Health - Any other coke-users showing high lead levels in their pubic hair?

[Sloop]

Hola
Swim has been a sporadic coke binger in the past 4 years and put about 60 grams up swims nose in Bolivia and Colombia throughout 2006. Swim has been home and not using since 2006.

Swim just received the results of a pubic hair analysis that showed swim had 40 parts per million of lead in swims pubes. Cadmium, mercury, arsenic and copper where also a little elevated but the lead was off the scale in the bad way!

Swim wondered if any other cola users out their have noticed a high level of lead in their hair, blood or urine levels?

Swims lead level is supposedly potentially harmful???? including the capacity to reduce dopamine production in swims brain! a potentially nasty visious circle with the cola!!!

The lab that done the testing is an officially recognised lab, even recognised by the scientific disbelievers in hair analysis (whom after all are often bank-rolled indirectly or directly from heavy metal related industries! including big pharma)

So swim is wondering how the fuck the lead got into swims body. Sure swim may have picked it up from numerous possibilities and we all are a bit high on lead nowdays, it seems, thanks to the wheels of industry etc.

Swim wonders if the cola is mostly to blame as the producers and manufacturers are forced to use all kinds of alternative solvents and chemicals to make the cola. For example swim imagines that whether the initial solvent is unleaded or leaded petrol is not a big issue in the campesinos mind, given the context of their workplace.

and even in the growing of coca, somebody in Bolivia was telling swim lead arsenate is still commonly used as a cheap pesticide to kill the little caterpillars that can occaisonally eat the coca leaves???

Swim doesnt want to turn anybody off cola, swim still loves the stuff in the right place and time, but when you get a report saying you could be a walking lead battery you wonder how the fuck it got in there....right?

Perhaps chronic lead poisoning is the least of our worries with modern cola manufacture methods?

and strangely I have seen a string of rigorous reports saying coke and meth addiction and chronic lead poisoning go hand in hand for lead knocks out the enzymnes that make your dopamine etc so coke meth and related stims makes lead sufferers just feel briefly normal again....vicious circle or what!

Hey maybe the big mafias know this and have instructed their minions to take simple measures so lead is in the ordinary peoples coke as a business strategy??? ummm another conspiracy theory..... is it just the lead in swims brain talking?

Any advice, ideas or experiences regarding this would be appreciated
I will hand them on to swim.....while he contemplates 6 months on DMSA pills before his next trip to Bolivia
regards

[Benga]

please do tell us more about pubic hair analysis.

b

[Pondlife]

40ppm is a high level for a hair test. However, hair tests are widely believed to be unreliable and not to be relied upon. The general advice is to get a blood analysis, which will show the true lead level, and use this as a guide as to whether treatment is required. If treatment is necessary, then it will be chelation probably using EDTA.

Here are some links:

http://www.lead.org.au/lanv3n3/lanv3n3-13.html
http://www.gla.ac.uk/ecohse/2000papers/strumylaite.pdf

[JDreaming]

I'm interested to know how SWIY end up having testing done on his pubic hair. Was SWIY just going "I've been doing a lot of drugs lately... definitely time to get my pubes analyzed! Where's that damn pubic hair scientist?" Isn't hair testing usually done on head hair since it contains most of the same chemical byproducts?

[dbjay417]

SWIMs a painter, so he has higher than normal levels of lead in his body from work. Its not from coke but rather from scraping ancient paint off the side of 200 year old buildings in New England. Tyvek suits and respirators can only protect against so much.

Also, I'd definately get my blood tested before I got my pubes tested for anything, cept crabs. But then, I don't think there is a test for crabs. Thats just one of those things, you know when you got um.

[Sloop]

Thanks for your replies and questions
I am not a medical doctor but working through medical people specialising in heavy metal posioning, who recommended this pubic test to me in the first place. i will try to answer some of your questions from what I think understand so far

1. Benja,
Presuming one is wearing clothes most of the time
Head hair shows more noise from day to day atmospheric fallout, dust and stuff people apply to their hair which can contain lead selenium etc etc
Pubic hair reduces a lot of this noise and as a result better reflects the longer term chronic bild up of metals in the body

2 Pond life
Blood levels for lead (and some other metals) are for accurate measurement of acute poisoning only, not for chronic lead in most cases unless you are on chelating agents.

