New Study Reveals How Leaded Gasoline May Have Caused Mental Health Issues For 150 Million Gen X & Elder Millennials
After all those "lead paint" jokes about boomers, the shoe may be on the other foot.
f.t.Photographer | Shutterstock It's become a common internet joke in recent years — or maybe an actual theory — to attribute boomers' often obstinate personalities to lead poisoning from their pre-regulation upbringings in a world positively covered in lead paint.
However, it now seems like the shoe may be on the other foot, as a new study found a potential link between lead and mental health in younger generations, including some of the frustrated children of Boomers.
The study revealed that leaded gasoline may have caused mental health issues for Gen Xers and elder Millennials.
The study, conducted by researchers at Duke University, Florida State University, and the Medical University of South Carolina, was recently published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and some of its findings are pretty staggering.
For starters, the previous use of lead in gasoline means more than half of the current U.S. population was exposed to unhealthy lead levels as kids. Lead was first added to gasoline in 1923, as it was protective to engines and improved their performance and efficiency.
Those improvements came at a cost, however — lead exposure, which causes all kinds of neurological and developmental harm to humans, especially children. The man who discovered lead was helpful to engines was, in fact, convalescing from lead poisoning at the time the gasoline he developed was launched.
The U.S. began phasing out lead in gas in 1975 because of pollution, not lead poisoning. The process took all the way until 1996 to complete, though new cars made the switch pretty much immediately. Nevertheless, that seems to have been plenty of time to do real harm to human beings, according to the study.
The study found anyone born before 1996 had worryingly high levels of childhood lead exposure, likely due to car exhaust.
The study looked at lead levels in the blood of children between 1940 and 2015, and their data showed some 151 million excess cases of mental health disorders over that time. This includes personality changes that likely impacted their levels of success and resiliency in their lives.
The study showed that basically everyone alive who was born before 1996 — which is the vast majority of Americans — likely had worrying high levels of childhood lead exposure, and while there are all kinds of ways to be exposed to lead, car exhaust is the most likely culprit.
That includes boomers, of course, who were born between 1946 and 1964 and are the most frequent butt of jokes about lead exposure causing personality issues and "Karen" tendencies. Lower impulse control and neuroticism, which the study found to be highly correlated with lead exhaust exposure, would certainly explain these traits.
Yet it wasn't boomers who the study found were most impacted. Rather, it was those born between 1966 and 1986 — Gen Xers and the "elder" millennial cohort — who had a higher incidence of conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Those born between 1966 and 1970 were the most impacted of all.
The study backs up previous data about lead exposure, including a link with crime rates.
There is no safe level of lead exposure for humans, especially children, and lead is still found in many forms in many places, from plumbing service lines to old paint and even some toys made overseas.
Experts say this new study backs up previous data about the dangers of lead exposure and explains not only Gen X and older millennials' higher tendency toward mental health issues but also data that has linked lead exposure to crime rates.
The "Lead Crime Hypothesis," for example, attributed the steep declines in crime of all types in the 1990s and 2000s to declining levels of lead poisoning due to bans on lead gasoline, lead paint, and other products in the 1970s.
Dr. Aaron Reuben, one of the study's authors, says that the new study doesn't necessarily prove a causal relationship between lead and mental illness (or crime rates, for that matter). But it does "add more evidence that removing lead from our environment and not putting it there in the first place has more benefits than we previously understood."
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.