. Right. Um,
So you can also get it from plumbing, although apparently,
um with lead plumbing it's not quite as much of
a thread as you would think. You know, didn't that
make you just want to like never drink water again,
knowing that you have lead pipes in your house, you
(25:55):
shouldn't necessarily be worried because um, over the years, water
sanitation experts have figured out that if you have good
water that's non corrosive, it actually is not only non corrosive,
the water will leave behind a protective coating that coats
the inside of the pipes that it runs through. The lead, Yes,
(26:21):
over whatever it is, but yeah, it's gonna leave a
protective coat of other substances that aren't toxic that it's
gonna form a barrier for later water and the pipes. UM.
And uh so you you shouldn't necessarily be freaked out
if you have lead pipes coming to your house. Although
I mean you've got the money, that's there's definitely worse
(26:42):
things you could spend your money on than replacing those pipes.
You know copper, Well, copper can be a problem as well.
There's actually a copper lead rule that UM that dictates
how non corrosive cities water has to be to follow
this rule, and it's detecting not just against led, but copper.
You don't really want copper either, although it's not nearly
(27:03):
as bad for you as lead interesting. So if you
have lead in your system, I mean it goes, it
goes into your bloodstream. Uh, it doesn't matter how it
gets in there. If you inhale it, it'll be absorbed
to the capillaries and the lungs into the blood or
if you uh, if you if you touch it, if
you lick it, it's gonna find this way into your blood. Uh,
(27:25):
and you can. I mean, it's really easy to find
out if you have lead in your blood. You just
get a blood test. UM. I don't know why they
would do this other test. I don't either, and not
just a blood test unless it's like prohibitably expensive or
something so that. Yeah, the other test is called the
zinc proto porphyrin um test, and that's a byproduct of
(27:46):
red blood cells as they break down in the presence
of lead. So rather than directly testing, and it's you're
like going around to see, excuse me, lead, I want
to see if your shadow is detectable. I don't get
it makes zero sense because you gotta take your blood
for that too, write and it's not exaccurate. Yeah, it
doesn't make any sense. But the lead blood test is
(28:09):
so easy that UM companies like three M and plenty
of others sell home lead blood tests. It's yeah, it
is nice unless you're the parent who is freaked out
giving one to your kid. Well, that's true. You know,
anything over equal to or greater than um five micrograms
per DESSI leader is bad if you're a kid. If
(28:31):
you're an adult, you can tolerate a little bit more,
but it's still distressing, right, And that's how it's expressed. So,
um a microgram to a DESI leader, which is a
tenth of a leader, right, Um, And so five is
not good. Ten micrograms in a desk a leader is
where demonstrable UM like behavioral and cognitive problems start to develop. Yeah,
(28:54):
that's serious trouble. But the e p A has said,
um that there's quote no demons traded safe concentration of
lead in blood, like you shouldn't have any in The
problem is nothing but toxic to humans. There is no benefit. Yeah,
and um, we'll talk about it in just a second.
But the problem with lead is that we're figuring out
(29:15):
that we shouldn't be exposed to it at all, while
we're also simultaneously figuring out that we have a washed
our planet in it from the last like a couple
of hundred years. Basically, you wanna take a break. Yeah,
all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about all
kinds of fun stuff, all right. So before I left,
(29:50):
I t s that there is no function for lead
in the body. It is nothing but toxic, uh in it.
The way it behaves in your body in a negative
way is really interesting. UM your body, and this happens
a lot. I feel like we covered the body mistaking
something for something else quite a bit. Is there there
(30:10):
should be a word for that, uh, the case of
mistaken identity. I guess that's it. But the body treats
lead like calcium. UM. So it's gonna go where calcium
goes in the body, including your bones, which is super scary. Yeah.
Lead settles in very comfortably into calcium receptors, and it's
not just bones, Like that's what I always think of
when I think of calcium, Like what you need calcium
(30:32):
because your bones will break or you get rickets if
you don't have it or whatever. Um, But calcium comes
in handy throughout your whole body. And one of the
big places that shows up is in calcium ions in UM.
Your neuronal activity. Right. So when your neurons fire, one
of the ways that they fire, uh, is because the
neurons or the calcium ions get them all excited and
(30:53):
then poo, your your neurons is fired. If lead is
in that calcium ion channel instead of calcium, that kaboo
doesn't happen, and all of a sudden, your neurons aren't
firing as much as they would if the lead wasn't present.
And now we have a big problem. Yeah, and it's
especially big problem with children because children's little brains are uh,
(31:14):
you know, we talked about plasticity before. They're constantly forming
these new neural connections and any kind of lead in
the mistaken for calcium is going to disrupt those connections.
And so your child is literally their brain isn't going
to advance like it should, right exactly. Intellectually, Um, the
(31:35):
apparently emotional centers like the amygdala can suffer UM that
it's been found to produce hyperactivity, anti social behavior, UM,
attention deficit disorder, all sorts of problems from the presence
of lead, right. Um. And like you said, it's worse
for kids because their brains are still developing and forming
(31:56):
it's bad for anybody, but it's definitely worse for kids.
And the other way that it affects kids is that
so the regions of their brains aren't developing correctly. But
then simultaneously, calcium is also important in the formation of myelin,
which is that protective sheath around the synapses between neurons.
So that's kind of like flimsy, which means that the
neurons aren't firing efficiently. So not only do you have
(32:20):
brain regions affected, but the communication between brain regions are
affected too in little kids. And the upshot is is
that it promotes all sorts of problems with cognitive and
emotional and behavioral development and children. Yeah, and like literally
lower i Q scores. And we should say that that's
just like the most prominent horrifying effect of lead. There's
(32:41):
a whole laundry list of other things that can happen to,
like um kidney failure, pain in your bones and joints
from all that lead settling into where the calcium is
supposed to go. Yeah, how about decreased sex drive and
sterility and infertility for both men and women. Uh, what else? Diarrhea,
lack of appetite, constipation. I think diarrhea is the least
of your worries. If you have a lad blood, high
(33:03):
blood pressure, enlarged heart. Uh, it's it's It affects virtually
every system in your body basically. And the reason why
again is because it mimics or it takes the place
of calcium, and calcium is incredibly vital. It's an extremely
important mineral that you need found throughout your body. And
if a leg goes in, it's like, um, I'm here instead. Yeah,
(33:25):
it's not going to do the stuff that the calcium
supposed to do, leading to all this cascade of horrific problems. Yeah.
And one of the other scary things is that they
unless you have acute lead poisoning, you may not know.
In fact, you probably won't know that you're being slowly poisoned.
And you might just think, oh, I have diarrhea and
I don't feel like having sex much anymore, and you
(33:45):
might be slowly getting lead poisoning, and you you just
blame that on too many buffalo wings. But boom, it's
lead poison takes care of both. Uh. You remember being
a kid and like lead pencils, like it was a
big scare, Like you know you lead poisoning if you
got poked with a pencil. Yeah, I remember that, But
then I also remember learning that there's actually graphite used
in pencils. We should have a buy our age. You
(34:08):
should have David Reeson. Oh yeah, how to sharpen a
pencil and he can school you on some pencils. He
wrote a whole book on it, literally wrote the book
on pencil sharpening. Yeah. I still have let or I guess,
graphite somewhere in my hand from when I was jabbed
very deep with a pencil that broke off and it
never left and there still just looks like a little
(34:28):
black freckle. It's like you're in prison and got shanked.
