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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Leaded gas wasn't fully stopped until 1996. Still in some aviation used (piston plane engines).
But yes I wonder about shooting ranges too. I think a couple times a year at an indoor range isn't insignificant.
Yeah some of the replies have good points about lead damage being cumulative and showing up later, so maybe the workers in those studies I mentioned showed impairment because they were chronically exposed over some lengthy period and the impairments they measured were because of the cumulative exposure?
That also makes me think again though that, like you said, going to the indoor range a few times per year and not taking proper measures to clean oneself could cause some cumulative effect over time?
I mean check out this post where this person’s lead level was over 15 and decreased to 8 after a month of no shooting. Idk but reaching a blood lead level of 15 can’t be good right? Especially if you’re exposed repeatedly over a long period of time?
Iirc indoor ranges need ventilation systems because, you know, all the combustion. I don't know if the residue on, say, counters, etc, is enough of a buildup to be significant but I would be surprised if airborne particulate was particularly high.
I saw something that yes the lead levels were high. Ventilation only does so much. It's that old math problem: you replace half, you replace half, etc, it never gets to zero. And in this case you're adding more.