Here in Australia we have a lot of controvery, mines, and a long recent history of leaded petrol use. Many exposed kids often have 30 ppm and much higher in head hair (and pubes for adolescents adults etc) but often nothing in the blood.
I am afraid official discrediting of properly done hair analysis is often about profits and the threat of liability hair. They try to throw out the baby with the bathwater (which their is plenty when it comes to hair analysis!)

Despite the findings with hair from legit labs the government seems to have spent more time and money on discrediting hair analysis. Why when hair analysis when done properly is considered accurate, by WHO for many medical problems, it holds ground in forensic science, it just doesnt hold ground in liability cases if you are still alive and grew up in a mining town...haha

Our government in Australia is very confronted by the fact that when you put these high hair lead kids with no evidence of bad levels of lead in their blood (many now adults) on DMSA (or IV EDTA which is a bit heavy for kids) their blood lead and piss often go through the roof on a dose dependent relationship as it chelates out.

Quackwatch are reflecting the big money here I believe, and hair analysis is obviously an easy target for there are so many whacky fast buck labs doing it that have things to sell as a result.

JDreaming, it did pass my mind when in bolivia and colombia putting a line up my nose that stank of gasoline etc that 'shit I hope that was made apon unleaded', but I laughed and forgot about that until now i got these results and it just makes one wonder how the fuck it got in their, you start getting vindictive and suspicious as I am not from a mining town etc

but actually i am on this path from routine medical checks, and my thyroid was shown to be low and as they dug in deeper with more tests to see what was wrong and my endocrine specialist recommended a heavy metal analysis (it turns out he was from a mining town as a kid and said he just had this hunch on my case)

dbjay417
I imagine you have an frequent acute exposures as a painter stripping old paint, take care!

I got the blood test at the same time as the hair, the blood turned up in acceptable limits, but now I have to decide to trial with EDTA and DMSA with piss tests , fuck what an ordeal! I wanted to save this money for my next trip to Bolivia

I am thinking about sending a second sample of hair under a different name to check these people, this time it will have to be head hair as I have cut off most of my pubes, but it may end up cheaper to take the DMSA for a week and just take a piss test to see what comes out? Does DMSA make you feel like shit????

I am glad for your news dbjay, that its not the coke, this is what I want to hear, as it gives me a little hope that when I get this fucken alleged lead level down I am going to Bolivia and Colombia for a holiday if I have any money left

thanks all

[fnord]

i dont taste any lead in mine....

how much does testing cost in the us?

[thrillhouse6146]

I don't know to what extent or how severe but I do know that most things containing lead have been phased out of production in the past half-century because of lead poisoning being discovered.

Re: pencils aren't lead anymore, all commercial paint is also now devoid of lead.

Maybe a fucked up cut cause I'm pretty sure it isn't the yay itself.

Some people are so dumbass with cutting it, not even the fact that they cut it bother me, it's that they are too retarded to do research and put something that can kill you or tastes like dog feces when you hit it up.

[Benga]

alright. re-opened, was a little too hasty on that one, sorry.

the question is legitimate. However, swim's doesn't recall hearing of cocaine containing traces of lead, and if it was the case this would be useful anti-drug propaganda. asfask, it's never been used. But maybe swim is mistaken, and will surely check. It's been said / proven to contain so many things that if it did contain lead and potentially induce lead poisoning this would be everywhere in anti-cocaine / harm reduction writing. swim doesn't recall this. But illegal cocaine, street coke is often analysed for adulterants etc.

Secondly, yes, gasoline kerosene etc are often used as non-polar extraction solvents for coca leaves. However, the non-polar / base / water mix goes through so many seperation / filtering processes in the acid base extraction that swim doubts traces of lead would remain ( sulfuric acid, potassium permanganate, acteone, d. ether or equivalents).