I know, I can't find where it is. No, that's
a scratch. So we've talked about all the cognitive problems
that can come about and behavioral and emotional disorders that
can develop from lead. And this is like study after
study after study has found this. It's one of the
(34:50):
big reasons why there have been so many restrictions placed
on lead exposure. Um And recently some people have some
research chers, including a couple of well an economist I believe,
and an epidemiologist have UM kind of taken that idea
that lead can create all of these behavioral problems and
(35:12):
any social behavioral problems UM and extrapolated to this idea
that there is a big rise in the crime rate
in the United States and actually around the world. That
followed about twenty years UM the same trajectory of the
use of lead and gasoline. Super interesting article, very controversial,
(35:36):
like when it came well it still is, UM, but yeah,
it's very interesting. Yeah, it's called lead America's Real Criminal Element.
It was in Mother Jones. Was written by Kevin Drum,
who was one of the all time greats working today.
And UM, I think I've mentioned it before, but I
strongly encourage anybody it doesn't even matter if lads the
most boring thing in the world to you go read
(35:58):
this article. You will be riveted by it. And Kevin
Drum does a lot of He does a very good
job of keeping his extrapolations down as low as possible,
although anybody can see by the evidence that he lays
out that this is it's pretty clear that lead is
some sort of culprit in this UM and it's been
(36:20):
shot down and that there's this idea that the science
isn't settled. I suspect that it's the same mechanisms that
force with climate denial. Like unsettled science doesn't prove anything.
If you look at all the studies associated with this,
the correlation between lead use in gasoline and therefore lad
(36:41):
emissions in UM cars and criminal activity and its decline again,
it just follows it like twenty years after. And the
whole idea is that when we started emitting lead into
the atmosphere, UM, kids started suffering these cognitive and in
associal but avirs. And then about twenty years after these
(37:02):
kids were born, they started actually carrying out criminal activity,
and we saw a tremendous rise and everything from like
murder to rape, to mugging's to everything. UM. And it's
the articles too long to to really go into detail. Again,
just strongly urge anybody to go read it. Yeah. The
the um the backlash that I've seen on the article
(37:22):
wasn't to me like it was all from scientists mainly. Yeah,
I read a few of them. They weren't poopooing the notion.
They said this what this means is it bears a
lot more investigation. UM. But as much as you want
if you can't replicate it. It's still possible confirmation bias
or just sure correlation and not causation, like could be
(37:43):
a host of other issues that went into that. It
could be And and Kevin Joon makes the same point.
He's like, there's also a rise in the use of
vinyl albums that followed roughly the same trajectory as well.
But um, you know, of course it needs more study
for sure. Well this this one scientist said, what you
really need to do is follow what he calls a
cohort study, when you actually follow individuals along a long timeline. Um,
(38:09):
it's just a tough study. It's it bears a lot
of uh to prove something like this just takes a
lot more data than they have, right, And I think
the guy you're referencing is Scott Firestone, who is, um, yeah,
that was a good who wrote on the Discover magazine
blog and um, you know he gives kudos to Drum
(38:32):
who definitely deserves it for basically saying every time he says,
you know, it's it's it's so obvious you have to
be just you know, have your head in the stand
to deny this. He does say that, yes, speaking scientifically
that does require more study. Super interesting though, because the
crime and drum followed it all over the world. He
(38:54):
didn't just go to the United States and he saw
the same thing and Canada and Australia, in Great Britain.
And the good news is if if that is the case,
then we should see crime dropping. Yeah. But the problem
is is that it also should get us to do
basically mitigate the lead that isn't around, like in the
(39:15):
soil and in the water and everywhere and people's houses. Um.
And the dollar amounts that he estimates it would cost
are pretty prohibitive at least as far as like the
public will goes from right now. But who knows. I mean,
if enough science is done on it, and you get
the scientific community vocally speaking about this, then maybe the
(39:36):
public will will change. Uh. If you do have lead poisoning,
you can't get on meds. Uh. There's a prescription called
sustamer as U S C I M E R. That
was beautiful. Uh you see that or sucker over I
like how you said, Um, it can reduce blood lead. Um.
There of course always side effects with every medication. UM.
(39:57):
And if you work, if you've like there's been a
disaster and you get toxic lead in your body very quickly. UM,
they can use something called kellation collation collection therapy. UH.
And that's when they use a collating agent. I'm not
even gonna try that. I'm gonna try it. Okay, Ethyl
(40:20):
lenna diamina tetracetic acid. Hey, not bad if you like
super quick. I missed the last A. That's just a
few letters off from super califragilistic xbomy. It looks like
the alphabet when it's on paper, but we'll call it
E E T A. And that's when it's infused into
(40:41):
the bloodstream and actually binds. It basically says lead you're
coming with me through your kidney, out of your body, right. UM.
But they use that when it's just an acute toxic dose. UM,
that that a person has been exposed to. UM. If
a kid's been found to be poisoned with lead, actually,
from what I read, one of the best treatments that UM,
(41:04):
they'll they'll carry out. They'll they'll be other stuff too,
depending on how bad it is. But a really good
nutritious diet. UM, getting the kid foods that are high
and things like calcium and high in things like vitamin
C that help the body absorb calcium so that they
can go displace lead in the body. Because if you've
got lead and you've got calcium fighting for the for
(41:25):
the same place, if you can get the calcium in there,
it's going to displace the lead and then hopefully leave
the body. It's like, I'm going home. That's gotta be
hard on the kidney. So I don't know. I yeah,
I think if you have an acute lead poisoning or
a serious lead poisoning, it's not good. But yeah, of
course it'd be hard on the kidneys because one of
the things is kidney failure in anemia. Uh it. Lead
(41:48):
is um Lead is definitely invariably in the ground and
the groundwater and then the soil um around us. And
that's a problem because it's sort of works this way
up the food chain and a weird way because what
you have are these tiny organisms um it gets in
their body, like plankton and microscopic plants, and they die
(42:10):
and then other things eat that their waste, and then
it just sort of like bigger animals come along and
keep eating these things. Yeah, it's not just humans that
suffer from lead toxicity. Other animals too, even the small ones.
So should we talk about these Flint lawsuits a little? Yeah,
and then antilotis and that hopefully toxic. I guess it
(42:33):
depends on who manufactured. So I did some reading on
the lawsuits. Right now, there's more than a dozen and
probably growing. A few of them are class action suits
on behalf of tens of thousands of Flint residents. And
you know, attorneys always look their chops when they hear
stuff like this. UM. But there's some concerns. One is
that the state of Michigan is, like the city is broke,
(42:56):
so don't even bother the state of Michigan. Maybe an
out to go if you want to get a lot
of money, but then they say that will just get
packs pass along to the taxpayer. UM. And a lot
of experts in the legal world say that compensation is
unlikely to begin with as far as money goes, because
of something a couple of things. One thing called sovereign immunity,
(43:18):
which basically means the government can say, you know, giving
water to the citizens is a core government function, so
we're shielded legally from liability for doing that, uh improperly,
So like you can't sue us we're trying to give
you water. And the other thing is specific causation has
to be proved. So not only do you have to
prove that the lead came from that water and not
(43:40):
like the lead pipes in your house or other like
the lead paint in your walls maybe has to come
specifically from that Flint River water. Uh, And you also
have to prove that that directly lead to the problem
that your kid is having, and not you know other things. Well,
one of the things I read was that it's very
possible that the lead came from the pipes in those
(44:03):
people's houses, but that it's still on the provider of
the water because they were supposed to be following corrosion
protection techniques that they lied about following. They weren't following them,
so it got rid of that protective coating that had
been on the lead pipes before and was bringing all
that lead into people's homes directly. So it may have
(44:23):
been lead from the people's homes, but it was the
corrosive nature of the terrible drinking water that was being
pumped through those that caused that lead to be brought
into the people's homes. And then again on top of it.
