Half a million VWs recalled, sneaky emissions software.

[Scuffers]

heebeegeetee said:

1. Ooh, I'm really not sure about that. From what I've read the dangers of TEL were every bit known in 1925 when introduced as it was 40-60 years later when it's use was stopped. It is being said that 10 years after the use of TEL is banned in any given jurisdiction violent crime decreases significantly, and indeed while I don't have a link right now, it is being said that the reason football violence in the uk has all but disappeared is being put down to the removal of lead from the air.

Are you seriously trying to suggest football violence was down to lead in petrol?

Really?

[heebeegeetee]

Scuffers said:

Are you seriously trying to suggest football violence was down to lead in petrol?

Really?

No me, no, others are though.

Apparently when TEL was removed form petrol, ten years later there was a significant and measurable decrease in the levels of violent crime.

[Scuffers]

heebeegeetee said:

No me, no, others are though.

Apparently when TEL was removed form petrol, ten years later there was a significant and measurable decrease in the levels of violent crime.

Talk about bullst

Just consider what changes took place around football in that timeframe.

Lead was withdrawn in 2000, football violence was stamped down on well before then.

Just how gullible do you have to be to even consider crap like this?

[heebeegeetee]

Scuffers said:

Talk about bullst

Just consider what changes took place around football in that timeframe.

Lead was withdrawn in 2000, football violence was stamped down on well before then.

Just how gullible do you have to be to even consider crap like this?

If you have a google, there is a lot of evidence to show correlations between violent crime and lead. Forget the football violence bit, that was just something I saw ages ago and haven't seen since, but it may be that the rise and fall in football violence took part in the same time frame as the rise and fall in violent crime generally.

I was wrong about 10 years too. Apparently, it has taken 20 years for violent crime to rise and fall in direct correlation to lead in petrol, all over the world.

[davepoth]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...

By looking at different countries (where it was banned at different times) it's possible to see a very good correlation between lead and violent crime.

[Beati Dogu]

davepoth said:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...

By looking at different countries (where it was banned at different times) it's possible to see a very good correlation between lead and violent crime.

http://www.sadanduseless.com/2015/09/crazy-stats/

[Scuffers]

heebeegeetee said:

If you have a google, there is a lot of evidence to show correlations between violent crime and lead. Forget the football violence bit, that was just something I saw ages ago and haven't seen since, but it may be that the rise and fall in football violence took part in the same time frame as the rise and fall in violent crime generally.

I was wrong about 10 years too. Apparently, it has taken 20 years for violent crime to rise and fall in direct correlation to lead in petrol, all over the world.

that's not evidence, it's at best, coincidental observation

Hell, this is the same bullst theories that have given us climate change.

[heebeegeetee]

Scuffers said:

that's not evidence, it's at best, coincidental observation

Hell, this is the same bullst theories that have given us climate change.

Well, there's a lot of evidence out there to dismiss. Wikipedia sums it neatly : "A statistically significant correlation has been found between the usage rate of leaded gasoline and violent crime: taking into account a 22-year time lag, the violent crime curve virtually tracks the lead exposure curve.[39][44] After the ban on TEL, blood lead levels in US children dramatically decreased.[39]"

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lea...

Here's one of PH's faves, George Monbiot: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/01/07/the-grime-behind...

"It seemed, at first, preposterous. The hypothesis was so exotic that I laughed. The rise and fall of violent crime during the second half of the 20th century and first years of the 21st were caused, it proposed, not by changes in policing or imprisonment, single parenthood, recession, crack cocaine or the legalisation of abortion, but mainly by … lead. "

"Is it really so surprising that a highly potent nerve toxin causes behavioural change? The devastating and permanent impacts of even very low levels of lead on IQ have been known for many decades. Behavioural effects were first documented in 1943: infants who had tragically chewed the leaded paint off the railings of their cots were found, years after they had recovered from acute poisoning, to be highly disposed to aggression and violence(15). "

"If it is true that lead pollution, whose wider impacts have been recognised for decades, has driven the rise and fall of violence, then there lies, behind the crimes that have destroyed so many lives and filled so many prisons, a much greater crime. "

I mean, lead is a poison, surely you're not going to dispute that? So we then have to ask, what effects does lead have on the populace?

Edited by heebeegeetee on Sunday 20th September 18:45

[Scuffers]

I repeat,

we only quit lead in 2000, as we have not even finished 2015 yet, their ~20+ years is some way off, so are we still in the middle of a violent crime-wave?

same goes for the lower IQ levels bullst, that was bandied about at the time, once again with zero evidence to back it up with (I would argue the general population are stupider now than 20 years ago!).

mind you, as I lived though leaded petrol for 35+ years of my life, I must be a violent, sub-IQ victim....

an yes, lead is poisonous, as are a lot of stuff we use every day. May I remind you there there are still thousands of houses with lead water pipes?

there are also millions of tonnes of lead roofing out there, water from them end up in the water table and eventually the water supply.

you might want to consider that the actual amount of lead in petrol was microscopic, max (for 4*) was 0.15 grammes per litre, but typically only 0.075 was used (ie. 1/10,000th by weight).

Edited by Scuffers on Sunday 20th September 18:55

[davepoth]

Scuffers said:

I repeat,

we only quit lead in 2000, as we have not even finished 2015 yet, their ~20+ years is some way off, so are we still in the middle of a violent crime-wave?

same goes for the lower IQ levels bullst, that was bandied about at the time, once again with zero evidence to back it up with (I would argue the general population are stupider now than 20 years ago!).

mind you, as I lived though leaded petrol for 35+ years of my life, I must be a violent, sub-IQ victim....

