Stuff You Should Know - What Makes Lead So Poisonous?

Episode Date: April 19, 2016

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? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's To My Right. So this is Stuff You Should Know. That's right, recording in a new pop-up restaurant called Jerry's Burrito Shack. 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's fine with me though. Eh, 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. Right, right.

This you call it like a burritette or something weird like that, something that differentiated, you know? I agree with you, man. Yeah, but man, sometimes when that refried bean pops out and burns your mouth, it's just the best. And you have a hole in your gums for a couple days? Yeah, I'll throw a little cheese on top, too, to cool it in the oven.

No, to melt on top. Oh, that's an enchilada then. Not really. I think the enchilada makes this, it's the sauce, right? Yeah, okay. That's what I'll say. It's swimming in sauce. All right, enchilada sauce.

This may be your best intro yet. Ole. Chuck, we're talking about lead today. That's right. Do you know much about the Flint, Michigan lead poisoning scandal that happened? I should say blemish. Yeah, I posted about it on our Facebook wall

a couple of months ago and sort of was a part of a lively discussion there, but only from that and then this research. Yeah, same here. I mean, I was aware of it kind of. I didn't understand the details. Yeah. But for those of you who don't know

about the Flint, Michigan water poisoning, Flint, Michigan has faced a lot of problems since the auto industry went away, but one of them wasn't poor water quality. They actually, the people of Flint actually paid, I think the highest rate or among the highest rates in the country to get their water. Their water was pumped from Lake Huron through Detroit

and Flint bought their water from Detroit. Yeah, to get that good, clean Detroit water. Right, you know you're in a pickle when you're buying water from Detroit and that's the healthy water. Yeah. So they're building a new pipeline from Lake Huron that goes around Detroit and Flint said,

we're gonna 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, basically the emergency mayor appointed by the governor himself said, we're just gonna tap into the Flint River. Yeah, not a good idea as it turned out.

No, it's not because in Flint, Michigan, there were, among other places, something called Buick City. Yeah. Buick City was a 400 plus acre car manufacturing plant that made Buicks and it really heavily polluted the river. Yeah. So much so that people in Flint,

after just a few months of drinking this water from the tap, started losing their hair. Well right away they said this looks and tastes awful. Right, it's taste of chlorine and the reason it tasted of chlorine because there were E. coli outbreaks that they had to treat the water with chlorine. And then it also, to some people,

it smelled like sulfur-y as well. It looked terrible, but people started losing hair, started getting rashes. There was one kid who had an autoimmune disease already. He just stopped growing and it was bad news. But the people, the Flint government and the Michigan Environmental Protection Division basically said, nope, we're following all the laws.

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 water sanitation and 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 guys are wrong.

This is toxic water and we're being poisoned and you have to do something about it. And they finally did. Well, I think the issue was, don't play dumb, we know, you know, why are you making us tell you? Exactly. And they kept, apparently the company line was, no, here's the science here.

Here are the results of the tests, but the tests were terrible. And if you want to know all about it, there's a really, really great article on 538.com called What Went Wrong in Flint? And 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 bunch of lead in the water is 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 Flint for months. Yeah, and the reason people use lead in pipes

is because it's not corrosive. That's how corrosive the water was. Yeah, exactly. That really says something. It really does. And I guess we'll loop back later and talk about the lawsuits and all that stuff. Sure, that sounds 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'd it come from? And that whole idea of using lead pipes is nothing new either.

It's actually pretty old to tell you the truth. Yeah, lead. Well, the Romans, of course, were the first to do almost everything, either Asians or Romans. Sure. Well, I don't know. Africa, that's true. Yeah.

So basically, everybody except Europe as the migration expanded. Exactly. And don't forget all of the innovations going on in Mesoamerica as well. Shout 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 in containers lined with lead. And in fact, this is pretty interesting. I think the English word for plumbing and the chemical symbol, PB, that is lead, comes from the Latin word plumbum. Now a plumbum is, is that plumber's crack? Oh, nice.

