You know, when you say, I heard this thing on a podcast the other day, and then you go on to tell someone all about this fascinating or disturbing or surprising story or interview you heard, well, yeah, that's about to happen here.

The other day is today, right now.

And the thing you heard about has to do with lead and its effect on mental

health and cognitive ability. The thing you heard is likely to stay with you for a while.

Like lead, actually. And the podcast, the name of the podcast? It's Depression Mode.

I'm John Moe.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm glad you're here, and I kind of hope you're sitting down because this is some heavy stuff.

There's a very good chance you are affected and perhaps impaired by lead, according to new research. Lead from Car Fuel,

a new study says, is responsible for 151 million instances of psychological disorders between 1940 and 2015.

The group affected the most Generation X.

Babies born between the mid to late 60s and the early 80s.

That's when lead was in use the most, and so the brains of kids born then were most affected by it.

Lead was first introduced to gas in the U.S. in 1923, stuck around until 1996.

In other words, we were all poisoned.

And those of us Gen Xers, hi, I'm one of them, we were poisoned more than anyone.

And it had an impact on our rate of mental illness and on our IQ as well, which is not great.

Dr. Aaron Rubin is co-author of the study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

He's a postdoctoral scholar in neuropsychology at Duke and the Medical University of

South Carolina. Dr. Aaron Rubin, welcome to Depression mode. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be here.

What is the top line finding in the research that you conducted?

So our research took two stages.

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