Remember 2002, when Getting’ Hot in Herre was popular? This song’s claim to fame in my mind was when my pre-teen and his friends called a radio station to request a song and this is what they asked for.
This song could be the theme song for a new generation because, yes it is getting Hot in Herre and unlike in the song, taking off all our clothes isn’t going to be enough.
How will this heat affect us?
When the weather heats up, people tend to drink more rose wine. They also commit more violent crimes.Some are due to youths out of school but also because of the discomfort heat causes. “Hot weather increases body temperature, which in turn increases heart rate and blood pressure. Increased blood pressure and heart rate can lead to discomfort, which researchers attribute to the correlation between high heat and increased anger and violence.”
People make poor decisions when it is hot, and this is exacerbated by sun exposure. Working in the sun decreases attention and vigilance, probably due to increased skin temperature. The body’s attempt to cool the skin robs the brain of oxygen. Added heat affects the hippocampus—responsible for memory and learning. Heat can break down the blood brain barrier, making people more vulnerable to drugs, pollution, and oxidative stress. Over time, this will lead to brain inflammation and permanent cell death. Heat increases the risk of suicide and epileptic seizures. Women have more problems regulating heat due to biological and physical factors. They have a greater connection between brain hemispheres which makes them more vulnerable to brain heat stress. (citation)
Heat exhaustion is an extreme manifestation of the effect of high temperatures-above body temperature of 98.6 F or 37 C- on the brain. “When the weather is hot and dry, the body becomes dehydrated, the blood thickens, and the heart may not be able to pump enough oxygen to the brain. Additionally, the human brain burns up 20 percent of the body’s energy and therefore needs to dissipate heat efficiently. In hot and humid conditions, sweating cannot cool the body and brain enough. This can lead to heat exhaustion, which has symptoms such as weakness, dizziness and headaches and, in extreme cases, heat stroke—which can then trigger delirium and loss of consciousness. A significant fraction of heat stroke survivors suffer neurological complications.” (citation)
As temperatures rise and people work in the heat, they risk Kidney disease. Intense labor in extreme heat is one of the major drivers of heat related kidney disease. Those disproportionally affected include rice farmers, construction workers, and miners. Climate change will increase the prevalence of chronic kidney disease throughout the world.
You’ve no doubt read the news, in the US our mental health has been damaged by lead. Not only does lead lower IQ and damage areas of the brain that control aggression, it disrupts thyroid function. Lead impairs brain growth and poisons neurons. It contributes to ADHD. It encourages cancer. Even teen-pregnancy has been linked to lead exposure. The poorer a person is, the more likely they are to have a high blood lead level but this hasn’t always been so.
I used lead test swabs to follow up and the ringing glass tested positive, along with several older glassware items and a new dish from Italy. This photo shows the items with positive lead swabs, shown by a pink color.
I decided to test all my glassware and cull the leaded items. I am a depository for hand-me-downs from the ancestors and some of them were far too materialistic. I needed some sort of reason not to keep all this burdensome stuff. The bag of leaded items will go to a recycling center or maybe a few will be used for laboratory demonstrations.
Of note, lead in glassware was banned in the late 70s. An Alvin and the Chipmunk glass bearing a date of 1985 was lead free.
My question is: are we all brain damaged? The answer very well could be yes for those born not so recently. The reason is not our glassware as it is about leaded gasoline. And perhaps guns.
The link between lead and crime has been published everywhere from science journals to Forbes to Mother Jones. Violent crime in the United States rose in the 1960s, spiked in the 90s, and has plummeted since then. Why did the generation associated with peace signs and hippies turn out to be the most violent in recent history? Many scientists point to one reason–lead in gasoline during their childhoods.
Lead in the form of tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline in the 1920s in to help electric igniting engines operate more smoothly. It worked well despite one problem with it. The additive was known to cause “madness” and hallucinations. This had been first documented in the 1850s. In fact, workers at the first lead additive manufacturing plant died after going “looney.” Despite this, the additive worked effectively and was cheap so the companies that made it pushed forward to add it to gasoline. It was temporarily banned in parts of the nation–not the Midwest however–making the breadbasket of our nation a rich source of environmental lead. With careful marketing and lobbying by the companies that made the additive, the health effects were down-played and the new technology was given a clean bill of health by the U.S. Surgeon General in the late 1920s. Thus, leaded gasoline was heavily used across the United States for over forty years.