The government was lying about using the techniques that they
were supposed to be using to prevent that from happening.
So that now that they've switched back over to Detroit water,
(44:45):
it's going to take a while for that protective film
to develop on the pipes again. So even now that
the different waters coming through, it's still lousy with lead.
And the sad thing is that some people in Flint
are too um poor to do anything about it, and
they's still need water, so they're still drinking leaded water
even though they know that it's going to hurt them
down the line. Well, and it's sad that it sounds
(45:07):
like getting real compensation is maybe unlikely. Yeah, because a
lot of these people who have kids, like if their
kids suffer severe cognitive development problems, they're gonna need help
like the rest of their lives. Yeah. This one guy, uh,
he's a law professor specializing in environmental law named Noah Hall.
(45:29):
He says, what the probably the smart thing to do
if you really want to help these people is set
up do what they did with the Deepwater Horizon spill
and set up a victim's compensation fund um instead of
doing it via lawsuit like legislator legislated, Um, maybe that
would help. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know that.
(45:49):
He basically said what the states shouldn't do his fight this,
He's like, that would be big trouble. Uh. He said
they should set up some sort of fund so then
they look like the good guys still. But then I
think you don't get all the dirty details dragged out
in public like you would with a lass. Well, apparently
they're already coming out anyway, like tropes of emails have
been released. Um. The the governor set up a task
(46:10):
force to find out who is to blame. And they
turned around and they were like you um, and he said,
fired the task for right exactly, You're all fired. Um. Yeah,
I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's it's very
scary public health scare Flint, Uh, I know, talk about
a city it's been roughed up over the years. I know. Well,
we're there with you, Flint, hanging there. If you want
(46:32):
to learn more about lead or Flint or criminal activity,
you can check out all these different articles on the
Internet and you can type lead into the search bar
house to works dot com and it'll bring up a
pretty great article. Since I said pretty great articles, time
for a listener, I'm gonna call this Finland rules. Remember
(46:54):
we did the Dark Money podcast and I was like,
what's a good place. It's not corrupt. I remember we
heard from a lot of people. Um in Scandinavia. Hi,
I'm an American living in Helsinki for the last few
years with my finished husband. Um, Chuck, you were right
on the money when he said there's very little political
corruption here. Of course there are some, but because there
are humans after all, But the level compared to the
(47:15):
States is laughable. When I asked my husband about it,
he thought for a second and asked about corruption scandals.
He said, a few years back, Uh, there was something
about a prime minister who accepted lumber from a company
to build his house. That was it. It seems comical
to me considering the States in an election year. Also,
the campaign season is much shorter here, and it's done
a little different. Party runs there at least five major parties.
(47:37):
That's crazy in and of itself, like crazy, good party
runs and whichever gets a majority elects from its ranks
the prime minister and makes a cabinet out of a
coalition of the other parties which received high numbers of votes.
How about that, Like you came in second, you're on
board too, Come on and here's your participant. Ribbon campaigns
(47:59):
are paid for by disclosed donations and public funds. Uh.
You also made a comment about the high taxes here.
Many people, usually Americans, say that with this taste, that
the taxes are so high here. But I've come to
think very highly of it. I've discovered that I don't
really need another pair of jeans or a new jacket,
but I need there's an educated society around me, in
access to quality healthcare, and a truly equal society where
(48:22):
everyone is safe and has her basic needs met. Uh.
That it's from Gabrielle. Wow, a lot of people hate
your guts for saying that. Gabrielle, that was so brave
of you. Thanks Gabrielle for writing in. Um, I don't
know how they say audios in Finland. No, she's American.
(48:42):
Well goodbye, Okay, thank you for writing in. If you
want to get in touch with us, you can tweak
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should
know if you can send us an email to stuff
podcast that how stuff Works dot Com and has always
join us on the web. It's stuff You You Know
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(49:08):
visit how stuff Works dot com. M
This episode is brought to you by squares Space. Start
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Stuff you should know from house Stuffworks dot com. Hey,
(00:24):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chub Bryant and Jerry's to my right. So this stuff
you should have. It's right recording in a new pop
up restaurant called Jerry's Burrito Check. Yeah, Jerry's eating a
burrito right now, A frozen one. I guess right. You
didn't make that from scratch fresh Jerry frozen burrito is
(00:44):
fine with me, though, yes, some of them. Nothing wrong
with any frozen burrito ever created. Yeah, I mean there's this.
They're very specific, you know. I mean, it's not like
a fresh burrito, but it's its own thing that's still good.
This you call it like a re tet or something
weird like that. It's something that differentiate it, you know.
I agree with you, man. Yeah, but man, sometimes when
(01:06):
that reef read bean pops out and burns your mouth,
that's just the best you have a hole in your
in your on your gums for a couple of days. Yeah,
alfa a little cheese on top too, to cool it
in the oven. No, to melt on top o. That's
an antilada then, Uh not really, I think the antilada
makes the it's the sauce, right, Yeah, okay, that's what
(01:29):
I'll say, swimming and saucel, right, antilata sauce. This may
be your best intro yet, Chuck. We're talking about lead today,
that's right. Do you know much about UM the Flint,
Michigan lead poisoning scandal that happened, would say blemish. Yeah.
(01:50):
I posted about it on our Facebook call UH a
couple of months ago and sort of was a part
of a lively discussion there. But UM only from that
and in this research same here. I mean I was
aware of it, kind of. I didn't understand the details.
But for those of you who don't UM, who don't
know about the Flint, Michigan water poisoning. But Flint, Michigan
(02:10):
UM has faced a lot of problems since the auto
industry went away, UM, but one of them wasn't poor
water quality. They actually the people of Flint actually paid
I think the highest radar, among the highest rates in
the country. To get their water, their water was pumped
from Lake Huron through Detroit, and Flint brought their water
from Detroit. Get that good, clean Detroit water, right, You
(02:33):
know you're in a pickle when you're buying water from
Detroit and that's the healthy water. So um, they're building
a new pipeline from Lake Huron that goes around Detroit,
and Flint said, we're going to get in on that action.
And Detroit said, oh yeah, well, we're canceling our contract
rather than pay for a short term contract with Detroit.
The emergency manager, the basically the the emergency mayor appointed
(02:56):
by the governor himself, UM said, we're just and tap
into the Flint River. Not not a good idea, as
it turned out. No, it's not because in Flat Michigan,
there were, among other places, something called Buick City. Buick
City was a four plus acre um car manufacturing plant
that made buicks, and um it really heavily polluted the river,
(03:19):
so much so that people in Flint, after just a
few months of drinking this water from the tap, started
losing their hair. Um. Well, right away they said this
looks and taste awful, right, it's taste of chlorine. And
the reason it tasted of chlorine is because there were
e coal I break outbreaks that they had to like
treat the water with chlorine. And then it also to
(03:41):
some people, um, it smelled like sulfury as well. It
looked terrible. But people started losing hair, started getting rashes. Um.
There's there was one kid who had an autoimmune disease already.
