Childhood leaded gasoline exposure damaged Americans’ mental health

Lead is a well known neurotoxin. It’s also a common pollutant. New research estimates the toll that those two truths, combined, have had on Americans’ mental health. Between 1940 and 2015, childhood lead exposure (specifically from the use of leaded gasoline) resulted in about 151 million additional instances of psychiatric illness that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred, according to the study published December 4 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The authors came to that conclusion by applying findings from previously published work to a model of the entire U.S.. 

“Writ large, across the population, we’ve shifted the curve away from normal, healthy functioning and towards greater rates of mental illness,” says Aaron Reuben, a study co-author and clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Virginia, where he’s an incoming assistant professor of psychology. 

Currently, lead is found in industrial emissions, water lines, paint, and contaminated foods and consumer products. But for decades it was also a gasoline additive. Between the early 1920s and 1980s, much of the gasoline used in the U.S. was leaded. (Though usage peaked in the 1970s, it wasn’t banned as a passenger car fuel additive in the U.S. until 1996, and it’s still used in some aircraft and off road vehicle fuels). 

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