Smarter People More Susceptible to Heavy Metal Toxicity?

[Guest guest]

Interesting blog from Onibasu:

" Smarter People More Susceptible to Heavy Metal Toxicity?

On Autism Mercury, Hall Cutler wrote that he suspects intelligence

plays a role in heavy metal poisoning:

.... the dirty little secret that is peeking out here is that smart people

are more susceptible to heavy metal toxicity than ones of lesser

intelligence. Lead dumbs them down, mercury makes them crazy. There are

hints of this in journal literature data, though the authors work mightily

to not notice it.

When asked for more information, he provided a journal article reference

from Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 112, Number 9. The article,

Recent Developments in Low-Level Lead Exposure and Intellectual Impairment

in Children) is here [PDF format]. The figure he mentions is on page 5.

To understand his point, assume there is a normal distribution (or bell

curve) of intelligence among a subset of children with the same level of

lead in their blood. In other words, take a vertical slice of the graph -

this is your bell curve at that blood-lead level.

An obvious assumption is that as the blood level of lead increases,

intelligence will decrease in direct proportion. If this was the case, the

bell curve should exhibit a linear change as you move to the right on the

graph.

In other words, the top and bottom " edge " formed by the bell curves as you

move to the right should be linear.

However the figure shows that it is not.

The cluster of dots gets tighter as you go to the right, due to the top half

been " squeezed " down. The top edge decreases very quickly with increasing

lead - it shows an obvious curve which indicates a non-linear relationship.

But the bottom edge barely decreases, and is roughly linear.

This is the effect noted by Hall Cutler - that children with higher

intelligence seem to be more affected by increased lead than children of

lower intelligence. And as he notes, this effect is not really explained by

the authors of the paper. "

http://onibasu.com/blog/

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

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