He just stopped growing. Um, and it was it was
bad news. But the people of Flint, the Flint government,
and the the Michigan Environmental Protection Division basically said no,
(04:04):
we're following all the laws. Um, everything's fine with the water.
Just go back to sleep. Flint and Flint did something different.
A bunch of them taught themselves the science of like
water and sanitation and um, the drinking water laws. They
became basically citizen scientists, and they took it back to
the Flint government and the state government and said, you
(04:26):
guys are wrong. This is toxic water and we're being
poison and you have to do something about it. And
they finally did well. And I think the issue was
don't play dumb. We know you know why, why are
you making us tell you exactly, and they kept the
apparently the company line was no that here's the science,
here the here the results of the tests. But the
(04:46):
tests were terrible. And if you want to know all
about it, there's a really really great um article on
five dot com called what went Wrong in Flint and
um it just really chronicles everything very well. But the
big problem with Flint isn't that there was chlorine in
the water. It was that there was a bunch of
lead in the water. And the reason why there's a
(05:07):
bunch of lead in the waters because there's lead pipes
going to a lot of houses in Flint and the
water that was being pumped through those pipes was so
corrosive that it was bringing a bunch of lead with
it and poisoning the city of Flints for months. Yeah.
And the reason people use lead in pipes is because
it's not corrossive. Corrosive, that's how corrosive the water. Yeah, exactly.
That really says something. It really does. Uh. And I
(05:30):
guess we'll look back later and talk about the lawsuits
and all that stuff. That sound good. Yeah, I think
that's a great idea, kind of bookend it. But let's
talk about lead itself, like what's the problem with lead?
Where did it come from? And that that whole idea
of um using lead pipes is nothing new either. It's
actually pretty old, to tell you the truth. Yeah, lead um. Well,
(05:50):
the Romans, of course were the the first to do
almost everything, either Asians or Romans. Um. Well, I don't
know Africa. Oh that's true. So basically everybody excepts he said,
Europe as the migration expanded exactly. And don't forget all
of the innovations going on in Mesoamerica as well. Shout
(06:12):
out to anyone who came before us. But it's been
going on since ancient times. Romans using lead as lead
piping for sewage draining and carrying water, even stored water
and containers lined with lead. Uh. And in fact, this
is pretty interesting. I think the English word for plumbing
and the chemical symbol pb that is lead, comes from
(06:33):
the Latin word plum bumb. Now a plumb bumb is
is that plumbers crack? Oh? Nice? If it wasn't it
is officially now. You know. My friend Eddie he his
young daughter, asked him what plumber's crack? What's the other day?
And he said, said what did you tell her? And
he said, well, you know, I told her what it was.
He said, sometimes plumbers they've bent over a lot because
(06:54):
pipes are below you, and sometimes their pants sag a little.
Then you see their butt crack. And she went, oh,
the only thing I take issue with is the use
of the words sometimes right all the times. Other than
that's a great explanation. So the Latin plum bumb, which
means lead. Yeah, which that that has been mysterious to
(07:15):
me for many decades. P B doesn't make any sense,
Like why would they call it p B because peanut
but head right, and p B is uh. You'll find
it on the periodic table. And the reason you'll find
it on the periodic table is because lead is an element,
a heavy metal um, and it has all sorts of
properties that make it very desirable, Yeah, really unique to
although super super toxic, as we'll find. Yeah, it's not
(07:38):
often you can find something that is super malleable and
soft but also strong in dense exactly um, which makes
lead perfect for water pipes because it's also it also
resists corrosion, like you said, so you can run water
through it and as long as the water is not
super bad. Uh. The the lead won't rust. It will
(08:01):
leach lead into the water, but it still won't rust,
right right. So um it's also uh, not very good
at conducting electricity, which makes lead very useful for other
things like um soldering electrical connections. The electrical connection will
remain the thing that transmits the current, the lead won't.
It's pretty awesome. Did you say soldier solder? Solder? Yeah,
(08:26):
I never heard of pronounce How do you say, solder solder?
You gotta say that l. I think the silent unless
it's regional, regional, regional. To my brain, I think solder.
You said that because you're from Toedo, right. So the
use of the use of leg goes back even before
(08:46):
the Romans. Actually, but it first appeared mostly in art
like lead paint. Yeah, it wasn't like um they described
in the articles and novelty. Uh. And it was apparently
it makes colors more vibrant and it's less erosive, which
is why you still, even in the United States, see
lead paint on street signs because it's less corrosive. Yeah,
(09:09):
that's what they say. It's still used on signs supposedly
up until as recently as the nineties, and it may
still be going on depending on the country that it's produced.
In The ink on the outside of a plastic bread
bag frequently has lead in it, or it used to,
and it wasn't a problem unless the somebody kept the
(09:31):
bread bag and turned it inside out to store food in.
Then that food leached the lead out of the ink.
It was actually like a big problem for a while. Well,
I'm not sure that it is anymore. I couldn't find
anything in recent the most recent thing I saw saying that, yeah,
it still happens, right, Well, it's less expensive as a paint,
which is another reason, uh in the in the colors
(09:52):
and more vivid apparently. But um, this hasn't been a
problem in the US for a while, but in China
they still use a lot of lead head um in paint.
And in two thousand seven there were massive recalls for
everything from Dora the Explorer toys to Sesame Street toys
due to the fact that they had lead pain on them.
And little kids put everything in their mouths, including their toys,
(10:16):
because they're big dummies, and they end up eating lead,
which is a big problem. So there was a massive
recall of Chinese products in because of this. Now it
was two thousand seven. What I say seven, Yeah, you're
harkening back and to the Urban Dance Squad day. Did
you look them up? Man, you're missing out. I don't
(10:38):
think that's true. Really, Yeah, why just because I like
them remember them vaguely? Oh yeah, it wasn't like I've
never heard of the Urban Dance Squad. No, you have
a good taste of music. Mental philosph for the Globe, great,
like a legitimately great album that I'll look it up.
I'll look it up. It's just weird that you say
you think you're not missing out. It's for no know,
(11:00):
because I mean, again, I remember Urban Nant Squad for
some reason. I put them in line with like Spin
Doctors in three eleven. No, no, well, you know what
I mean. Three eleven could be slightly compared because they
were kind of a rock rap group, but they were Dutch.
Urban Dance Squad was okay, so that that makes them
cool in here right automatically? Yeah. Uh, but if you
(11:23):
just picked this up as like, what are they talking
about Enchilada's Urban Dance Squad, um so lead paint in
the United States is uh, well, it's still an issue.
In some ways because older houses still have it. But
as of UM nineteen seventy eight they said no more,
get the light out. That's right, and they define it
(11:43):
as any paint or surface coating that contains lead equal
or exceeding one milligram for a square centimeter. Yeah. So
basically um In said, if you're going to manufacture something
for somebody's home that people are generally going to come
in contact with, most people don't come in contact with
street signs, UM, right, then you can't have lead in it.
(12:06):
But again, any house built pre there's plenty of them
out there, very likely has lead paint in it. It
also probably has lead pipes. Um. And there's a lot
of lead around us all over the place in places
you wouldn't even think, like there's lead. And uh, leaded
glass like really like a glass you like you might
(12:28):
be using you conceivably could be drinking lead out of it. Oh,
but you don't drink out of leaded glass. Sure. Yeah,
they use it to make regular plain old dumb glass
into more like crystal. It gives it like a ping
when you when you tap it. It makes it, uh,
the the reflection a lot sharper. It also UM lowers
(12:50):
the melting point. So you know, if you put it
in the oven, it doesn't like, but it's conceivably bad
for you. You know, who was on it long but
for the United States government. Federal government was the city
of Baltimore. In one they banned lead pigment for interior paint,
very smart for their housing. And since the fifties had
(13:13):
kind of been phased out in different parts of the country.
