Lead is a neurotoxin .... with documented toxicity going back over a thousand years .
but , guess what ? , Lead poisoning is preventable.
Lead blood levels considered normal in the 70s can knock up to five points off a child's IQ.
a Child's dumbed down IQ translates into a dumbed down adult with a dumbed down earning potential .
nevermind .
...lets have more dumbness please , if it makes soldering easier .
Yes it is toxic
And gues what ever single metal is toxic as are their sulfates , sulfides, oxides, chlorides etc etc etc.
However lead is not soulable in a human digestive tract
The expirment of injecteg a sinker then recovering it & weighing it had been done for ages till ethics committees banned it .
Hunter have been using lead shot amost from the invention of gunpowder particularly for shooting game bird which are then eaten, usually with some of the shot remaining in the bird because it is near impossible to get it all out .
Lead fumes can also not get from your lungs to your blood stream in any form
Lead oxides are a different matter
However while they are a big problem for a developing brain, they post little to no problems to adults
The prime medical problem ( in both cases ) is the Pb binds onto heamobloben which renders them incapable of transporting oxygen.
And these compromised heamoglobens remain in the blood stream till the kidneys finally idntify them as being bad and send then to the baldder for removal .
So in adults, severe lead contamination leads to anemia .
And it is excreated through your urine unlike some thing like Zinc which accumulated in your kidneys as does calcium for that matter and we are all familiar with calcium posionong , commonly called kidney stones .
I used reduced heamogloben & lead in urine as screening tests for the 500 lead workers I monitored monthy for 4 years .
When they got too leaded they got sent to either the steel scrap yard or the aluminium scrap yard or the battery factory .
None of the battery makers ever picked up enough lead to require detoxing or even requiring a full blood lead determination.
All of the contaminated workers came from the lead scrap yard or the furnace mouth where they were exposed to oxides , usually from bad hygine so they injested dust from ther clothing or hands.
The whole lead hysteria stems from the fuel crisis of the 70's when Europe wanted to use poor quality crude because Arab crude prices had gone through the roof & supply was squeezed
However the crude made bad petrol, much of which could not be atomised or burned in an IC engine and thus the exhaust containe very high levels of unburned hydrocarbons ( also quite toxic )
So the answer was to put an after burner , called a catalytic converter in your echaust to durn the petrol that your engine can not burn but you still paid good money for.
Now Joe public was never going to wear that so the spin doctors turned an economic problem into a health problem
The of course you bring kids into it to get the irratinal emotions kicking in.
The fact that it was really a cast of Alaskin elephant repellant got overlooked.
The prime source of injestable lead is and always has been minning followed by paint followed by cheap white glaze ( includes spark plugs ) and of course cosmetics but from memory lead was removed from face powder long before it was removed from petrol
Now removing lead oxides from paint was a good idea but of course when you find a good thing then stick to it and every palce where any kind of lead was used became public enemy No 1 regardless of weather that lead could ever become injestable or not.
And the oxides on the top of lead pots is a coumpound oxide contain both lead & tin & some of the other alloying elements so the lead is bound tight and not available to the body even if you ate it.
As for dropping 5 points, you really mean scoreing 5 points less in a test that scored me 20 points lower because on my dyslexia .
As for making dumb adults you can't go past the www where millions of supposedly well educated high scoring IQ people slavishly follow blithering idiots whu usually have no idea what they are posting about called "social influencers "
And time & time again then biggest influiencer on the earning capacity of a person is directly linked to their parents .
OR to put it another way the best way to get rich is to have rich parents .
Geting back to solder
Zero data to show any heath problems related to the use of lead tin solder & I would hazard a guess thatthe fluxes were a bigger health problem than the chemstry of the solder .
Bannng lead colder is a stupid as banning leaded bronzes or brasses which I have no doubt is the next on the hit list .