If it wasn't, it is officially now. You know, my friend Eddie, his young daughter asked him what plumber's crack was the other day. Oh, really? And he said, what'd you tell her? And he said, well, you know, told her what it was. He said, sometimes plumbers, they bend over a lot because pipes are below you.

And sometimes they're pants sag a little, and you see their butt crack. Yeah. And she went, oh, OK. The only thing I take issue with is the use of the word sometimes. Yeah, right, all the times. Other than that's a great explanation.

So the Latin plumbum, which means lead. Yeah, which that has been mysterious to me for many decades, PB, doesn't make any sense. Like, why would they call it PB? Yeah, it's a lead, right. And PB is, 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.

And it has all sorts of properties that make it very desirable. Yeah, really unique, too. Although super, super toxic, as we'll find. Yeah, it's not often you can find something that is super malleable and soft, but also strong and dense. Exactly, which makes lead perfect for water pipes. Because it also resists corrosion, like you said.

So you can run water through it. And as long as the water's not super bad, the lead won't rust. It will leach lead into the water, but it still won't rust, right? Right. So it's also not very good at conducting electricity, which makes lead very useful for other things,

like soldering electrical connections. The electrical connection will remain the thing that transmits the current. The lead won't. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Did you say soldier? Solder.

Solder? Yeah. Never heard it pronounced that way. How do you say it? Solder. Solder. You got to say that L. I think the L silent unless it's regional, maybe regional.

Regional to my brain, I think. Solder. You say that because you're from Toedo. So the use of lead goes back even before the Romans, actually, but it first appeared mostly in art, like lead paint. Yeah, it wasn't like they describe it in the articles and novelty. And it was apparently it makes colors more vibrant.

And it's less corrosive, which is why you still, even in the United States, see lead paint on street signs because it's less corrosive. There's not a paint. Oh, really? Yeah, that's what they say. It's still used on signs. Supposedly, up until as recently as the 90s,

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. Really? And it wasn't a problem unless somebody kept the bread bag and turned it inside out to store food in, then that food leached the lead out of the ink. Oh, wow.

It was actually like a big problem for a while. But I'm not sure that it is anymore. I couldn't find anything recent. The most recent thing I saw was 1991, saying that, yeah, it still happens. Right. Well, it's less expensive as a paint, which is another reason. And the colors are more vivid, apparently.

But this hasn't been a problem in the US for a while. But in China, they still use a lot of lead in paint. And in 2007, there were massive recalls for everything from Dora the Explorer toys to Sesame Street toys, due to the fact that they had lead paint on them. And little kids put everything in their mouths, including their toys, 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 1997 because of this. No, it was 2007. What did I say, 97? Yeah. You were harkening back in to the Urban Dance Squad days. Did you look them up?

No. Man, you're missing out. I don't think that's true. Really? Yeah. Why? Just because I like them? No, no, no, no.

I remember them vaguely. Oh. Yeah, it wasn't like I'd never heard of the Urban Dance Squad. No, you have good taste in music. Mental floss for the globe. Great. Like a legitimately great album of those days. All right, I'll look it up.

I'll look it up. It's just weird that you say you think you're not missing out. No, because I mean, again, I remember Urban Dance Squad. For some reason, I put them in line with spin doctors in 311. No, no. Well. You know what I mean? 311 could be slightly compared, because they

were kind of a rock rap group. But they were Dutch. Urban Dance Squad was? Yeah. Oh, OK. So that makes them cool in here. Right, automatically. Yeah.

Somebody who just picked this up is like, what are they talking about? I know, enchiladas, Urban Dance Squad. So lead paint in the United States is, well, it's still an issue in some ways, because older houses still have it. But as of 1978, they said, no more. Get the lead out.

That's right. And they define it as any paint or surface coating that contains lead equal or exceeding 1 milligram per square centimeter. Yeah, so basically, in 1978, it 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.

Yeah, that's the deal. Right, then you can't have lead in it. But again, any house built pre-1978, and there's plenty of them out there, very likely has lead paint in it. It also probably has lead pipes. And there's a lot of lead around us all over the place. In places you wouldn't even think,

like there's lead in leaded glass. Not really, like a glass you might 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 tap it.