And then ine, we finally got the Federal Lead Poisoning
Prevention Act, and then it took seven years after that
to fully ban the paint the paint lead paint. Right.
There's another big source of lead that was all over
the place in the twentieth century. Uh, and that was
(13:35):
in gasoline in cars. There was an additive in gasoline
that was added to gaso link called tetra ethyl lead, right, yeah,
you remember that, like, uh, you know, fill it up
with unleaded or or or fully leaded. And the reason
that they added lead to gas was because there was
a problem called knocking right where um, the in a
(13:57):
high performance engine, when the gas entered the ignition chamber,
the combustion chamber, it it may just get so amped
up that it would combust it would ignite before it
was supposed to, and this would basically disrupt the movement
of the pistons. Right, they knocked the pain that did
(14:18):
all sorts of bad stuff. The lead kept the gas
from combusting or igniting before it was meant to, so
it was a pretty great additive. The thing is, we
already knew that lead was not good for you at
the time, but we added it to gas anyway, and
it was finally phased out in the seventies. Starting in
the seventies, I should say, um, because we started adding
(14:42):
catalytic converters to our cars. Yeah, that helped that, and um,
just are are the process of the chemical process of
refining petroleum just advanced, so we no longer needed it. Right,
So it wasn't just crumby gas. It was pretty good gas.
It didn't need lead. If you run leading gas through
catalytic converter, it totally messes it up. And the catalytic
(15:03):
converters there to prevent emission, so you take lead out
of gas. The problem we found is that during these
few decades from like the twenties till actually was the
last year you could have lead in your gas in
the United states, Um that during this period, basically all
the cars on the road were spewing lead, lead vapors
(15:26):
into the atmosphere that would just go into the air
and then come back into the ground and settle in
the soil and water and your face. Yeah, I had.
I used lead of gas in my Um. I had
to put it in. My early VW Beatles that I
drove had a couple of old you know, vented well vintage.
They bought theom new Oh yeah, yeah, my mom she
(15:47):
bought a sixty eight Beetle brand New. Wow, that's when
I drove. When I turned sixteen, I think it was
still around. Huh yeah, yeah, you know those things they
never die if you take care of them. Did you
like ever use duct tape or anything like that on? No,
but I did. Uh. Funny you mentioned I had a hole,
sizable hole in the rear floorboard. Um that we my
(16:09):
friends call it the Flintstones car because you could, like
you put your feet down and run. So I did
have a board, a running board. Um no, just a
board over the whole. But I mean you can remove
the board and run while you're sitting in the backseat.
That's right. Great car. Yeah, lead has been added to
cosmetics over the years. Uh, jewelry, jewelry, Uh, pottery, and
(16:33):
then uh today because everyone knows let is so uh
such a jerk. One of the only places you're gonna
find it in the u S at least as in
your car battery your car, Yeah, your car battery or
your laptop actually, yeah, which is why it's really important
to recycle that car battery, don't or that laptop. Don't
throw it in the woods. Yeah, responsibly recycle your electronics
(16:54):
and batteries. Yeah. If there's one thing that we've learned
since the twentieth centuries that lead has some serious staying
power and it has a very pesky tendency to get
out of wherever we put it, right, And yeah, if
you put it in just a regular landfill that's not
designed to accept things like lead, um, it will just
leach into the groundwater and um. Same thing with your
(17:15):
e waste, your your laptops, and the reason that they're
used in laptops, um is because the lead actually protects
you from the radiation that would shoot out of your
laptop screen into your face if it weren't for the
toxic lead in there. That's right. Glass cathode ray tubes
like you find in your computer laptop screen. Yeah. Well
(17:37):
I don't know about your laptop, but your computer, yeah,
your monitor. But there's but you should let in there.
You should responsibly recycle your laptop too, for sure, for
a number of reasons. I know you did a what
was it called electronics recycling? Yeah? What was it? Like?
Just a thought or I have no idea what you're
talking about. You did a video series where you like, no, sure,
(17:59):
deep thought. No, I can't even remember I created the series. Yeah,
but you do one on e recycling. Yeah, but nobody
cared or watch. So the world was not saved. Everyone said, Chuck,
quit doing it. All right, Well, let's take a break.
I'm gonna go cry tire for man. What was the
name of that series? I don't know. We'll go get
(18:19):
forties and pour them out on the curb Forum. All right,
we'll be back in a second. All right, Josh, we've
(18:40):
talked a lot about lead so far and enchiladas in
Dutch rock rack rap rock bands. It comes from the earth, though,
let's let's take it underground. Yeah it's not actually, I mean,
it is naturally occurring, but it doesn't naturally occur in
its pure form. Yeah, you don't just like dig down.
You're like, hey, there's a big hunk of lead, let
(19:00):
me pull it out. Instead, lead atoms have um I
think four unpaired uh electrons maybe, and it's outer shell um.
So it likes to form connections with other things. So
when you find lead in the earth, you're gonna find
it in the form of a ox side or a
sulfide or something like that. Frequently it's combined with silver,
(19:23):
and so that means it has to be separated. And
even the Romans back in the day, which by the way,
these Roman um lead pipes that they used for baths
and for sanitation and stuff still intact today. You can
still dig those up and beat people with them. You could.
That's the other place you'll find a lead pipe is
in the hand of some dude coming after you, or
(19:44):
a game of clue. Oh yeah, that's right. That was bent.
Even the guy was hit so hard with it, Colonel Mustard,
he was not to be trusted, he was not. But yes,
the Romans they had a pretty us man. They were
so smart. They had a pretty ingenious process called coppellation. Uh.
The extent of that is basically the idea is that
(20:05):
some precious metals, I'm sorry, precious metals. All precious metals
won't oxidize, but dumb metals will. So if you heat
that junk up, it's going to separate, right. And then
they used it mostly to separate from silver. But these
days we get most of our lead from something called galena,
where a lead sulfide is found, right. Yeah, And our
(20:26):
process is sort of similar. It is very like using
heat to separate things. And this this actually it very
much resembles Do you remember our waste gasification episode. Yeah,
I couldn't remember which one this it was that one,
because the process is very similar. So you take some
lead sulfide and you heat it up, uh in the air,
(20:46):
so there's the presence of oxygen and it converts into um,
lead oxide and sulfur dioxide, right, So you separate them
out a little bit. Then you take that lead oxide
and you egg carbon co and you again mix it
with some air and as that happens, the air combines
with the oxide into car you know, the carbon combines
(21:09):
with the air and becomes carbon dioxide. Takes all of
the um oxygen molecules from the lead atoms. So the lead,
basically what amounts of pure lead, becomes molten and goes
down to the bottom of the furnace and carbon dioxide
goes out into the atmosphere. It sounds like a very
safe process. Basically you're creating molten lead and carbon dioxide. Yeah,
(21:31):
that's called roasting and smelting. And uh. Once that lead
sinks cools down, it's gonna it's called a pig It's
just a big mess of lead basically. Yeah, like pig iron. Yeah,
it's it's delicious. Uh. And then you have slag, which
is the non metallic byproduct of the smelting process, and
(21:52):
you siphon and cool that down and it's waste waste product. Yes. Uh.
