Stock image of a gasoline fuel nozzle.Photo:Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg/Getty
Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg/Getty
“A significant burden of mental illness symptomatology and disadvantageous personality differences can be attributed to US children’s exposure to lead over the past 75 years,” a study published in theAssociation for Child and Adolescent Mental Healthsaid.
“Lead’s potential contribution to psychiatry, medicine, and children’s health may be larger than previously assumed.”
The study analyzed lead levels in children’s blood from 1940 to 2015, and found that those born between 1966 and 1986 had the highest rate of lead-associated mental illnesses like depression, ADHD, and anxiety, a report inNBC Newsexplains.
Stock image of a sign announcing leaded gasoline.Getty
Getty
That dovetails with the peak use of lead in gasoline, whichCar and Driversays was added to fuel to reduce engine “knock” — a sound produced in the engine when fuel burns unevenly.
“Exposure to lead can seriously harm a child’s health,” theU.S. Centers for Disease Controlsays, explaining that it’s most harmful to children under age 6. Lead can damage the brain and nervous system, slow growth and development, and cause problems with learning, behavior, hearing, and speech.
The impact of lead exposure on mental health has been extensively documented: As theNational Library of Medicinesays, “There is an association between lead and ADHD and that even low levels of lead raise the risk.” And according to another report in theNational Library of Medicine, “lead-exposed workers in foundries, battery plants, or lead smelter were reported to suffer from cognitive and neuromotor deficits, as well as mood disorders such as anxiety, hostility, and depressive states.”
As Aaron Reuben, a co-author of the gasoline study and a postdoctoral scholar in neuropsychology at Duke and the Medical University of South Carolina told NBC, “Studies like ours today add more evidence that removing lead from our environment and not putting it there in the first place has more benefits than we previously understood.”
Stock image of a car exhaust pipe.Getty
But while it was banned as a gasoline additive in 1996, theEnvironmental Protection Agencypoints out lead is still everywhere: in paint that covers children’s toys, in some dishes and glasses, and in pipes.
“We’ve done a lot of good in the U.S. reducing lead exposures. Blood lead levels have gone way down, but they could go down further,” Reuben told NBC. “I hope that we can learn from the history about how much harm we caused in the U.S., and try to apply that moving forward."
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source: people.com