It makes it the reflection a lot sharper. It also lowers the melting point. So, if you put it in the oven, it doesn't like. Right. But it's conceivably bad for you. You know who was on it long before the United States government, federal government, was the city of Baltimore.

In 1951, they banned lead pigment for interior paint. Very smart. They banned it for their housing. And since the 50s, it had kind of been phased out in different parts of the country. And then in 1971, 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 20th century. And that was in gasoline, in cars. There was an additive in gasoline that was added to gasoline called tetraethyl lead, right?

Yeah, you remember that. Like fill it up with unleaded or fully leaded. Right. And the reason that they added lead to gas was because there was a problem called knocking, right? Where in a high performance engine, when the gas entered the ignition chamber, the combustion chamber,

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? When they did that, they knocked, they pinged, it did 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 then it was finally phased out in the 70s, starting in the 70s, I should say, because we started adding catalytic converters to our cars. Yeah, that helped that.

And just the chemical process of refining petroleum just advanced, so we no longer needed it. Right, so it wasn't just crummy gas, it was pretty good gas, it didn't need lead. If you run leaded gas through a catalytic converter, it totally messes it up. And the catalytic converter's there to prevent emissions, so you take lead out of gas.

The problem we found is that during these few decades, from like the 20s till actually 1996, was the last year you could have lead in your gas in the United States, 1996. That during this period, basically all the cars on the road were spewing lead vapors 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 used leaded gas in my, I had to put it in my early VW Beetles that I drove. Oh yeah. Had a couple of old, you know, vintage, well, not vintage, we bought them new. Oh yeah? Yeah, my mom, she bought a 68 Beetle brand new.

Wow, that's neat. And that's when I drove, when I turned 16. Wow, that thing was still around, huh? Yeah. Yeah, nice. 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 it? No, but I did, funny you mentioned. I had a hole, sizable hole in the rear floorboard that my friends call it the Flintstones car because you could put your feet down and run. So I did have a board. A running board? No, just a board over the hole.

But I mean, you could remove the board and run while you're sitting in the back seat. That's right. Great car. Yeah. Lead has been added to cosmetics over the years, jewelry, pottery, and then today because everyone knows lead is so such a jerk.

One of the only places you're gonna find it in the US at least is 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 and batteries. Yeah, if there's one thing that we've learned since the 20th century is that lead has some serious staying power and it has a very pesky tendency to get out of wherever we put it, right? Yeah. And yeah, if you put it in just a regular landfill that's not designed to accept things like lead,

it'll just leach into the groundwater. And same thing with your e-waste, your laptops. And the reason that they're used in laptops 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. Well, I don't know about your laptop. But your computer. Yeah, your monitor. Yeah. I'll bet there's lead in there. You should responsibly recycle your laptop too.

For sure. For a number of reasons. Yeah. 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 narrowly did. Oh, sure. Deep thoughts. No, I can't even remember. I created the series. Yeah, but you did one on e-recycling. Yeah, but nobody cared or watched, 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 a tear for, man, what was the name of that series? I don't know. We'll go get forties and pour some out on the curb for them. All right, we'll be back in a sec. Mmm.

Es hug. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lascher and Kristine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey, Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey, Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. ["Selfish Love"] All right, Josh, we've talked a lot about lead so far

and enchiladas. Enchiladas. In Dutch, rock, rap, rock bands. Yeah. Lead comes from the earth, though. 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. Right. Let me pull it out. Instead, lead atoms have, I think, four unpaired electrons, maybe, and it's outer shell. So it likes to form connections with other things. So when you find lead in the earth,

you're going to find it in the form of a oxide, or a sulfide, or something like that. Frequently, it's combined with silver. And so that means it has to be separated. And even the Romans back in the day, which, by the way, these Roman lead pipes that they used for baths and for sanitation and stuff, still intact today.

Yeah, you can still dig those up and beat people with them. You could. They're so strong. That's the other place you'll find a lead pipe, was in the hand of some dude coming at you. Yeah, or a game of clue. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was bent even.

