Then again, life has gotten better.
1.) Women's rights have made huge strides, along with minority groups being able to get a decent job
2.) Medicine has made huge strides, steriliztion has become mandatory for all things
3.) No more lead in the paint
4.) No more lead in the gasoline
5.) No more lead in the pipes
6.) Airbags and full seatbelts mandatory on all non-racing cars
7.) Electric lawnmowers (thank goodness for those, the gasoline ones make my ears ring)
8.) The personal computer
9.) The internet
10-10,000.) New things one can do with the internet (research, find old friends)
10,010.) Non-stop flights from California to Bejing
10,011.) Genetically modified crops to boost food supply
10,012.) Fall of Communism
10,013.) AH2
You guys are confusing how fun being a kid was with the actual quality of life back then. Now that you're an adult and life sucks, you blame it on the time period.
-Penguin
1- Yup. thus lowering individual incomes due to a surplus of workers. Now women have their equal rights. so much so that in most cases these days families cant afford to have stay at home moms. Now both parents HAVE to work just to make ends meet.
3 Yup, no more lead. Unfortunately a paint job no longer lasts 20-30 years anymore either. What people dont realise is everything that went into making quality paints. Is no longer allowed. Your lucky to get 10 years out of a paint job. So instead we have houses encased in plastic which contributes tot he rise of carbon monoxide and radon gas poisoning because before houses used to vent these gases out. Now everything is so airtight. The gasses no longer escape. Not to mention that the siding is made out of plastic and all the good that does to the environment.
There is a bit of misinformation on lead paint. Lead paint inand of itself is not dangerous. Or I should say not nearly as dangerous as the media has made it out to be. The problem lies in poorly maintained homes where the paint has been allowed to dry out and chip or turn into a powder. You could eat a bowlful of lead paint chips as you would cornflakes and suffer little to any effects from it because it has to be of a size that it would be able to enter your bloodstream.
such as would happen if you gnawed on and sucked on a windowsill. Or stuck your finders inot the dust in that windowsill cause by the movement of the window and then stuck your fingers in your mouth.
Or on the exterior if the home has been poorly maintained and the paint washes off the siding and into the ground where chipped paint also has a tendancy to be crushed into finer peices where it can enter the bloodstream though your skin.
Or in improper renovation techniques and improper cleanup.
Point is. a poorly maintained home or building is the primary cause of lead paint based poisoning. Or letting kids chew and suck on the wood.
Anything that has been properly maintained is not a hazard so long as you dont decide to develop an appetite for your woodwork. So if you live in a house built before 1978. Please dont eat your doors and windows.
If your home was built before 1978. there is a 25% chance it contains lead. and the odds get worse from there back to nearly 100% in the early 1900's and before.
How do you best deal with an older home you suspect has lead in it? You encapsulate it. You do that by painting it and keeping it maintained. Putting siding over it does not encapsulate it. On the inside you either paint it. Rock over it. Or rip out all the walls and redo it.
There is no way to remove lead from wood even if you strip it. In fact stripping it places you and your family at even greater risk..
The reason why kids tend to get lead poisoning rom paint more often then adults is because of poorly maintained buildings.
I know all this crap cause I had to spend $100 and 8 hours on an EPA approved class pass the test (I scored 100%). Then send the EPA another $300 for a license to work on homes built before 1978
5 misinformation. Even with teh above mentioned the vast majority of lead poisoning currently in the USA is not from old paint. But from the lead that in the water mains. While your home may no longer use lead based solder holding the pipes together. Cept for new developments. Most of the old mains still do. That is why you are told to run your water before drinking.
And for the record. Some 250,00 kids tested positive for "elevated" levels of lead in their blood. thats not lead poisoning. Which sounds like alot and it is.
And thats the number they like to throw out thre to alarm everyone.
But as a percentage of all kids tested. Came out to 2%. You stand a better chance of having a child born with a birth defect or being born gay.(both around 6%) then you do of getting lead poisoning or even testing positive for "elevated" levels of lead in your blood.
8 which has helped create a society of people who no longer do anything helping in the rise of childhood obesity and a rise in anti social behaviour
9 (see 8)
10,011. between that and additives currently being suspected in possible causes of everything from peanut butter allergies to a rise in autism
