Lead: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

let the most dangerous thing in Led Zeppelin's name and I will remind you the other thing was Zeppelin now we've heard a lot about lead over the last year due to the horrific events in Flint Michigan Flint's tap water was laced with dangerous levels of lead the state knew about it and did nothing there are 200 children under the age of six in Flint with elevated blood levels 9,000 children have been exposed yes Flint has become a city whose very name evokes disaster like Benghazi or Waco or Smurf Village never forget never forget what happened there never forget Flint was a perfect storm of incompetence from start to finish and the crisis began when the city switched water sources a decision which was commemorated thusly it's a little weird to see people make a toast as they essentially drink poison yes under those circumstances you'd usually expect to hear something like I'll see you all in Hell or the mother ship is coming and soon we will all ascend that new water source corroded the city's pipes and leach led into the drinking water and with all the bureaucratic cluster fury involved politicians in Washington were lining up to be vocally outraged we've got children that have been harmed and yet we're sitting here equivocating over words that mayor mayor may not establish blame the safety and well-being of our citizens is not a Republican or a Democrat or an independent issue it's a human issue we're not some third-world country where you get a hundred thousand people who get poisoned poisoned for long periods of time that's right because there is only one poison that thousands of Americans should consume and that is Mountain Dew Code Red holy Sh the most delicious way of contracting Reds poisoning that is horrific so we all care about led in Flint now which is great unfortunately the problem is not just in Flint a USA Today Network report found lead contamination in almost 2000 additional water systems spanning all 50 states and we can't just act like it's not there the way we all pretend that the public swimming pool is not 3% child you're in that's generous by the way and if you're thinking well what we should just rip out every lead pipe in the country it's not quite as easy as that there are an estimated seven point three million lead service lines around the country and we don't even know where many of them are and if we did a partial solution that could increase rather than decrease lead in water but perhaps more importantly even if we did replace all lead pipes that still wouldn't come close to stopping lead poisoning as what led activists reassuringly puts it kids are not gonna get poisoned from a water fountain at their school they're not they're gonna get poisoned from paint in their homes okay I like how that starts off sounding reassuring will ends up even more terrified it's like saying look that boa constrictor isn't gonna bite you it's not it's just not it's gonna crush you to death with its body and then swallow you whole because that's what it does but she is right the biggest threat of lead poisoning to children does not come from water it comes from ingesting lead paint dust there are an estimated 2.1 million homes all around the country that contain both a lead dust hazard and a child under six and the CDC estimates over half a million children have elevated blood lead levels and that's terrible ladies almost as much of a scourge in young children's homes as frozen merchandise why do you need three Olaf's and a singing Elsa Mackenzie let let it go go hashtag let let it go go if you're thinking at this point what what well how how big a deal is a little LED dust anyway it's a big deal how potent is LED a child can be poisoned by only 10 milligrams of pure lead to give you an idea of what a small amount that is this spoonful contains about four thousand milligrams today we know just ingesting small amounts of lead dust can lead to brain damage and even death okay first maybe don't say death in that jolly tone of voice over the photo of a baby but but second in his true that there is no safe level of lead it's one of those things so dangerous you shouldn't even let a little bit of it inside you much like heroin or Jeremy Piven even even low level exposure can lead to irreversible damage like lower IQs antisocial behavior and reduced attention span and the dangers are so severe that twenty years ago Sesame Street even produced a video to teach kids how to deal with lead in their homes I've had it who do you people think you are anyway the lead police it's a close call but as police songs go the possibility of being poisoned by lead is still less terrifying than every breath you take every breath I take you'll be watching me that's a crime you're stalking me Gordon you're a stalker that video was made 20 years ago and it's enough to make you wonder well if lead paint is so dangerous why the is there still so much of it in houses where kids live and that's a good question many countries around the world actually banned the use of lead paint in the 1920s so we knew it was dangerous but instead of joining them America decided to put LED basically everywhere humble that it's a naturally occurring element not Meryl Streep's Oscar speech and also if we're assigning personality traits to metals why stop with humble lead how about passionate zinc free spirited copper and extremely racist tin it wasn't just newsreels promoting Lent the the lead industry reassured us it was safe releasing things like this coloring book inviting you to the Dutch boys LED party which sounds like the worst sex club in all of Amsterdam and even when the government finally got serious about banning LED in the 70s and 80s the LED industry did not go down without a ridiculous fight here is the head of a led industry trade group pushing back against the evidence that led was dangerous the fact of the matter is if you look at a total national profile we have never been healthier we have never lived longer there must be something that we're doing right what he's basically saying it can't be bad I turned out fine which is the number-one argument made by people who did not turn out fine it's like when your uncle says hey I had my first beer at 10:00 and I turned out okay but did your Uncle Stu though because your dinner last night was 23 croutons dipped in frosting and that has not turned out fine behavior make a change uncle and by the way there was already plenty of hard evidence showing that childhood led exposure was harmful to in large part to a study by this man dr. Herbert Needleman in the late 1970s dr. Needleman studied the baby teeth of healthy school children in two Boston suburbs when we looked at the data we found that children who had highlander teeth but who had never been identified as having any problems with lead at lower IQ scores poor language function and poor your attention that's right it's time you knew children there is no tooth fairy your baby teeth were all taken away by dr. Herbert's Needleman we told you the fairy thing because we knew that would creep you out but you should be thanking that man because thanks to studies like his America