Having polluted air is one thing, but it seems like it could be confounded by what's causing the pollution: millions of people sitting in cars for hours a day, not getting physical exercise while under a constant barrage of micro-stresses from driving, not to mention skipping out on proper nutrition going through drive-thrus. In some circles it's unthinkable to travel even a few blocks away without driving, let alone simply strolling around for pleasure. How much of this change would be reversed if people simply lived healthy lifestyles
The original source has a bit more detail - from https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119 (not open access):
> The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.
So, let me see, if the worst of it was people born between 1960 and 1975, that would be ages 47 - 62 as of 2022.
I get eating lead pencils or paint chips isn’t good
But I do wonder if these statics are in like the moderate coffee/red meat/alcohol studies flip flopping between good and bad because of weak methodology and statistic calculations
Imagine if we had real capitalism and made the polluters pay for all that lost income and inflicted suffering
Ah, that explains the boomers and 2016 elections.
Increasingly as we get some distance to it, the decades of the late 20th century have shed their normalizing mythology as the "best in history" (for the wealthy countries) and become one more era of human survival among many: a time we can look back upon as a slightly more brutish and uncivilized one with unique unkindnesses, even as we grapple with many of the same age-old challenges of civilization right now.
I wonder if it also made us more violent, besides stupider.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...