Decades of lead exposure from car exhaust altered the mental health of millions of Americans, making them more prone to depression, anxiety and ADHD, a new study claims.
But lead is toxic to brain cells, and there's no safe level of exposure at any point in life. Children are especially vulnerable, as lead is known to impair brain development.was banned in the United States in 1996, but anyone born before then -- especially during peak use in the 1960s and 1970s -- is at risk for toxic brain effects from car exhaust, researchers said.
“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,” Reuben added in a university news release. “This is the exact approach we have taken in the past to estimate lead's harms for population cognitive ability and IQ,” noted researcher Michael McFarland, a professor of sociology at Florida State University. Previous research from the team found that lead stole 824 million IQ points from the U.S. population over the past century.
Generation X would have had the greatest lead exposures and the greatest mental health losses, the researchers concluded.
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