Friday 18 September 2009

More sniping at lead

UPDATE: The RSPB's Mark Avery is now drawing attention to the story linked below, and dropping heavy hints that "we will hear more about this". I suspect he, and others, may know more than they're letting on.

The BBC is reporting new findings on lead from a study at the University of Bristol. Apparently even 'safe' levels of lead cause poor educational achievement, antisocial behaviour and hyperactivity. And they've 'taken account of factors likely to influence the results', so it must be true.

This piece has to be a candidate for Bad Science. At best it demonstrates a correlation, not cause and effect - a point completely lost on the Health Protection Agency and the BBC reporter who unquestioningly repeated their propaganda and thereby bolstered its credibility.

Never mind the truth, expect a renewed campaign to ban lead in shotgun cartridges and rifle bullets soon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Even if they can prove a link, lead from firerms ammo is not the source of the lead in children. With the addition of tetra-ethyl lead in fuels now banned, the main source is from flaking old paint in houses.

Leaded paints are already banned, so the only real solution is to make a lot of advertising noise about the dangers of old paint and hope that people dispose of it safely, or seal it in with modern lead-free paints. Sniping at firearms lead is completely missing the point and merely serves to make those doing so look like complete idiots.