Analytical chemistry upped its game in the 1970s, finding that the lead persisted in the environment and in people. Many states began phasing it out in the 70s and 80s. It was banned state by state and eliminated from car gasoline in 1996. But since it is an element, lead can’t break down into anything simpler. Scientists believe that everyone over 40 in the U.S. has some degree of lead poisoning. Lead can be cleared from blood by the body, but it resides in bones for 30 years or longer. Lead still lingers in many locations in the U.S.– thanks to corroding old pipes, old paint and even old cans and glassware.
It’s no surprise that lead is found at high levels in shooting ranges. These are regulated by OSHA and there are rules demanding clean up but these rules are not always followed. People who work at firing ranges & those who go to firing ranges often show elevated blood lead levels, especially if the ranges are indoor ranges. Air propelled bullets and those with copper jackets can help reduce the lead exposure to an extent. Another precaution is not allowing children to engage in gun play. However, gun ownership itself is a hazard for children of gun owners and increases their blood lead levels. Yes, an adult having a gun is linked to higher blood levels in their kids.
Eating meat shot with lead is also dangerous, especially for children. Adding vinegar to game shot with lead bullets makes the lead even more soluble in the meat and increases the toxicity. However, lead in gasoline has been by far the most egregious contributor. As use was curtailed, lead in blood began to drop dramatically. Crime did as well.
Fuel for small airplanes contains lead and they are one of the major contributors to lead pollution today. However, lead in gasoline has been by far the most egregious contributor. As use was curtailed, lead in blood began to drop dramatically. Crime did as well.
The tragedy of lead poisoning in the Unites States is a sad tale of greed and lack of regulation. Every one of us has suffered to some extent from exposure to lead. The cautionary take-away is that when it comes to chemicals, we need more regulations and more care taken before approving them for use in consumer products.
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Getting some new pavement, as I did? It causes 8% of the world carbon emissions. Good news ahead! Climate friendly concrete will soon become available.
Unwashed men pose danger. You may have heard of VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are released into the air from synthetic products such as carpet, gasoline engines, and paint. These compounds can cause health issues ranging from irritation, headaches, organ damage, and cancer. And, when men don’t wash, they emit them.
Speaking of tests, a blood test to supplement the more invasive colonoscopy has been approved. With colorectal rates skyrocketing, this test should make getting screened easier, although it will not entirely replace colonoscopies.
I remember the birth of the birth control pill much like many might remember Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger blowing up. No, I wasn’t ready for birth control, but my mom sure was and as the oldest, I was deeply sensitive to her frustrations as a being a housewife who was frequently pregnant. My mom had gone to college and chosen one of the three paths available for women who were educated: secretary, nurse or teacher. She was a teacher who had to quit her job when she was pregnant with me because showing might tell the students that she’d been up to something. As the oldest, I must have been her confidant because I do remember her in the living room of our split level in Rockville, Maryland, sun streaming onto the wood floors, saying how happy she was that she could just take a pill and not have kids anymore. Having some symptoms of eldest daughter syndrome at a young age, I shared her joy.
To quote Janis Joplin, my mom was searching for a life very different than what she had known. It was common for girls to look at their future in horror back then–marriage and children. That’s it. My mom was a loving mother, but being a homemaker bored her and I could sense it.
Wanting to control family size is nothing new. Some of the earliest records from ancient Egypt contain recipes for birth control, primarily soaking lint in substances such as honey and acacia leaves putting it you know where. Nursing for many years was also a suggested method. The techniques, put forth by female doctors and midwives, were for avoiding overpopulation and keeping women beautiful. The later was the most important. Interestingly enough, scientists today link an increased biological age to each pregnancy a woman endures.
The ancient Greeks had different approaches from eating pomegranate seeds (hello Persephone, you had no choice but to eat that seed), infanticide and encouraging sex outside of marriage with someone of your own sex. This may seem shocking now, but they were very aware that again, the right family size was best for society.
The birth control pill chemically manipulates a person’s natural sex hormones. Sex hormones are steroids with a somewhat simple structure, many of them being almost identical and similar to the structure of cholesterol. The basic secret behind the birth control pill is progesterone. This hormone is secreted during pregnancy to prevent ovulation and thicken the uterus. This tells the body to prepare for pregnancy and to stop further ovulation- no eggs are prepared to be released.
