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Topics: Health, Science, Environment, Mental Health, History
Callum Jones
Topics: Health, Science, Environment, Mental Health, History
A warning has been issued to Americans born before 1996 as 150 million people are said to be impacted by a toxic chemical.
Back in 1996, US authorities banned adding lead to gasoline after the previous five decades saw people breathing in fumes of the metal.
If inhaled, lead can cause harm to your nervous system as smog filled with the metal enters our bloodstream and causes inflammation.
This, in turn, can lead to neurons decaying - which can negatively impact development and cause behavioral problems.
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A massive review into this has found a whopping 151 million cases of depression, anxiety and ADHD are linked to folks breathing in lead from car exhaust fumes.
It was a team of experts from Duke University that worked on the findings and they have published their results in a new study.
"We have very few effective measures for dealing with lead once it is in the body, and many of us have been exposed to levels 1,000 to 10,000 times more than what is natural," Aaron Reuben, the study co-author and a neuropsychology researcher at the university said.
Meanwhile, Mathew Hauer, a fellow co-author and sociologist at Florida State University, added: "Many more people experienced psychiatric problems than would have if we had never added lead to gasoline."
So, how did researchers get to the estimate of 151 million people being impacted by the toxic chemical?
They used national data on blood levels in children, as well as leaded-gas use over time and more general population statistics already released.
This was done for folks around from 1940 to 2015, which allowed the team of experts to get a rough idea to the levels of lead people have been exposed to over their lifetime.
Further investigations were done into looking at how high levels of lead exposure is linked to poor levels of mental health and other conditions.
And with that, the team at Duke University found 151 million people have been diagnosed with some form of mental health illness between 1940 and 1996 due to lead exposure.
Leaded gasoline peaked in the 1960s and 1970s - meaning experts believe those born between 1965-1980 are likely to be more impacted.
And it's children that are more vulnerable, because their brains are still developing.
"Childhood lead exposure has likely made a significant, under appreciated contribution to psychiatric disease in the US over the past century," the study stated.