The guy was hit so hard with it. Yeah. Colonel Mustard, he was not to be trusted. He was not. But yes, the Romans, they had a pretty ingenious, man, they were so smart. They had a pretty ingenious process called cupolation. The extent of that is basically the idea is that

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 gonna separate. Right, and 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 process is sort of similar. It is very similar. And like using heat to separate things. And this actually very much resembles, do you remember our waste gasification episode? Yeah, I could remember which one this depoked, yeah. It was that one. Because the process is very similar.

So you take some lead sulfide, and you heat it up in the air. So there's the presence of oxygen, and it converts into lead oxide and sulfur dioxide, right? So you separate them out a little bit. Then you take that lead oxide, and you add carbon, coke, and you again mix it with some air. And as that happens, the air combines with the oxide

into, no, the carbon combines with the air, and becomes carbon dioxide, takes all of the oxygen molecules from the lead atoms. So the lead, basically what amounts to 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, that's called roasting and smelting. And once that lead sinks, it cools down, and it's called a pig. It's just a big mess of lead, basically. Yeah, like pig iron. Yeah, it's delicious. And then you have slag, which is the non-metallic byproduct

of the smelting process, and you siphon and cool that down, and it's waste product. Yes. 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, because you can keep using it.

Exactly, that's the other good thing about lead. It is extremely reusable, because, again, it has a lot 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 mine anymore 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? Yeah, melt down those tiny civil war figurines. Oh yeah, those guys are stoned. Are those lead? Sure.

I thought they were. Yeah. So handling and painting those with lead paint, it's dangerous, right? Yes. Yes. Yes, it is. Is that why 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. It contributes. So, okay, Chuck, you mentioned,

or we mentioned lead refining and processing, smelting, roasting, that kind of stuff, right? That does create emissions of not just carbon dioxide, but also lead vapor, which is not good stuff. And you wanna control that kind of stuff, but it is emitted. And it used to be, well, these days, lead emissions from refining and processing

are actually the number one source of lead vapor emissions in the environment, right? But 40, yeah, about 40 years ago, 45 years ago, that was not the case. The case was all those cars driving around on the streets emitting lead vapor. Yeah, it used to account for about 78% if it came from your automobile.

And since the phasing out and reversal, we now have 52% coming from the processing. And what is it down to road sources? It's 13%. 13% in fuel combustion? Yeah. Not bad. No, not bad.

Still, again, you basically wanted it like zero. As we're finding, as we'll see, that lead exposure in any amount is not good. And it goes from not good to really bad very quickly, apparently. Yeah, lead is no good. We mentioned kids chewing on something with lead pain is not good.

If you're redoing your house, and it's pre-1978, if you wanna get a piece tested, you can't just be like, oh, let me sand off the paint on this molding. No, because again, even if you think you've cleaned it up, there's lead right there, buddy. Yeah. That you're not going to get rid of it.

Apparently also, opening and closing your windows in a pre-1978 house can create lead dust. Yeah, if you're lucky enough to be able to open your windows. Sure, that's a point. Mine are sealed shut. Yeah, or nailed shut or what have you. Yeah, just from years of painting, basically,

with probably lead paint. Guaranteed. No, it's not, actually, we had it tested. Oh, did you? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't 100% lead paint. But you had it tested all the way through, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I'm saying is pre-1978,

it's not like that's the only paint that was used. I know you're saying. That's why you get it tested. Right, but did you get all the layers underneath tested? Well, for any, yeah. Okay, that was my, all the layers sound effects. Like we hired a lead person. I got you, good, good, good.

That makes me feel better. Yeah, and if you want to, if there is lead and you want to get the lead out, you're gonna have to hire someone that knows what they're doing. Oh, yeah. They'll come in with their hazmat suits on to do so. Right, so you can also get it from plumbing.

Although, apparently, with lead plumbing, it's not quite as much of a thread as you would think. You know, doesn't that make you just want to, like, never drink water again knowing that you have lead pipes in your house? You shouldn't necessarily be worried because 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. Over the lead? Yes, over whatever it is. But yeah, it's gonna leave a protective coat of other substances that aren't toxic. It's gonna form a barrier for later water and the pipes.

