Years Of Lead Blu Ray Review
Charise Zelnick
BOTTLE, BAR OR BUST: Bottle, and partly because this release a single barrel and by design delivers uniqueness. Michter's 10 Year Bourbon has been so incredibly consistent over the years that any risk it'll be off is arguably zero. It's earned the trust to deserve a "bottle" rating.
OVERALL: The nose leads with sorghum molasses, raspberry tart, dark-fired tobacco, glove leather, creamed corn, soda bread, macadamia nuts, chocolate graham cracker ... yeah, all that and more. On the palate comes toasted oak, dark caramel, chocolate ganache, ground coffee and almond croissant and the subtlest hint oak with no appreciable tannin. The finish is so soft, short and warm that it seems deliberately designed, and I'm enjoying it.
While it's likely no one reading this will have the chance or part with the cash (given secondary pricing influence) to find two of these, it would be neat to do so. That's because the whiskey in this 10 year release could represent some of the last long-age releases using whiskey made by its undisclosed contract partner.
Its Shively distillery just completed its eighth year in operation, which means its aged stocks are approaching this lowest watermark of Michter's long-aged whiskeys. It might make for a nice reference bottle to compare with future releases that may differ some in taste.
All that said, given Michter's November release of its 25 Year Bourbon, who, other than the powers that be, could guess the size of its cache of tanked whiskeys that could be used to add consistency to future 10, 20 and 25-year releases? As the brand mentioned in its notes below, the whiskeys in this bottle are older than the age statement, but its team thought more time in the barrel would drive it closer to their taste preferences.
So let's put it this way: In the lifetimes of some reading this, we may never taste a Michter's release that presents any noticeable deviation from its delicious norm due to the company's ability to select, hold and wisely ration out its old whiskeys.
Millions of tons of lead were added to gasoline worldwide beginning in 1922, and leaded gasoline has been a major source of population lead exposure. In 1960s, lead began to be removed from automotive gasoline. Removal was completed in 2021.
We examined published studies that reported population blood leaded levels for two or more years, and we calculated average concentrations of lead in gasoline corresponding to the years and locations of the blood lead level measurements.
There remain many countries for which no multi-year studies of populations BPb have been identified, including all of Central America, high population countries including Pakistan and Indonesia, and major lead producers including Australia and Russia.
The addition of lead to gasoline was a catastrophe for global health. It caused neurodevelopmental disability with diminished intelligence and disordered behavior in millions of children, as well as neurobehavioral deficits and premature deaths from cardiovascular and kidney disease in millions of adults, and great economic losses.
WHO and UNEP deserve enormous credit for having successfully completed the removal of lead from automotive gasoline in all countries around the world. This work was accomplished under the leadership of the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles (PCFV) led by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Health Organization [1].
In the past century, millions of tons of lead were added to gasoline worldwide [6]. The result has been a global pandemic of lead poisoning with damage to health, impairment of cognitive function, reduction in life expectancy, and premature death of millions of persons. This pandemic began in 1922 when lead in the form of tetraethyl lead was first added to motor fuels, accelerated after World War II, and peaked in the 1970s and 1980s. Neurodevelopmental impairment with IQ loss, shortened attention span, dyslexia, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, school failure, and increased future risk for drug abuse, criminal behavior and incarceration are the main health consequences in children [7,8,9,10,11]. Neurobehavioral impairment, hypertension, renal disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke and premature death are the health consequences in adults [12, 13]. It is now known that no level of lead is safe [14, 15].
Our data indicate that all countries, in all regions of the world have now eliminated lead from gasoline used in motor vehicles. Algeria, the last country to remove lead from automotive gasoline, did so in 2021. Declines in blood lead levels following removal of lead from gasoline have been reported in numerous countries and cities [26]. Lead is still used in racing cars and in aviation gasoline for small, piston-engine aircraft [27].
Now to extend, update and corroborate the 1999 analysis by Thomas et al. [28], we have gathered 38 additional reports. For those reports as well as for earlier publications, we have systematically examined the relationships between reductions in levels of lead in gasoline and declines in population blood lead levels. This work was undertaken as a component of an effort led by the World Health Organization to develop guidelines on the prevention and management of lead exposure.
We developed and refined a data extraction sheet. One author extracted data from each study included in the analysis, and the second author checked the extracted data to ensure accuracy. Disagreements were resolved by discussion between the two review authors; if no agreement could be reached, a third author was available to adjudicate. However, all disagreements were resolved without the need for a third review. If an article identified through the databases could not be found, the corresponding author listed in the research article was contacted for the full-text article. If there was confusion about the contents of a research article, the corresponding author was contacted for further clarification. If the corresponding author was unable to be contacted, the principal investigator for the respective research article, subsequently followed by any additional authors listed, were contacted.
We included observational studies that measured serial blood lead levels (BLLs) in populations over a time span of at least 1 year. We also included studies that compared primary data with historical data. We included studies examining populations of both males and females, all age groups, and both urban and rural communities. Finally, studies in this systemic review had to include BLLs as their primary outcome.
Through this systematic search, we identified a total of 1696 records through database searching. After removing duplicates, 1264 records were screened and 874 articles were excluded based on the title and/or the abstract. Three hundred and ninety articles were then assessed for eligibility. Three hundred and fifty-one articles were excluded for reasons, including:
No evaluations of study quality or the possibility of bias other than the above criteria were applied. The criterion of providing blood lead measurements for more than one time period separated by at least 1 year is a significant marker of achievement, requiring ongoing laboratory and analysis capability. In sum, 38 articles were added to the systematic review of changes in blood lead levels related to changes in the lead content of gasoline published previously by Thomas et al. [28]. The data extracted from these articles was population blood lead level for each year reported, population location, and the population age range (Fig. 1).
To characterize the use of lead in gasoline we consider two metrics, the total amount of lead used in gasoline, and the average concentration of lead in gasoline, calculated as the consumption-weighted average lead concentration of all gasoline grades sold, including unleaded gasoline.
Each included study reports data on population blood lead concentrations for at least 2 years for the same or similar location and for a similar population group. For each year with a reported population blood lead level, we calculated the average gasoline lead level, including both leaded and unleaded gasoline, on a national level. In cases in which the reported population blood lead levels covered a combined two-year period, in which case we use the average gasoline lead concentration over the two-year period.
Studies are from different countries and locations, and the population cohorts differ by age and location, and thus we do not combine results from different studies, and we do not extrapolate or fit the data. There are measurement errors in both the blood lead values and the gasoline lead values. We estimate the error in the gasoline lead values as 10-20%.
Even though there are numerous European studies, there are countries for which there are no data on how blood lead concentrations have changed over time. There are no studies over time from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Netherlands, Czech Republic, and others. Russia is a major lead producer, but nonetheless took early action to eliminate lead from gasoline in major cities [65].
Figures 10 and 11 show result for Africa, for South Africa, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo [94,95,96,97,98]. Although lead was phased out of gasoline in many African countries by 2006, there are ongoing exposures from other sources [31, 99]. The data in Figs. 10 and 11 show consistent slopes, with decreases corresponding to reduced use of lead in gasoline and over time. All of the African studies show relatively lower blood lead concentrations for the gasoline lead concentrations, compared to the results from South America, North American and Europe, while similar to the results from Asia. These may indicate comparatively low consumption of gasoline in the African cities studied, compared to the studies from North and South America and Europe. Further studies of lead exposure in more locations in Africa would be welcome to further examine population lead exposures and trends.
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