Lead in gasoline tied to millions of excess mental health disorders: study
The U.S. population experienced an estimated 151 million excess mental health disorders attributable to exposure to lead from car exhaust, according to a study.
Exposure to lead in gasoline during childhood resulted in many millions of excess cases of psychiatric disorders over the last 75 years, a new study estimates.
Lead was banned from automobile fuel in 1996. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, looked at its lasting impact in the U.S. by analyzing childhood blood lead levels from 1940 to 2015. According to the findings, the national population experienced an estimated 151 million excess mental health disorders attributable to exposure to lead from car exhaust during children’s early development.
The exposure made generations of Americans more depressed, anxious, inattentive or hyperactive, the study says.
The researchers — a group from Duke University, Florida State University and the Medical University of South Carolina — found that the exposure also lowered people’s capacity for impulse control and made them more inclined to be neurotic.
Lead-associated mental health and personality differences were most pronounced for people born between 1966 and 1986, according to the study. Of that group, the greatest lead-linked mental illness burden was for Generation Xers born between 1966 and 1970, coinciding with peak use of leaded gasoline in the mid-1960s and mid-1970s.
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