New research from the University of Virginia has found people born between the late 1960s and mid-1980s in the United States experienced high levels of lead exposure as children, due to the use of leaded gasoline.
“We estimate that at least 151 million cases of diagnosable mental disorder that the population would have experienced over the last 75 years could be attributable to lead,” said Aaron Reuben, a new assistant professor of psychology at UVA and a study co-author. The cases, he said, “would not have existed were it not for the addition of lead to gasoline,” ostensibly to improve engine performance.
“If you look at the current population, Generation X likely had the highest exposures, en masse, of any U.S. generation.”
The study found people born during the era of leaded gasoline are expected to have experienced in their lives “a greater risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, greater risk for psychosis and thought disorders, greater risk for externalizing conditions like antisocial behavior, and internalizing conditions like anxiety, depression,” Reuben said.
“We also observe personality differences in adults who are exposed to lead as children,” Reuben said. “They are slightly more neurotic and slightly less conscientious.
He said these traits tend to “lead to lower levels of wealth, health and happiness over time.”
“We know that there are implications of lead exposure for more basic organ health, so greater rates of hypertension, greater rates of cardiovascular disease risk, things like kidney and liver disease, all of these are implicated in that exposure,” Reuben said.
Methodology
The study team, including researchers at Florida State University, used publicly available data from national lead surveillance surveys and data about consumption of leaded gasoline “to reverse-estimate for Americans alive today what their blood lead levels would have been when they were very young children, which is when we believe the highest exposures happened and when we believe the brain is at its most vulnerable.”