And like I said, recycling your car battery is important
because there's also a process called secondary extraction where they
get that lead out of your battery. You can keep
using it exactly. That's the other good thing about lead.
It is extremely reusable because again, it has a lot
(22:12):
of staying power, so you're not gonna use lead up,
you know, which means you want to reuse it. Yes,
we should get to the point where we don't need
to mind any more lead or process anymore lead. Just
reuse the lead we've got, or maybe find some great
substitute that isn't so toxic. You know, you melt down
those tiny civil war figurines. Oh yeah, those guys are
(22:33):
lead Okay I thought they were. Yeah, So handling and
painting those with lead paint, it's dangerous, right, yes, yes,
yes it is. Is that where we're losing so many
Civil war figurine buffs? I think so at an alarming rate.
That's why they all have like spittle and drool around
the corners of their mouths and like zone out while
they're painting. Well, there's other reasons for that, but sure contributes.
(22:58):
So uh okay, chuck um, you mentioned or we mentioned
lead refining and processing, smelting, roasting, that kind of stuff, right, Um,
that does create emissions of not just carbon dioxide but
also um lead vapor, which is not good stuff, and
you want to control that kind of stuff. But it
(23:19):
is emitted and it uh it used to be. Well,
these days, lead emissions um from refining and processing are
actually the number one source of lead vapor emissions in
the environment. Right, but um forty yeah, about forty years ago,
forty five years ago that was not the case. The
case was all those cars driving around on the streets
(23:41):
emitting lead vapor. Yeah, used to account for about seventy
if it came from your automobile. And uh, since the
phasing out and reversal, we know coming from the processing
and what is it down to, uh road sources, it's
a fuel combustion. Yeah, not bad, No, not bad. Still again,
(24:07):
you basically wanted like zero as we're finding, like the
um as, we'll see that that lead exposure in any
amount is not good and it gets it goes from
not good to really bad very quickly apparently. Yeah. And
you know, let us know good. We mentioned kids chewing
on something with lead pain is not good. If you're
redoing your house, uh and it's pre nineteen seventy eight,
(24:29):
you want to get a piece tested. You can't just
be like, let me sand off, no the paint on
this molding now, because again, even if you think you've
cleaned it up, there's still there's lead right there, buddy,
um that you're not going to get rid of it. Apparently. Also,
opening and closing your windows in a pre nineteen house
can create lead dust if you're lucky enough to be
(24:51):
able to open your windows. Sure, that's a that's a
point minor sealed shut yeah, or nailed chatter, what have you. Yeah,
just from years of painting basically with probably lead paint guaranteed. No,
it's not. Actually we we had it tested, Oh did you? Yeah?
I mean it wasn't lead paint, but you had it
tested like all the way through, Like yeah, yeah, yeah,
(25:12):
But what I'm saying is pre nineteen seventy eight, it's
not the only paint that was used. I know you're
saying that's why you get it tested, right, But did
you get like all the layers underneath tested well for
any Yeah? Okay, that was my all the layers sound
effect like we hired a lead person. I got too. Good.
Good good. That makes me feel better. Yeah. And if
you want to if there is lead and you want
(25:33):
to get the lead out, you're gonna have to hire
someone that knows what they're doing and they'll come in
with their has mat suits on to do so. Right. Um,
So you can also get it from plumbing, although apparently,
um with lead plumbing it's not quite as much of
a thread as you would think. You know, didn't that
make you just want to like never drink water again,
knowing that you have lead pipes in your house, you
(25:55):
shouldn't necessarily be worried because um, over the years, water
sanitation experts have figured out that if you have good
water that's non corrosive, it actually is not only non corrosive,
the water will leave behind a protective coating that coats
the inside of the pipes that it runs through. The lead, Yes,
(26:21):
over whatever it is, but yeah, it's gonna leave a
protective coat of other substances that aren't toxic that it's
gonna form a barrier for later water and the pipes. UM.
And uh so you you shouldn't necessarily be freaked out
if you have lead pipes coming to your house. Although
I mean you've got the money, that's there's definitely worse
(26:42):
things you could spend your money on than replacing those pipes.
You know copper, Well, copper can be a problem as well.
There's actually a copper lead rule that UM that dictates
how non corrosive cities water has to be to follow
this rule, and it's detecting not just against led, but copper.
You don't really want copper either, although it's not nearly
(27:03):
as bad for you as lead interesting. So if you
have lead in your system, I mean it goes, it
goes into your bloodstream. Uh, it doesn't matter how it
gets in there. If you inhale it, it'll be absorbed
to the capillaries and the lungs into the blood or
if you uh, if you if you touch it, if
you lick it, it's gonna find this way into your blood. Uh,
(27:25):
and you can. I mean, it's really easy to find
out if you have lead in your blood. You just
get a blood test. UM. I don't know why they
would do this other test. I don't either, and not
just a blood test unless it's like prohibitably expensive or
something so that. Yeah, the other test is called the
zinc proto porphyrin um test, and that's a byproduct of
(27:46):
red blood cells as they break down in the presence
of lead. So rather than directly testing, and it's you're
like going around to see, excuse me, lead, I want
to see if your shadow is detectable. I don't get
it makes zero sense because you gotta take your blood
for that too, write and it's not exaccurate. Yeah, it
doesn't make any sense. But the lead blood test is
(28:09):
so easy that UM companies like three M and plenty
of others sell home lead blood tests. It's yeah, it
is nice unless you're the parent who is freaked out
giving one to your kid. Well, that's true. You know,
anything over equal to or greater than um five micrograms
per DESSI leader is bad if you're a kid. If
(28:31):
you're an adult, you can tolerate a little bit more,
but it's still distressing, right, And that's how it's expressed. So,
um a microgram to a DESI leader, which is a
tenth of a leader, right, Um, And so five is
not good. Ten micrograms in a desk a leader is
where demonstrable UM like behavioral and cognitive problems start to develop. Yeah,
(28:54):
that's serious trouble. But the e p A has said,
um that there's quote no demons traded safe concentration of
lead in blood, like you shouldn't have any in The
problem is nothing but toxic to humans. There is no benefit. Yeah,
and um, we'll talk about it in just a second.
But the problem with lead is that we're figuring out
(29:15):
that we shouldn't be exposed to it at all, while
we're also simultaneously figuring out that we have a washed
our planet in it from the last like a couple
of hundred years. Basically, you wanna take a break. Yeah,
all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about all
kinds of fun stuff, all right. So before I left,
(29:50):
I t s that there is no function for lead
in the body. It is nothing but toxic, uh in it.
The way it behaves in your body in a negative
way is really interesting. UM your body, and this happens
a lot. I feel like we covered the body mistaking
something for something else quite a bit. Is there there
(30:10):
should be a word for that, uh, the case of
mistaken identity. I guess that's it. But the body treats
lead like calcium. UM. So it's gonna go where calcium
goes in the body, including your bones, which is super scary. Yeah.
Lead settles in very comfortably into calcium receptors, and it's
not just bones, Like that's what I always think of
when I think of calcium, Like what you need calcium
(30:32):
because your bones will break or you get rickets if
you don't have it or whatever. Um, But calcium comes
in handy throughout your whole body. And one of the
big places that shows up is in calcium ions in UM.
Your neuronal activity. Right. So when your neurons fire, one
of the ways that they fire, uh, is because the
neurons or the calcium ions get them all excited and
(30:53):
then poo, your your neurons is fired. If lead is
in that calcium ion channel instead of calcium, that kaboo
doesn't happen, and all of a sudden, your neurons aren't
firing as much as they would if the lead wasn't present.