started regulating and removing lead from our environment in the 1970s resulting in a graph of child blood lead levels in this country that looks like this now lead paint was banned here and leaded gasoline was phased out all through here so getting rid of lead in paint and gas was a major public health victory you know that 18-year old intern in your office who thinks he's so damn smart well he probably is because he was born after America's lead epidemic you've got lucky soy yet now go get my coffee but even though we drastically cut back on the amount of new let that we put into the world we were still left with all the lead that was already there in our pipes and on our walls and while we all agreed it was a problem the cost of getting rid of it all was surprisingly high in 2000 the estimated cost for testing for and then totally removing lead from old housing stock nationwide was sixteen point six billion dollars per year every year for the next decade which is the sort of figure that turns the government into parents with a sick family dog hey I know we said we'd do anything to make this better but we just got an estimate from the vet and do you know the name doggy heaven every meal is hot dogs don't you think bandit would like to go live there I do I do and look nobody expected the government to pick up that full tab that same report even ran an estimate of what it would cost if the government used interim controls like sealing lead paint in or periodic cleanings and only did that in homes where families with low incomes lived and that cost came out to just two hundred and thirty million dollars per year which sounded lower and therefore better unfortunately and amazingly we have never funded it at that level for instance the main program to abate lead paint in housing HUDs lead hazard control program has never been appropriated funding above 176 million it's been steadily going down since 2003 and this year we've allocated just a hundred and ten million dollars that is just a little more than Americans spent to go see right along to a movie which incidentally the New York Post described us as funny as lead poison it's amazing and look that reduction is by no means because we were done removing lead from housing because remember there are still millions of homes with lead paint hazards in them and according to heart they were only able to fund around half the applications for lead abatement grants they received last year meaning many Americans still live in homes with LED in them and sadly it is often the group's least able to do anything about it people in the lower socio-economic levels go into older housing less well taken care of housing housing where there may be absentee landlords and as a result are more liable to have lead paint that is not been abated has not been taken off the walls of course and if you are in that situation you probably can't shop around for a new apartment so most people with lead problems are stuck in homes they can't leave trying their best to avoid danger which may sound familiar because it's the plot of everything horror movie ever made and the crazy thing is while LED abatement is expensive it's cost effective for instance some studies show a correlation between decreasing LED levels and a falling crime and when you combine that with lower medical bills and greater economic activity one study found that each dollar spent on lead paint hazard control would bring back at least seventeen dollars in societal benefits which is great although the cost savings still do rank a distant third on my list of reasons to not poison children number one and two still being it's poison and their children and you would think that our members of Congress would be on board with doing more to fight lead poisoning after all you remember how angry they were about all those kids who got poisoned in Flint right we've got children that have been harmed it's a human issue it's an American issue that affects Americans lives we're not some third-world country where you get a hundred thousand people who get poisoned poisoned they seem so concerned concerned which which is what which is what makes it but that's what makes it so frustrating that last year all of those men voted for a bill that would have reduced the already low funding for Hoglund abatement programs by thirty five million dollars amounting to a thirty two percent cut and the truth is if you cut funding like that a whole lot more children might get poisoned poisoned now the good news is those cuts didn't go through the bad news is the funding stayed flat and by the way the other two primary agencies that work on LEED related issues have had funding problems in recent years as well which makes no sense because I thought poisoned children was something we were all justifiably outraged by this problem was obvious enough 20 years ago for Sesame Street to feel the need to address it and since we very much still have this problem it's clearly time to address it again I can't believe that it has been two decades since Sesame Street taught kids how to avoid lead dust you two do not look like you've aged a day oh very nice whoa wow you both look great but unfortunately I'm here to say a lot of places still contain lead paint well it's a good question we need to care more than we currently do so that we spend enough money on containing it oh that's nice what how much have you got in there Elmo how much is it okay that's a start no no no Elmo you did not you didn't actually do it because because we're gonna need a lot more of that money probably hundreds of millions of dollars every year I ma'am we really do not have time for that but but but the problem here is people are worried that lead is too expensive a problem to fix that's ridiculous how can anyone say it's too expensive huh aren't they aware that according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives every dollar we spend on lead paint hazard control produces returns of at least seventy to one Wow that is an astonishing level of economic insight coming from someone who lives in a trash can the scan is rent-controlled I've had it since the 60s okay no I know it's cost-effective but people just aren't willing to do it I guess it just seems too hard doesn't does make sense Elmo things do tend to get done if you just decide you want to do them can you think of another example where that's true you see you just have to have a vested interest in the outcome and you'd be amazed of what you can do rasca you take your books guess my trash can is messy people stop and they stare well that is unsurprisingly negative Oscar but you know what that's actually a fair representation of our institutional problems so there you go you mean I helped you prove your point yes Oscar you actually did lettuce they're all around us our pipes our walls and our hair we should do more to contain it but first we all have to care that's our show thank you sir

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 11,820,008

Keywords: Last Week Tonight, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Lead, john oliver lead

Id: GUizvEjR-0U

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2016