Mental disorders in US kids linked to decades of lead exposure [Video]

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Lead exposure in the 20th century may have led to mental health issues in Americans, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Duke University and Florida State University studied the impact of lead in gasoline, which was first added in 1923 to help keep car engines healthy. (It was later banned from all U.S. vehicles in 1996.)

People born from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s are thought to have had the highest exposure.

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The findings revealed that childhood exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas resulted in an imbalance of mental health in the U.S., which made “generations of Americans more depressed, anxious and inattentive or hyperactive,” according to a Duke press release.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, attributed an …