And now we have a big problem. Yeah, and it's
especially big problem with children because children's little brains are uh,
(31:14):
you know, we talked about plasticity before. They're constantly forming
these new neural connections and any kind of lead in
the mistaken for calcium is going to disrupt those connections.
And so your child is literally their brain isn't going
to advance like it should, right exactly. Intellectually, Um, the
(31:35):
apparently emotional centers like the amygdala can suffer UM that
it's been found to produce hyperactivity, anti social behavior, UM,
attention deficit disorder, all sorts of problems from the presence
of lead, right. Um. And like you said, it's worse
for kids because their brains are still developing and forming
(31:56):
it's bad for anybody, but it's definitely worse for kids.
And the other way that it affects kids is that
so the regions of their brains aren't developing correctly. But
then simultaneously, calcium is also important in the formation of myelin,
which is that protective sheath around the synapses between neurons.
So that's kind of like flimsy, which means that the
neurons aren't firing efficiently. So not only do you have
(32:20):
brain regions affected, but the communication between brain regions are
affected too in little kids. And the upshot is is
that it promotes all sorts of problems with cognitive and
emotional and behavioral development and children. Yeah, and like literally
lower i Q scores. And we should say that that's
just like the most prominent horrifying effect of lead. There's
(32:41):
a whole laundry list of other things that can happen to,
like um kidney failure, pain in your bones and joints
from all that lead settling into where the calcium is
supposed to go. Yeah, how about decreased sex drive and
sterility and infertility for both men and women. Uh, what else? Diarrhea,
lack of appetite, constipation. I think diarrhea is the least
of your worries. If you have a lad blood, high
(33:03):
blood pressure, enlarged heart. Uh, it's it's It affects virtually
every system in your body basically. And the reason why
again is because it mimics or it takes the place
of calcium, and calcium is incredibly vital. It's an extremely
important mineral that you need found throughout your body. And
if a leg goes in, it's like, um, I'm here instead. Yeah,
(33:25):
it's not going to do the stuff that the calcium
supposed to do, leading to all this cascade of horrific problems. Yeah.
And one of the other scary things is that they
unless you have acute lead poisoning, you may not know.
In fact, you probably won't know that you're being slowly poisoned.
And you might just think, oh, I have diarrhea and
I don't feel like having sex much anymore, and you
(33:45):
might be slowly getting lead poisoning, and you you just
blame that on too many buffalo wings. But boom, it's
lead poison takes care of both. Uh. You remember being
a kid and like lead pencils, like it was a
big scare, Like you know you lead poisoning if you
got poked with a pencil. Yeah, I remember that, But
then I also remember learning that there's actually graphite used
in pencils. We should have a buy our age. You
(34:08):
should have David Reeson. Oh yeah, how to sharpen a
pencil and he can school you on some pencils. He
wrote a whole book on it, literally wrote the book
on pencil sharpening. Yeah. I still have let or I guess,
graphite somewhere in my hand from when I was jabbed
very deep with a pencil that broke off and it
never left and there still just looks like a little
(34:28):
black freckle. It's like you're in prison and got shanked.
I know, I can't find where it is. No, that's
a scratch. So we've talked about all the cognitive problems
that can come about and behavioral and emotional disorders that
can develop from lead. And this is like study after
study after study has found this. It's one of the
(34:50):
big reasons why there have been so many restrictions placed
on lead exposure. Um And recently some people have some
research chers, including a couple of well an economist I believe,
and an epidemiologist have UM kind of taken that idea
that lead can create all of these behavioral problems and
(35:12):
any social behavioral problems UM and extrapolated to this idea
that there is a big rise in the crime rate
in the United States and actually around the world. That
followed about twenty years UM the same trajectory of the
use of lead and gasoline. Super interesting article, very controversial,
(35:36):
like when it came well it still is, UM, but yeah,
it's very interesting. Yeah, it's called lead America's Real Criminal Element.
It was in Mother Jones. Was written by Kevin Drum,
who was one of the all time greats working today.
And UM, I think I've mentioned it before, but I
strongly encourage anybody it doesn't even matter if lads the
most boring thing in the world to you go read
(35:58):
this article. You will be riveted by it. And Kevin
Drum does a lot of He does a very good
job of keeping his extrapolations down as low as possible,
although anybody can see by the evidence that he lays
out that this is it's pretty clear that lead is
some sort of culprit in this UM and it's been
(36:20):
shot down and that there's this idea that the science
isn't settled. I suspect that it's the same mechanisms that
force with climate denial. Like unsettled science doesn't prove anything.
If you look at all the studies associated with this,
the correlation between lead use in gasoline and therefore lad
(36:41):
emissions in UM cars and criminal activity and its decline again,
it just follows it like twenty years after. And the
whole idea is that when we started emitting lead into
the atmosphere, UM, kids started suffering these cognitive and in
associal but avirs. And then about twenty years after these
(37:02):
kids were born, they started actually carrying out criminal activity,
and we saw a tremendous rise and everything from like
murder to rape, to mugging's to everything. UM. And it's
the articles too long to to really go into detail. Again,
just strongly urge anybody to go read it. Yeah. The
the um the backlash that I've seen on the article
(37:22):
wasn't to me like it was all from scientists mainly. Yeah,
I read a few of them. They weren't poopooing the notion.
They said this what this means is it bears a
lot more investigation. UM. But as much as you want
if you can't replicate it. It's still possible confirmation bias
or just sure correlation and not causation, like could be
(37:43):
a host of other issues that went into that. It
could be And and Kevin Joon makes the same point.
He's like, there's also a rise in the use of
vinyl albums that followed roughly the same trajectory as well.
But um, you know, of course it needs more study
for sure. Well this this one scientist said, what you
really need to do is follow what he calls a
cohort study, when you actually follow individuals along a long timeline. Um,
(38:09):
it's just a tough study. It's it bears a lot
of uh to prove something like this just takes a
lot more data than they have, right, And I think
the guy you're referencing is Scott Firestone, who is, um, yeah,
that was a good who wrote on the Discover magazine
blog and um, you know he gives kudos to Drum
(38:32):
who definitely deserves it for basically saying every time he says,
you know, it's it's it's so obvious you have to
be just you know, have your head in the stand
to deny this. He does say that, yes, speaking scientifically
that does require more study. Super interesting though, because the
crime and drum followed it all over the world. He
(38:54):
didn't just go to the United States and he saw
the same thing and Canada and Australia, in Great Britain.
And the good news is if if that is the case,
then we should see crime dropping. Yeah. But the problem
is is that it also should get us to do
basically mitigate the lead that isn't around, like in the
(39:15):
soil and in the water and everywhere and people's houses. Um.
And the dollar amounts that he estimates it would cost
are pretty prohibitive at least as far as like the
public will goes from right now. But who knows. I mean,
if enough science is done on it, and you get
the scientific community vocally speaking about this, then maybe the
(39:36):
public will will change. Uh. If you do have lead poisoning,
you can't get on meds. Uh. There's a prescription called
sustamer as U S C I M E R. That
was beautiful. Uh you see that or sucker over I
like how you said, Um, it can reduce blood lead. Um.
There of course always side effects with every medication. UM.
(39:57):
And if you work, if you've like there's been a
disaster and you get toxic lead in your body very quickly. UM,
they can use something called kellation collation collection therapy. UH.
