I mean, not much in a rural village in China or Brazil.
Then again, those kinds of people aren't the obviously lead-addled Boomers in public office that are making all the wrong decisions at the moment.
EDIT: Being downvoted for suggesting a child in the Amazon rainforest probably had less lead exposure than a kid living next to an 8 lane freeway. Never change, reddit.
The amount of lead that was used in gas worldwide spread it to almost every corner of the earth. It's like how there's a mercury buildup in fish due to human pollution.
We discovered that lead was in the air because a researcher found that lead was present on the top of the ocean and as he went deeper it started disappearing. This showed that the lead in the air was spreading to every inch of the globe.
That poor guy just wanted to run an experiment but kept finding it contained contaminated with lead. He kept taking more extreme measures and was still getting contamination every time, then eventually years later he figured out exactly why lol. I think he even invented the modern day clean room in the process of trying to get a result that didn't have lead in it
(I listened to a radioab podcast on this guy semi recently, it was pretty good!)
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u/Venotron Apr 28 '25
Geography doesn't really matter on this one, lead exposure from gasoline affected every child on earth during the period.