Is lead toxicity from shooting guns a primary reason many Americans seem cognitively impaired ?
Is lead toxicity from shooting guns a primary reason many Americans seem cognitively impaired ?
I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
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"you're brain dead, you've got aalmost as much lead as a motherfuckin bullet in ya head."
I doubt it's the main cause, widespread cultural phenomena are normally mostly generated by social interactions (words) and reinforcement, and demagogues (or so they often over-claim).
Poison like that will impact a fairly small proportion and takes a long time to impact and spread. Seems unlikey to be anything major. Besides which many more sources of lead poisoning from paint and leaded petrol, and water pipes and stuff - not specifiic to US and not specific to guns.
Lead pipes corrode internally very quickly. This corrosion prevents any significant amount of lead from entering the water. They should still be replaced of course, but the danger is way overstated.