And that's when they use a collating agent. I'm not
even gonna try that. I'm gonna try it. Okay, Ethyl
(40:20):
lenna diamina tetracetic acid. Hey, not bad if you like
super quick. I missed the last A. That's just a
few letters off from super califragilistic xbomy. It looks like
the alphabet when it's on paper, but we'll call it
E E T A. And that's when it's infused into
(40:41):
the bloodstream and actually binds. It basically says lead you're
coming with me through your kidney, out of your body, right. UM.
But they use that when it's just an acute toxic dose. UM,
that that a person has been exposed to. UM. If
a kid's been found to be poisoned with lead, actually,
from what I read, one of the best treatments that UM,
(41:04):
they'll they'll carry out. They'll they'll be other stuff too,
depending on how bad it is. But a really good
nutritious diet. UM, getting the kid foods that are high
and things like calcium and high in things like vitamin
C that help the body absorb calcium so that they
can go displace lead in the body. Because if you've
got lead and you've got calcium fighting for the for
(41:25):
the same place, if you can get the calcium in there,
it's going to displace the lead and then hopefully leave
the body. It's like, I'm going home. That's gotta be
hard on the kidney. So I don't know. I yeah,
I think if you have an acute lead poisoning or
a serious lead poisoning, it's not good. But yeah, of
course it'd be hard on the kidneys because one of
the things is kidney failure in anemia. Uh it. Lead
(41:48):
is um Lead is definitely invariably in the ground and
the groundwater and then the soil um around us. And
that's a problem because it's sort of works this way
up the food chain and a weird way because what
you have are these tiny organisms um it gets in
their body, like plankton and microscopic plants, and they die
(42:10):
and then other things eat that their waste, and then
it just sort of like bigger animals come along and
keep eating these things. Yeah, it's not just humans that
suffer from lead toxicity. Other animals too, even the small ones.
So should we talk about these Flint lawsuits a little? Yeah,
and then antilotis and that hopefully toxic. I guess it
(42:33):
depends on who manufactured. So I did some reading on
the lawsuits. Right now, there's more than a dozen and
probably growing. A few of them are class action suits
on behalf of tens of thousands of Flint residents. And
you know, attorneys always look their chops when they hear
stuff like this. UM. But there's some concerns. One is
that the state of Michigan is, like the city is broke,
(42:56):
so don't even bother the state of Michigan. Maybe an
out to go if you want to get a lot
of money, but then they say that will just get
packs pass along to the taxpayer. UM. And a lot
of experts in the legal world say that compensation is
unlikely to begin with as far as money goes, because
of something a couple of things. One thing called sovereign immunity,
(43:18):
which basically means the government can say, you know, giving
water to the citizens is a core government function, so
we're shielded legally from liability for doing that, uh improperly,
So like you can't sue us we're trying to give
you water. And the other thing is specific causation has
to be proved. So not only do you have to
prove that the lead came from that water and not
(43:40):
like the lead pipes in your house or other like
the lead paint in your walls maybe has to come
specifically from that Flint River water. Uh, And you also
have to prove that that directly lead to the problem
that your kid is having, and not you know other things. Well,
one of the things I read was that it's very
possible that the lead came from the pipes in those
(44:03):
people's houses, but that it's still on the provider of
the water because they were supposed to be following corrosion
protection techniques that they lied about following. They weren't following them,
so it got rid of that protective coating that had
been on the lead pipes before and was bringing all
that lead into people's homes directly. So it may have
(44:23):
been lead from the people's homes, but it was the
corrosive nature of the terrible drinking water that was being
pumped through those that caused that lead to be brought
into the people's homes. And then again on top of it.
The government was lying about using the techniques that they
were supposed to be using to prevent that from happening.
So that now that they've switched back over to Detroit water,
(44:45):
it's going to take a while for that protective film
to develop on the pipes again. So even now that
the different waters coming through, it's still lousy with lead.
And the sad thing is that some people in Flint
are too um poor to do anything about it, and
they's still need water, so they're still drinking leaded water
even though they know that it's going to hurt them
down the line. Well, and it's sad that it sounds
(45:07):
like getting real compensation is maybe unlikely. Yeah, because a
lot of these people who have kids, like if their
kids suffer severe cognitive development problems, they're gonna need help
like the rest of their lives. Yeah. This one guy, uh,
he's a law professor specializing in environmental law named Noah Hall.
(45:29):
He says, what the probably the smart thing to do
if you really want to help these people is set
up do what they did with the Deepwater Horizon spill
and set up a victim's compensation fund um instead of
doing it via lawsuit like legislator legislated, Um, maybe that
would help. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know that.
(45:49):
He basically said what the states shouldn't do his fight this,
He's like, that would be big trouble. Uh. He said
they should set up some sort of fund so then
they look like the good guys still. But then I
think you don't get all the dirty details dragged out
in public like you would with a lass. Well, apparently
they're already coming out anyway, like tropes of emails have
been released. Um. The the governor set up a task
(46:10):
force to find out who is to blame. And they
turned around and they were like you um, and he said,
fired the task for right exactly, You're all fired. Um. Yeah,
I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's it's very
scary public health scare Flint, Uh, I know, talk about
a city it's been roughed up over the years. I know. Well,
we're there with you, Flint, hanging there. If you want
(46:32):
to learn more about lead or Flint or criminal activity,
you can check out all these different articles on the
Internet and you can type lead into the search bar
house to works dot com and it'll bring up a
pretty great article. Since I said pretty great articles, time
for a listener, I'm gonna call this Finland rules. Remember
(46:54):
we did the Dark Money podcast and I was like,
what's a good place. It's not corrupt. I remember we
heard from a lot of people. Um in Scandinavia. Hi,
I'm an American living in Helsinki for the last few
years with my finished husband. Um, Chuck, you were right
on the money when he said there's very little political
corruption here. Of course there are some, but because there
are humans after all, But the level compared to the
(47:15):
States is laughable. When I asked my husband about it,
he thought for a second and asked about corruption scandals.
He said, a few years back, Uh, there was something
about a prime minister who accepted lumber from a company
to build his house. That was it. It seems comical
to me considering the States in an election year. Also,
the campaign season is much shorter here, and it's done
a little different. Party runs there at least five major parties.
(47:37):
That's crazy in and of itself, like crazy, good party
runs and whichever gets a majority elects from its ranks
the prime minister and makes a cabinet out of a
coalition of the other parties which received high numbers of votes.
How about that, Like you came in second, you're on
board too, Come on and here's your participant. Ribbon campaigns
(47:59):
are paid for by disclosed donations and public funds. Uh.
You also made a comment about the high taxes here.
Many people, usually Americans, say that with this taste, that
the taxes are so high here. But I've come to
think very highly of it. I've discovered that I don't
really need another pair of jeans or a new jacket,
but I need there's an educated society around me, in
access to quality healthcare, and a truly equal society where
(48:22):
everyone is safe and has her basic needs met. Uh.
That it's from Gabrielle. Wow, a lot of people hate
your guts for saying that. Gabrielle, that was so brave
of you. Thanks Gabrielle for writing in. Um, I don't
know how they say audios in Finland. No, she's American.
(48:42):
Well goodbye, Okay, thank you for writing in. If you
want to get in touch with us, you can tweak
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should
know if you can send us an email to stuff
podcast that how stuff Works dot Com and has always
join us on the web. It's stuff You You Know
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(49:08):
visit how stuff Works dot com. M
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