Progesterone alone is not a great birth control pill material. It breaks down in the stomach too quickly. Scientists set about to modify progesterone so that it could survive being taken as a pill.
Why were people so keen on a birth control pill? For one thing, public health measures including sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics resulted in fewer childhood deaths. As a result, family size was burgeoning, and children were becoming a financial burden. There were many reasons given for developing the birth control pill : to control population, to free women to enjoy sex, and to help people out of poverty. Many people working on and funding he perfect birth control formula the noble goal of making sure that every person born was wanted and had a chance in life. They knew, as we do now, too many children too close together depletes the mother who is more likely to have complications in childbirth with subsequent pregnancies. In some cases, women were fitted with IUDs to ”correct uterine problems.” Although often illegal, diaphragms were also women-centric birth control tools. However, the idea of a discretely taken medication which didn’t require insertion of a foreign object, an idea as old as time, was appealing
Katharine McCormick worked in conjunction with Gregory Pincus to find the ideal hormone. She provided funds to Pincus, an animal reproductive biologist, searching for the perfect progesterone like molecule. He tested several forms of progesterone on lab animals in a ramshackle lab in Massachusetts
When it was time for human trails, ethical and practical dilemmas raised their ugly heads. Finding test subjects wasn’t easy. One of the goals was to have ovulating and intelligent women who could be relied on to carry out the instructions to take the medication each day. It wasn’t so easy to find healthy people who wanted to take a new medication, especially when birth control still had a stigma for some.
Women in Puerto Rico stepped up to the task. Many of them thought there was no escape from poverty if they had more than a couple children. Abortion was legal fairly common in Puerto Rico. Many women from the mainland went there to have a “San Juan weekend.” A pill was a better alternative. The trials were successful in preventing pregnancy, however, shady, in that the women who volunteered were not clearly informed that this was an experimental drug not previously tested on humans! In fact, one of the people involved in setting up the trial was on a mission to sterilize woman in Puerto Rico because he saw them as unfit. I can look back at this time and see why people can be afraid of a new medication. Thankfully, some guidelines have been put into place including informed consent. (Hopefully, these won’t be tossed out.)
Another set of patients was found at the Worcester State Hospital for the Chronically Ill, a mental asylum. Many of the women here were suffering from abuse and domestic conditions that were not bearable. Even men there were given the prototype pill to see how men reacted. These trails were a flop because no one was having sex.
The development of the Pill can fill a book. A formulation containing Norethynodrel and dubbed Enovid was developed. It was eventually called The Pill. Selling the idea to religious and social groups was a struggle. Some called it un-natural, and others compared it to permitting sexual gluttony, like being able to constantly eat cake. People still considered talking about birth control to be “porn” as shown in this comic where the woman has not used birth control but her children are naked inside the home, showing how anything can be called porn.
The first woman take The Pill, before it gained FDA approval, was not a poverty stricken over-worked mother but a well-to do white woman, Sue Dixson Searle, daughter of the Searle family, whose pharmaceutical business developed the formulation. After two closely spaced babies, she decided she wanted a break and was happy to be “a pioneer.” She lived to 91, dying recently in 2022, after being an enthusiastic patron of art of public lands in the Chicago area and a mother to three and great grandmother to many. It must have been a disappointment to those who saw birth control as a means to reduce “undesirables” in the population, but the reason Dixson took the Pill harkens back to birth control in ancient Egypt—she wanted to be happy.
On Oct 1, 1957, the Pill was offered clandestinely to women since birth control was still a felony in 17 states.
The Pill was approved by the FDA May 6, 1960.
By 1965, more than 6.5 million women were taking the Pill. In 1963 the Dial Pak was introduced.
Slowly laws against contraception fell, and it was fully legalized in 1972.
In 2023, a non-prescription alternative, the OPill was approved for purchase.
As for my mom, she stopped having babies and went back to work as a teacher and she and my dad resumed an active social life. People just want to be happy and limiting family size to your individual choice can make it easier. But who knows, laws restricting its use may arise again.
The two books in the center of this snapshot of part of my messy bookcase were sources for this blog.
Catherine Haustein 