Right. And so you shouldn't necessarily be freaked out if you have lead pipes coming to your house. Although, I mean, you got the money. There's definitely worse things you could spend your money on than replacing those pipes. Yeah. You know?

Move to what, copper, PVC? Well, copper can be a problem as well. There's actually a copper lead rule that dictates how non-corrosive city's water has to be to follow this rule. And it's protecting not just against lead, but copper. You don't really want copper either,

although it's not nearly as bad for you as lead. Interesting. So if you have lead in your system, I mean, it goes into your bloodstream. Doesn't matter how it gets in there. If you inhale it, it'll be absorbed through the capillaries and the lungs into the blood. Or if you,

if you- Lick it? Lick it? Yeah. It's gonna find its way into your blood. 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. 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 prohibitively expensive or something. So, yeah, the other test is called the zinc protoporphorin test. And that's a byproduct of red blood cells as they break down in the presence of lead. So rather than directly testing-

And it's not as sensitive either. You're like going around to see, excuse me, lead, I wanna see if your shadow is detectable. I don't get it. It makes zero sense. Because you gotta take your blood for that too, right? Sure. And it's not as accurate.

Yeah, doesn't make any sense. But the lead blood test is so easy that companies like 3M and plenty of others sell home lead blood tests. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it is nice unless you're the parent who has freaked out giving one to your kid. Well, that's true. Anything over equal to or greater than

five micrograms per deciliter is bad if you're a kid. If 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 a microgram to a deciliter, which is what, a tenth of a liter, right? Sure. And so five is not good.

10 micrograms in a deciliter is where demonstrable, like behavioral and cognitive problems start to develop. Yeah, that's serious trouble. But the EPA has said that there is, quote, no demonstrated safe concentration of lead in blood. Like you shouldn't have any in you. Right. The problem is-

Because it's nothing but toxic to humans. There is no benefit. Yeah, and we'll talk about it in just a second, but the problem with lead is that we're figuring out that we shouldn't be exposed to it at all while we're also simultaneously figuring out that we have awashed our planet in it. Yeah.

From the last couple hundred years, basically. Yeah. You want to take a break? Yeah. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about all kinds of fun stuff. ["Stars of the Colt Classic Show"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the Colt Classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

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step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so before I left, I teased that there is no function for lead in the body. It is nothing but toxic. And the way it behaves in your body in a negative way is really interesting. Your body, and this happens a lot.

I feel like we covered the body mistaking something for something else quite a bit. There should be a word for that. Case of mistaken identity. I guess that's it. But the body treats lead like calcium. So it's going to 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. That's what I always think of when I think of calcium. Like, well, you need calcium because your bones will break, or you'll get rickets if you don't have it, or whatever. But calcium comes in handy throughout your whole body.

And one of the big places that shows up is in calcium ions in your neuronal activity. So when your neurons fire, one of the ways that they fire is because the neurons, or the calcium ions, get them all excited, and then, boom, your neurons is fired. If lead is in that calcium ion channel instead of calcium, that, boom, it 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 here. Yeah, and it's especially a big problem with children because children's little brains are, you know, we've talked about plasticity before. They're constantly forming these new neural connections. And any kind of lead 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. The apparently emotional centers, like the amygdala can suffer, it's been found to produce hyperactivity, antisocial behavior, attention deficit disorder,

all sorts of problems from the presence of lead, right? And like you said, it's worse for kids because their brains are still developing and forming. It's bad for anybody, but it's definitely worse for kids. And the other way that it affects kids is that 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 brain regions affected, but the communication between brain regions are affected too in little kids.

And the upshot is that it promotes all sorts of problems with cognitive and emotional and behavioral development in children. Yeah, and like literally lower IQ scores. And we should say that's just like the most prominent horrifying effect of lead. There's a whole laundry list of other things that can happen to you, like kidney failure, pain

in your bones and joints from all that lead settling into where the calcium's supposed to go. Yeah, how about a decreased sex drive and sterility and infertility for both men and women? What else, diarrhea, lack of appetite, constipation? I think diarrhea is the least of your worries if you have a high blood pressure. High blood pressure, enlarged heart.

