Consumer Reports recently found that a ton of popular protein powders are spiked with lead, a neurotoxin. The stuff we worked tirelessly to scrub out of paint and gasoline is now in your post-workout shake.
According to a recent study, we humans have been exposing ourselves to lead for thousands of years, and it might be what sets us apart from Neanderthals. An international team of researchers analyzed 51 fossilized teeth from ancient hominids and found lead in 73 percent of them.
Lead exposure isn’t just something we’ve been dealing with since the industrial age. It’s been intertwined with human life since the Stone Age, thanks to volcanoes, wildfire, and eroding rocks, all of which produce trace amounts that build up over time, so much so that researchers can find it in our bones quite a while later.
The study suggests that Homo sapiens may have actually adapted to lead exposure better than Neanderthals. That’s thanks to a gene called NOVA1 that both species share but in slightly different forms.
When scientists created mini brains, aka organoids, with the ancient Neanderthal version of NOVA1 and doused them with lead, it scrambled a crucial speech gene called FOXP2, which made the Neanderthal brain no-talk good.
Humans May Have Evolved With the Help of Lead Poisoning
Meanwhile, our version of NOVA1 handled the lead well, allowing Homo sapiens to retain their sociability and verbal skills even when exposed to neurotoxin. That may have helped us outlast our evolutionary cousins, who were less talkative, more isolated, and apparently more susceptible to heavy metal brain damage.
While today’s lead exposure still causes serious problems like heart disease and learning disabilities (and there is some evidence to suggest that people exposed to high concentrations of lead might later become criminals), there’s a bit of evolutionary irony to all this.
Lead might be killing us now and driving us insane, but it could have given our ancient ancestors a leg up in the evolutionary arms race, making them more adaptable. Cool. Now get it the heck out of my protein shake.
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