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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 23 2017, @09:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the there-are-acceptable-levels-of-lead-poisoning? dept.

Some neighborhoods in California are experiencing levels of lead that exceed those measured in Flint, Michigan:

Dozens of California communities have experienced recent rates of childhood lead poisoning that surpass those of Flint, Michigan, with one Fresno locale showing rates nearly three times higher, blood testing data obtained by Reuters shows.

The data shows how lead poisoning affects even a state known for its environmental advocacy, with high rates of childhood exposure found in a swath of the Bay Area and downtown Los Angeles. And the figures show that, despite national strides in eliminating lead-based products, hazards remain in areas far from the Rust Belt or East Coast regions filled with old housing and legacy industry.

In one central Fresno zip code, 13.6 percent of blood tests on children under six years old came back high for lead. That compares to 5 percent across the city of Flint during its recent water contamination crisis. In all, Reuters found at least 29 Golden State neighborhoods where children had elevated lead tests at rates at least as high as in Flint.

Interactive map of U.S. lead hotspots.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:05AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:05AM (#483996) Journal

    If you pay high taxes and don't get proper services (especially life-saving ones), you start chopping heads... at the ballot box, then literally.

    I'm getting really tired of Americans telling the world they have the best system, but the worst government. Kicking butt around the world but being sheep at home, worshiping a decent but outdated and imperfect constitution, while pledging and singing to a flag which means less every day... Get your butt off your chair and kick some sense into your ruling class, o former blah-blah-representation people! Put your pride where it matters, instead of in your truck size...

    And I get tired of people calling for more taxes without considering what those taxes get spent on. There's a kit of voters who have gone along with this mess. And a key , if not majority component are the voters who can't be bothered to care where the money goes.

    "Sorry, can't get involved. I've got my little chunk of the American Dream I could lose to the big nebulous scary government" (which is made up of millions of evilmongers, not 99.9% decent people trying, hard or not, to do their jobs under the direction of a thousand lunatics) Fucking pathetic.

    high non-essential spending like public employee pension funds.

    Right, blame the pension funds! Isn't the Pentagon getting a 10% raise while a hundred thousand bridges are structurally deficient?

    There's several things to remember here. First, pension funds and Social Security is first and foremost a bribe to the US voter to go along with the status quo. For any attempt at fiscal responsibility has to address these items which are bigger than military spending after the proposed budget hike in large part because they are also increasing faster than the US economy than military spending.

    Second, without the significant additional stream of revenue from Social Security over the past 80 years, US military spending wouldn't have gotten as big as it did. Excess revenue gets dumped into the general fund and spent.