Yeah. It affects virtually every system in your body, basically. And the reason why, again, is because it mimics or 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, oh, I'm here instead.

Yeah. It's not going to do the stuff that calcium's supposed to do, leading to all this cascade of horrific problems. Yeah, and one of the other scary things is that 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. Right. And you might be slowly getting lead poisoning. Yeah. And you just blame that on too many buffalo wings. But boom, it's lead poisoning.

It takes care of both. Sure. You remember being a kid and lead pencils like it was a big scare. You got lead poisoning if you got poked with a pencil. Yeah, I remember that. But then I also remember learning that it's actually graphite used in pencils.

Yeah, we should have that. By our age. You should have David Rison. Oh yeah, how to sharpen a pencil. Man, 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, or I guess, graphite somewhere

in my hand from when I was jabbed very deep with a pencil that broke off. Wow. And it never left. And there still just looks like a little black freckle. It's like you're in prison and got shanked. I know. I can't find where it is.

We're shived. I see it's right there. No, that's a scratch. Good try. So we've talked about all the cognitive problems that can come about in 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 big reasons why there have been so many restrictions placed on lead exposure. And recently, some people have some researchers, including a couple, well, an economist, I believe, and an epidemiologist have kind of taken that idea that lead can create all of these behavioral problems and any social behavioral problems 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 20 years the same trajectory of the use of lead in gasoline. Yeah. It's a super interesting article, very controversial, like when it came. Well, it still is. Sure.

But yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, it's called lead. America's real criminal element. It was in Mother Jones. It was written by Kevin Drumm, who's one of the all time greats working today. And I think I've mentioned it before, but I strongly encourage anybody, it doesn't even matter if lead's the

most boring thing in the world to you, go read this article. You will just be riveted by it. And Kevin Drumm 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 it's pretty clear that lead is some sort of culprit in this. And it's been shot down in 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, oh, 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 lead emissions in cars and criminal activity and its decline, again, it just follows it like 20 years after.

And the whole idea is that when we started emitting lead into the atmosphere, kids started suffering these cognitive and antisocial behaviors. And then about 20 years after these kids were born, they started actually carrying out criminal activity. And we saw a tremendous rise in everything from murder to rape to muggings to everything. And the article's too long to really go into detail.

Again, just I strongly urge anybody to go read it. Yeah, the backlash that I've seen on the article wasn't to me like it was all from scientists, mainly. I read a few of them. They weren't poo-pooing the notion. They said what this means is it bears a lot more investigation. But as much as you want, if you can't replicate it, it's

still possible confirmation bias or just correlation. And not causation could be a host of other issues that went into that. It could be. And Kevin Jones 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 of course it needs more study, for sure.

Well, 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. It's just a tough study. It bears a lot of, 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 wrote on the Discover Magazine blog. And he gives kudos to Drum, who definitely deserves it, for basically saying every time he says, it's so obvious you'd have to have your head in the sand to deny this. He does say that, yes, speaking scientifically, it does require more study. Super interesting, though, because Drum followed it all over the world.

He didn't just go to the United States, and he saw the same thing in Canada and Australia and Great Britain. And the good news is, if that is the case, then we should see crime dropping forever. Yeah. But the problem is, it also should get us to basically mitigate the lead that is around in the soil and in the water and everywhere in people's houses.

And the dollar amounts that he estimates it would cost are pretty prohibitive, at least as far as 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 public will will change. Yeah.

If you do have lead poisoning, you can get on meds. There's a prescription called Susomer, S-U-C-C-I-M-E-R. That was beautiful. See, that is succomer. I like how you said it. It can reduce blood lead. There are, of course, always side effects with every medication.

And if you work, if there's been a disaster and you get toxic lead in your body very quickly, they can use something called callation therapy. And that's when they use a collating agent. I'm not even going to try that. I'm just going to call it EDTA. I'm going to try it, OK? Ethylenediamine tetracetic acid.

