Lead poisoning is being blamed for Freddie Gray’s woes.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this:
The link in the clip goes to a Baltimore Sun article which reads:
Now if Freddie Gray is deemed to have had lead poisoning with blood lead levels of between 11-19 mg/DL, then virtually everyone above the age of say 35 was probably similarly lead “poisoned,”as shown by the CDC chart below:
Here are the CDC levels of concern for lead in historic perspective:
If Freddie Gray was lead “poisoned,” so were most of the rest of us.
Freddie Gray’s problem was poverty — not lead.
For more, read Steve Milloy’s FOXNews.com column “Get the Lead Hysteria Out.”
With a mean IQ of 76, Baltimore inner-city blacks fall about 0.6 SD below the African American average nationally. More than a third have death-penalty immunity on grounds of mental retardation.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/city.htm
Anyone ever try and do the math and figure out how MUCH paint and polluted air would have to be breathed to even cause a 5 point loss in IQ?!?!?
Mr. Gray was retarded or near retarded as evidenced by his school placements. Lead,of course was not the cause of his problems as almost everybody would have been retarded a few years ago before lead was removed from gasoline. Poverty did not kill the man either as most people in his neighborhood are poor and alive..
I am chagrined that CNN discounts the testimony of a second prisoner in the van holding Mr. Gray. There was a solid partition in the van, and the two men in the van could not see each other. But voice witnesses are valid in some cases. The blinded witness could hear Mr. Gray kick and hit the wall. To me the van would be two small to permit the kind of beating to effect Mr. Gray so badly. Kicking and banging himself against the side of the van is the only plausible scenario that I could imagine.
The crushed larynx is a mystery. There was notice of damage to the larynx in the New York Garner case. The medical examiner knew of the :I can’t breath” and that Mr. Garner was taken to the ground by something like a chock hold, but we know that Mr. Garner could breath as the medical people did not give CPR or oxygen to Mr. Garner before putting him into their ambulance. I think there was confabulation in the Garner medical report. That is a shame because medical exams should reflect best effort to follow science. Maybe one of JS followers can explain the larynx problem, without calling me names.
The main source of lead which would find it’s way into humans was tetraethyl lead, a gasoline additive widely used until 1973. It was phased out almost completely by 1995. Some residuals would have remained within a few meters of bust roads for a few years.
Freddie Gray, born in 1990, would not have been exposed to very much lead compared to the political ‘geniuses’ who were born anytime between the 1920’s and the 1970’s.