Gasoline Linked to 150 Million Cases of Mental Health Disorders, Particularly in People Born Between 1966 and 1986

More than 150 million cases of mental health disorders — including ADHD, anxiety and depression — may have been caused by lead in gasoline.

“A significant burden of mental illness symptomatology and disadvantageous personality differences can be attributed to US children's exposure to lead over the past 75 years,” a study published in the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health said.

“Lead's potential contribution to psychiatry, medicine, and children's health may be larger than previously assumed.”

The study analyzed lead levels in children’s blood from 1940 to 2015, and found that those born between 1966 and 1986 had the highest rate of lead-associated mental illnesses like depression, ADHD, and anxiety, a report in NBC News explains.

Related: Stanley Responds to Claims That Their Cups Contain Lead

That dovetails with the peak use of lead in gasoline, which Car and Driver says was added to fuel to reduce engine “knock” — a sound produced in the engine when fuel burns unevenly.

“Exposure to lead can seriously harm a child's health,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says, explaining that it’s most harmful to children under age 6. Lead can damage the brain and nervous system, slow growth and development, and cause problems with learning, behavior, hearing, and speech.

The impact of lead exposure on mental health has been extensively documented: As the National Library of Medicine says, “There is an association between lead and ADHD and that even low levels of lead raise the risk.” And according to another report in the National Library of Medicine, “lead-exposed workers in foundries, battery plants, or lead smelter were reported to suffer from cognitive and neuromotor deficits, as well as mood disorders such as anxiety, hostility, and depressive states.”

As Aaron Reuben, a co-author of the gasoline study and a postdoctoral scholar in neuropsychology at Duke and the Medical University of South Carolina told NBC, “Studies like ours today add more evidence that removing lead from our environment and not putting it there in the first place has more benefits than we previously understood.”

Related: Arsenic, Lead, 14 Other ‘Toxic Metals’ Found in Tampons, According to Study

But while it was banned as a gasoline additive in 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency points out lead is still everywhere: in paint that covers children’s toys, in some dishes and glasses, and in pipes.

“We’ve done a lot of good in the U.S. reducing lead exposures. Blood lead levels have gone way down, but they could go down further,” Reuben told NBC. “I hope that we can learn from the history about how much harm we caused in the U.S., and try to apply that moving forward."

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