Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has a column extolling the reduction in lead levels as progress:
Eventually, over industry protests, came regulation and the removal of lead from gasoline. As a result, lead levels of American children have declined 90 percent in the last few decades, and scholars have estimated that, as a result, children's I.Q.'s on average have risen at least two points and perhaps more than four.
Funny how many of the current top editors of the New York Times, and even perhaps a columnist or two, came of age before the regulatory crackdown on lead. These are the same editors and columnists who regularly assure us that life was so much better in the 1950s and 1960s, before the rise of Reagan Republicanism, the Tea Party and with it the dreaded income inequality and political polarization and dysfunction in Washington.
I'm not arguing for the reintroduction of lead into gasoline or paint or any other products, just chuckling that the current generation of Times editors have somehow managed to muddle through with lower IQs than they might have attained if they had been born younger, and marveling that there's a Times columnist who doesn't share the belief that everything has gotten worse over time.