Cydrome Leader wrote:
can you elaborate on this?

On scary battery plants or MBTE exposure, or long-term lead exposure rates?
--scott

both-

I imagined you visited some dirty smelting town where everybody was a
mouth breather caked in filth. The battery plant must have been a pleasant
place too.

The battery plant was in a town called Leeds, Alabama, and I have no idea
what happened to it. I was born in Pittsburgh so I have a pretty high
tolerance for industrial waste in the air, but lead is scary. The company
there had sent recruiters to gatech and as a new grad I was trying to get
as many plant tours as possible just to see what the industry was like.

I still do try to get plant tours whenever I can.

Here is some recent but pretty complete data on lead levels in children:
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/national.htm

And here is a good overview on why any lead is bad:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533151/

I don't have a good online citation on how blood lead levels dropped when
leaded gasoline was banned, but "Cities: An Environmental History" has
an overview.

Gary, IN had the permanent pollution cloud over it from heavy until maybe
the early 2000s. The smell was awful.


But if it was anything like Pittsburgh, the sunsets were beautiful. My
aunt is still upset that they closed the mills down and now with no sulfur
in the air she keeps getting mildew on her roses.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."