Scientists Discover Why America Got Dumber

New research reveals how lead exposure poisoned an entire generation’s brains, explains the crime wave of the ’90s, and why 29 million American homes are still dangerous today

I just made a joke on my FB profile about MAGA being dumb because they ate lead paint as children, but the truth is - I’m actually being kind of serious. I did a deep dive a few years ago about why people in this country seem to be getting dumber - and this is what I learned…

For most of the 20th century, American kids were surrounded by a neurotoxin. It was in the paint on their walls, in the dust they breathed, and in the places they lived and played. That neurotoxin was lead - and it didn’t just poison a few unlucky children. It quietly lowered the collective IQ of the entire country.

Lead crosses the blood-brain barrier and damages the developing brain. Kids are especially vulnerable because they absorb more of it, and their brains are still forming. And even tiny amounts can cause measurable cognitive damage. The CDC now says there is no safe level of lead in a child’s blood. None.

A study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that even low-level exposure drops a child’s IQ by several points. Some kids lost up to 7 points - and that’s not just bad for them personally. It’s a national issue. When the average IQ across a population dips, it shifts the entire curve. There are fewer high performers, more kids struggling in school, lower productivity, more behavioral issues, and more people falling through the cracks.

And we’re not talking about a small group. A 2022 study in PNAS estimated that over 170 million Americans were exposed to high levels of lead as children - mostly from leaded paint and gasoline. That exposure cost the country 824 million IQ points. Let that number hit you. Almost a billion points of intelligence - gone.

And as usual - the damage wasn’t distributed equally. Poor communities, Black communities, renters, families living in older homes - they got hit hardest. Entire neighborhoods were saturated with lead, and most didn’t have the money or political power to do anything about it. The result? Generational cognitive harm on top of everything else they were already up against.

Paint companies like Sherwin-Williams knew the risks and kept selling it anyway. They lobbied against regulation, buried the research, and lied to the public. Lead paint wasn’t banned in homes until 1978. That’s how long they got away with it.

Then, there was a groundbreaking 2015 Wayne State University study found that “mothers with high neonatal blood lead levels correlate with altered DNA methylation at 564 loci in their children’s neonatal blood,” and that “lead exposure during pregnancy affects the DNA methylation status of the fetal germ cells, which leads to altered DNA methylation in grandchildren’s neonatal dried blood spots”.

This was “the first demonstration that an environmental exposure in pregnant mothers can have an epigenetic effect on the DNA methylation pattern in the grandchildren”.

And the aftershocks are still here. Lead exposure has been linked not just to lower IQ but to higher rates of ADHD, learning disabilities, and even violent crime. Some researchers argue that the drop in crime in the ’90s wasn’t just about better policing - it was about phasing out lead. That’s how deep this goes.

So yeah - when I say some people’s brains got scrambled by lead paint, I’m not entirely joking. We’re living in the long tail of a public health disaster no one likes to talk about.

And just to really drive it home - there are still 29 million homes in the U.S. with lead paint hazards today.

This wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t an accident. It was a self-inflicted wound caused by greed, negligence, and decades of policy failure. We chose profits over children’s brains - and now we wonder why people can’t think straight.

#ratcclips✍️