We only quit lead in 2000, but all new cars sold since around 1990 have run on lead free petrol. Combine that with all the cars that could already run unleaded before 1990, and all of the cars that were run on unleaded because it was cheaper, and you'll find that lead levels started to tail off significantly as soon as unleaded petrol was introduced in 1986 in the UK.



Here's the US graph for comparison, unleaded fuel was introduced there in 1972.

[Willy Nilly]

as people get wealthier they have more to loose by committing crime.

[anonymous-user]

lead has been proven to cause mental retardation, and i guess scuffers arguing with facts must have lived in a high lead area.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-liv...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12576...

Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis

''Lead exposure affects the intelligence quotient (IQ) such that a blood lead level of 30 μg/dL is associated with a 6.9-point reduction of IQ, with most reduction (3.9 points) occurring below 10 μg/dL.''

Edited by The Spruce goose on Sunday 20th September 22:36

[davepoth]

The Spruce goose said:

lead has been proven to cause mental retardation, and i guess scuffers arguing with facts must have lived in a high lead area.

Ouch.

[eharding]

davepoth said:

The Spruce goose said:

lead has been proven to cause mental retardation, and i guess scuffers arguing with facts must have lived in a high lead area.

Ouch.

I assumed Scuffers was slightly special because he spent his leisure time nicking, and then licking, the lead from his local church roof.

[dxg]

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[davepoth]

dxg said:

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Except it isn't. There's pathology to back it up (in that lead in the body has neurological impacts) as well as the correlation being aligned with the reduction of unleaded fuel in any country you care to check the numbers for, not just the two I posted above.

[Scuffers]

The Spruce goose said:

lead has been proven to cause mental retardation, and i guess scuffers arguing with facts must have lived in a high lead area.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-liv...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12576...

Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis

''Lead exposure affects the intelligence quotient (IQ) such that a blood lead level of 30 µg/dL is associated with a 6.9-point reduction of IQ, with most reduction (3.9 points) occurring below 10 µg/dL.''

Edited by The Spruce goose on Sunday 20th September 22:36

I assume you have actually read that link?

Did you pickup on where the data came from?

Point is, 10 µg/dL is actually pretty high, and they have not demonstrated where it came from.

Now, having been to 3 of the places used, they are the most polluted cities on the planet.

[turbobloke]

Scuffers said:

The Spruce goose said:

lead has been proven to cause mental retardation, and i guess scuffers arguing with facts must have lived in a high lead area.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-liv...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12576...

Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis

''Lead exposure affects the intelligence quotient (IQ) such that a blood lead level of 30 µg/dL is associated with a 6.9-point reduction of IQ, with most reduction (3.9 points) occurring below 10 µg/dL.''

Edited by The Spruce goose on Sunday 20th September 22:36

I assume you have actually read that link?

Did you pickup on where the data came from?

Point is, 10 µg/dL is actually pretty high, and they have not demonstrated where it came from.

Now, having been to 3 of the places used, they are the most polluted cities on the planet.

That was a charming reply to you from The Spruce goose, any irony present was presumably unintentional.

I don't know whether low level lead in blood has the effect on IQ claimed or not, it's possible, but your point about 'not demonstrated where it came from' is a critical flaw in comments attributing IQ score to lead levels arising from petrol additives, indicated not least by the methodolody in one of ths studies, Lanphear et al.

"We contacted investigators for all eight prospective lead cohorts that were initiated before 1995, and we were able to retrieve data sets and collaboration from seven."

One important point is that the studies were initiated before 1995, and they are international cohorts as per "data collected from 1,333 children who participated in seven international population-based longitudinal cohort studies".

These children will have lived in homes in whatever countries including the UK and USA that were susceptible to lead paint having been used in home decoration, lead paint on toys (toys which children put in their mouths and chew) and lead pipes in plumbing systems. Bans on lead being used in such applications which were implemented later on cannot (obviously) go back in time to when homes were built and when toys were manufactured to remove the lead.

Retrospective attention from the EPA in the US only arrived in 2010 and applied to businesses carrying out renovation and painting projects that involve lead-based paint in homes, child-care facilities and nursery settings built before 1978.

So the first flaw in comments as above is that the investigators carrying out that particular study have absolutely no idea where the lead in children's blood came from and to be fair to them they don't make any claims in that regard, it seems to be an assumption from others who are commenting on it.

The second flaw is that intelligence scores don't just depend on lead levels as per the study and the study offers no comprehensive list of relevant factors, a list of ten is mentioned and the only one I can recall having read the report is maternal IQ. Given that there are many other factors affecting IQ score with individual children that cannot be eliminated or inferred from group membership, factors which may well have correlational and causal impact, that study suffers from the ecological fallacyy aka epidemiological fallacy, which is worth looking up if anyone isn't aware of it and what the implications are. Without knowing more details we can't even assess the level of endogeneity bias in the samples.

Information on the ecological fallacy from the online encyclopedia of epidemiology

Studies and reports linked don't show that any particular blood lead originated from involatile inorganic lead compounds in vehicle emissions. Not is the causal link to IQ a 'fact' in terms of the evidence presented, if more evidence is available it would be interesting to see it.

The point remains that lead in the human body is not a good thing. Neither is stretching studies to go where they were never intended while insulting others on that basis.

Edited by turbobloke on Monday 21st September 09:11

[MarshPhantom]

VW shares down 20%.

[Burwood]

Ouch. The law suits from investors will only mount to the pain. VW are in serious trouble. Up to 15B wiped off the stock price due to illegal and wilful conduct. Fines in the billions. Whoever is responsible is probably going to prison