Hey, not bad. If you've understood that super quick. I missed the last A. That's just a few letters off from supercalifragilisticexpialidose. It looks like the alphabet when it's on paper. But we'll call it EDTA, and that's when it's infused into the bloodstream and actually binds. It basically says, lead, you're coming with me through the kidney out of your body.

Right. But they use that when it's just an acute toxic dose that a person's been exposed to. If a kid's been found to be poisoned with lead, actually, from what I read, one of the best treatments that they'll carry out, there'll be other stuff too, depending on how bad it is, but a really good, nutritious diet. Getting the kid foods that are high in 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 got lead and you got calcium fighting for the same place, if you can get

the calcium in there, it's going to displace the lead and then hopefully leave the body. Interesting. It's not going home. That's got to be hard on the kidney, so. I don't know. 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

and anemia. Exactly. Yeah. If lead is definitely invariably in the ground and the groundwater and in the soil around us, and that's a problem because it sort of works this way up the food chain in a weird way because what you have are these tiny organisms. It gets in their body like plankton and microscopic plants and they die 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 enchiladas and that will fully.

Yeah. Non-toxic enchiladas. I guess it depends on who manufactured it. So I did some reading on the lawsuits. Right now there's more than a dozen and probably growing. I'm sure. A few of them are class action suits on behalf of tens of thousands of flint residents and attorneys always look their chops when they hear stuff like this.

But there's some concerns. One is that the state of Michigan, like the city is broke, so don't even bother. The state of Michigan may be a bar out to go if you want to get a lot of money. But then they say that'll just get passed along to the taxpayer. Yeah. 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, which basically means the government can say giving

water to the citizens is a core government function. So we're shielded legally from liability for doing that 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 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.

And you also have to prove that that directly led 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 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 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 now that they've switched back over to Detroit water, it's going to take a while for that protective film to develop on the pipes again.

So even now that the different water is coming through, it's still lousy with lead. And the sad thing is that some people in Flint are too poor to do anything about it. They 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 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 going to need help like the rest of their lives. Yeah, this one guy, he's a law professor specializing in environmental law named Noah Hall.

He says what 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 instead of doing it via lawsuit, like legislated. Maybe that would help, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. He basically said what the state shouldn't do is fight this. He's like, that would be big trouble. 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 lawsuit. Well, apparently they're already coming out anyway, like troves of emails have been released. The governor set up a task force to find out who was to blame and they turned around and they were like, you, and he said, fire the task force. Exactly. You're all fired. Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's very scary.

Public health scare. Flint, I know. Talk about a city that's been roughed up over the years. I know. Well, we're there with you, Flint. Hang in there. If you want 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

at housetheworks.com and it'll bring up a pretty great article. Since I said pretty great articles, time for a listener. I'm going to call this Finland Rules. I remember we did the dark money podcast and I was like, what's a good place? Right. It's not corrupt. I remember. We heard from a lot of people in Scandinavia.

Hi, I'm an American living in Helsinki for the last few years with my Finnish husband. Chuck, you were right on the money when you said there's very little political corruption here. There are some because they're humans after all, but the level compared to the 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, 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 sees as much shorter gear and it's done a little different. Party runs. There are at least five major parties. That's crazy in and of itself. Sure. Like crazy good.

A party runs in whichever gets a majority elects from its ranks, the prime minister and makes a cabinet out of a coalition of the other parties which receive high numbers of votes. How about that? Like you came in second? You're on board too. Amazing. Come on.

And here's your participant ribbon. Campaigns are paid for by disclosed donations and public funds. You also made a comment about the high taxes here. Many people, usually Americans, say that with distaste 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. What I need is an educated society around me and access to quality healthcare and a truly equal society where everyone is safe and has their basic needs met.

That is from Gabrielle. Wow. A lot of people hate your guts for saying that, Gabrielle. That is so brave of you. Thanks Gabrielle for writing in. I don't know how they say Adios in Finland. No, she's American. Well, goodbye.

Okay. Thank you for writing in. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, join us on the web at stuffyoushouldknow.com. A classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. You ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.