Bruce Lanphear

Ayurvedic medicine is not well regulated.

And so that's one of the most important sources when we think about India, for example.

And I think you pointed out a really important thing is number one, we don't know that there's any safe level.

Even though blood lead levels in the United States and Europe, for example, have come down by over 95%, the levels that we're exposed to, and especially the levels on our bones,

are 10 to 100 times higher than our pre-industrial ancestors.

So we haven't yet reached those levels that our ancestors were exposed to.

Are there effects at even lower and lower levels?

Everything would suggest we should assume that there is.

but we don't know down below, let's say one microgram per deciliter, or that's the equivalent of 10 parts per billion of lead in blood.

What we also know though, is when leaded gasoline was restricted in the United States and Canada and elsewhere,

the companies turned to the industrializing countries and started to market it there.

And so we saw first the epidemic of coronary heart disease in the United States, Canada, Europe, then that's come down over the past 50 years.

At the same time, it was rising in low to middle income countries.

So today, over 95% of the burden of disease from lead, including heart disease, is found in industrializing countries.

Right.

Well, not commercial airlines.

It's going to be a small, single-piston aircraft.

So, for example, we did a study down around the Santa Clara County Airport, Reed-Hillview, and we can see that the children who live within a half mile of the airport have flooded levels about 10% higher than children that live further away.

And the children who live downwind, 25% higher still.

Now, nobody's mapped out the health effects, but one of the things that's particularly troubling about emissions from small aircraft is that the particle size of lead is extraordinarily small.