Of course one could consider that the water used, as well as the "glassware" or rather plasticware used is dirty, soiled with the original solvent, however the chemists however jungly they might be are striving for the purest product possible. Seems unlikely that such a crude and avoidable contamination would occur, either during extraction or during smuggling of the finished product ( whch is indeed sometimes transported in gas tanks etc...) this stuff is worth money, people take care in order to avoid losing money.
most of the solvent smells and residue found in illegal cocaine come from cutting and re-rocking techniques done by shady characters once the cocaine has been smuggled.
swim doubts that closer to the production area cocaine would be more contaminated than after i has been smuggled, and will check but does not recall reading about significant amounts of lead in street samples analysed. if anyone has more info please post it here.

if swiyou is really afraid, swiyou could read up on ways to purify cocaine HCl such as LeJunk's thread. And there are ways to filter traces of lead in water, surely they can be adapted to cocaine purification.

swim's opinion ? swiyou lived in Colombia and Bolivia, countries which are heavily poluted. Probably drank some water. Ate there etc etc...
this is most likely to be the source of swiy's lead poisoning or near poisoning levels. Not cocaine. Too many fitering operations involved in the manufacture.
I'd say blame it one the fish, or the meat, plumbing and paint in swiy's south american lodgings, or some more environmental cause.

but do seek medical help, and to all of you artists out there, stay away from paintjobs offered by sexy old houses, and all that intimate derelect plumbing inspection

will read up on traces of lead in illegal cocaine HCl though, never thought of this.

b

[Sloop]

Hi All,
Thanks for re-opening Benga and the thoughtful reply, the logic on your last post makes sense to swim

Forgive swim but one gets vindictive when trying to work out how the fuck the lead got in there

Swim hopes he didnt turn anybody off a line or rail as some call it, more to the point swim hopes he possibly increased the ability of somebody out there to enjoy it , cause whats the use in putting your money up your nose if you aint got much dopamine in the head to start with? its like throwing a burning fire starter in a bucket of water!

So swims guesses the most important lesson from this experience so far that may be relevant on this board are:

1. The accepted medical hypothesis that Lead can fuck your bodies enzymatic capability to make neurotransmitters, mainly dopamine but also others like seratonin is confirmed to swim and may be of real concern to some that arnt getting any bang for buck out of there yayo

In swims case the lead didnt start showing up at high levels in the blood and 24 hr piss tests, until swim took the chelators, aka DMSA (and it made swim feel like absolute shit as the body flushes it out).

This is why swim dropped off the planet for a while, while clearing out this lead with oral DMSA and at the same time living simply on a little organic farm, eating fresh stuff and doing the general nature stuff to help the healing process , it may of helped?

Some may ask how Swims experience supports the medical hypothesis on dopamine? Well for several years now Swim takes dexedrine for diagnosed ADHD (most days), but took less during the lead flush out as it just didnt work at all, however swim now notices the effects of dex much better and not just in a reduced tolerance way.

Admittedly swim has only dex as a decent dopamergic to go on since his recent lead clean out and is extrapolating this finding to coke which swim usually only takes in South America.

Swims seond finding is
2. Pubic Hair analysis can be useful for showing a chronic lead build up in the past (not an acute exposure where blood tests and piss tests are most accurate). However, hair analysis must be done properly by a reputable lab, without other external interference (ie shampoos and lotions with heavy metaLS IN THEM) or by a so called hair analysis lab run by people that want to sell you lots of stuff for clearing out heavy metals, which after all, wow! they will find something in your hair! and wow! they just happen to have the right remedy .....well you know that story.

all the best, and if people are interested swim will update if finding anything on lead in coke, swim hopes he does not for chelating the stuff out is shit!

[lipglass]

The only thing that comes to mind really applies more to crack users I'd think...if one lives in a house built prior to 1981 (in the US), old layers of paint around windowsills etc. most likely contain lead. If that person were to crawl around while jonesing looking for crack he's sure he dropped and smokes paint flakes (it could happen lol) there ya go....