Debunked: Lead hysteria

Hey everyone. Steve Milloy here. Biden US AID administrator and Obama-era UN representative Samantha Power and another know-nothing named Alexander Berger had an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning claiming that millions of children around the world are at risk of “killer” lead poisoning. Their op-ed is total BS as the entire lead scare is classic junk science.
Basic toxicology is that: “It is the dose that makes the poison.” That is true for all substances, including lead. But lead hysterics, aka the entire public health bureaucracy, are fond of saying that there is no safe exposure to lead and that any measurable lead in your blood is “lead poisoning.” That is total nonsense.
The classic scenarios for lead poisoning are children eating leaded-paint chips like they were potato chips or a child swallowing a small toy or piece of play jewelry made of lead. But lead was banned from paint and toys decades ago. And general environmental exposures to lead are just too low to cause toxicity.
In their Washington Post op-ed, Power and Berger cited a study reporting that half of the 1.5 billion children in low-income countries around the world had blood lead levels as high as 11 millionths of a gram per deciliter of blood. But that level of lead isn’t dangerous at all. The average blood lead level of children born before 1980 in the US was 15 millionths of a gram per deciliter or 36% higher. The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers and Gen X turned out just fine despite blood lead levels that would freak out the today’s public health hysterics.
There are a couple more point that I want to make. The public health bureaucracy claims that exposure to lead reduces child IQ and increases behavior problems. That claim first surfaced in research done by the University of Pittsburgh’s Herbert Needleman in the 1970s. But accusations of scientific misconduct soon followed Needleman.
Review boards found his results scientifically flawed… involving a “pattern of errors, omissions, contradictions and incomplete information…”. Needleman’s own institution, the University of Pittsburgh, concluded that Needleman’s mistakes were, quote, “hard to explain as honest error,” end quote.
But Needleman’s fraud had traveled around the Earth way faster than the truth could catch up. Although there is still no credible science showing that blood lead level has anything to do with IQ or behavior, the public health bureaucracy nevertheless promotes its nonsensical position that there is no safe exposure to lead.
Power and Berger also claim that lead poisoning kills at least 1.5 million people per year - more than annual death toll from HIV and malaria combined. But that claimed death toll is based on mathematical modelling. There are no actual bodies. The models merely assume that exposure to lead causes death from heart disease. But there is no credible science behind that assumption. So there is no there there behind the 1.5 million deaths claim.
Finally, Power and Berger mention that, 10 years ago, residents of Flint, Mich., were exposed to “toxic” levels of lead in their drinking water. That is false. Research shows that no one was poisoned by the lead in the drinking water at Flint. Yes, there were water problems at Flint for sure. They were caused by a bungling state and local government and were allowed to fester by the Obama, EPA. But no one was poisoned by lead - even by lead hysteria standards.
Facts matter, yet Samantha Power and Alexander Berger brought nothing but fact-free hysteria to their Washington Post op-ed. Stay up with the latest in junk science. Follow me on X at @JunkScience and at my web site JunkScience.com. Thanks for watching.