I what some people here seemed to be missing, is this correlation isn't just lead was removed from the environment and 23 years later crime went down. It's that various areas has differing degrees of lead pollution and started reducing it at different times.
The places that reduced lead pollution first, saw the drop in crime first, the places that reduced it later saw the drop later. The eras that initially had high levels of lead had a larger drop in crime than areas that always had a low level.
And it's not just the USA either. The pattern holds pretty accurately for various nations around the world, like in Europe. Those who banned leaded fuel first, saw the drop in crime first, those who banned later, saw the drop later.
And these nations had massively differing crime policies. Some nations increased prison sentences to try and deter crime, and crime went down. Some nations put a huge effort into reforming criminals, and crime went down. And some nations cut prison sentence, and crime went down.
If the theory is true it could also account for the fact that violent crime is more abundant per capita in urban areas compared to rural areas since lead from gasoline will obviously be more abundant in cities with lots of cars per square mile compared to rural areas with very few cars.
This reminds me very much of the study that correlated legalized abortion with a decline in crime -- I believe it also showed it wasn't just a general global trend with legalized abortion and dropping crime, but that places that legalized abortion first saw crime drop first etc.
I think the conclusion is obvious: Removing lead from petrol lead to legalized abortion. Or was it vice versa?
But seriously, I think we need statistical analysis showing the correlation between legalized abortion and unleaded gasoline. Perhaps it would actually show that places that legalized abortion first actually WERE correlated with places that unleaded gasoline first.
It would be silly to assume causation there, even if the correlation were just as strong. Which would be a useful reminder about correlation and causation. Just because you have a correlation where causation is _plausible_ still doesn't mean causation.
It's always interesting when statistics correlate across multiple frames (time, location, etc.); however that still doesn't prove causality. I'm inclined to think that the causes behind an area being slow to remove leaded gasoline could also affect crime rates.
Perhaps another study should be done following individuals. It seems a decent attempt at disproving the hypothesis.
Take say 50 specific individuals ... actually look at where they lived each year of their lives, and estimate as accurately as possible their lead exposure. If they move cross country, "follow" them and estimate the change in lead exposure accordingly.
Once you have an assessment of the lifetime lead exposure of the 50 people, see if it predicts their levels of criminal behavior or aggression.
What they might also be misssing -- and the article highlights this -- is that its not just a correlation analysis. There's also a fairly well-developed explanation for the causal mechanism that justifies the hypothesis -- lead has already been established to have significant effects on brain development and behavior (and been specifically linked problems in impulse control and executive functioning.)
I wonder if the lead could leave the body, and if the effects it had are somewhat reversed over time, for those that lived in environments with much traffic.
Aren't the politics required to enforce lead reduction the same that would tackle crime, though? I don't think there are many enviromentally-friendly corrupt parties.
Except: "So in 1923 three of America’s largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive “ethyl” because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than “lead” and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.
Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, the Ethyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab , when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: “These men probably went insane because they worked too hard.” Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills, and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility. ..."
Midgley is perhaps among the most damaging engineers the world has known: he is responsible for both tetraethyl lead additives to gasoline (the subject of this article) and chloroflorcarbons, responsible for damaging the Earth's ozone layer:
This story is also a very strong argument toward both regulation of markets due to externalities (lead in gasoline and paint were defended vigorously by their respective industries for decades), and of the argument that there are some products and services which, despite being profitable to those dealing in them directly, impose a net negative cost to society as a whole.
Such activities are often difficult to recognize strictly because of the nature of externalities: they're diffuse, affecting many individuals, often incrementally in a small way, often indirectly and, in the case of environmental lead, with impacts lagging cause by decades.
This is also a very powerful case of negative impacts accruing largely due to socioeconomic circumstances not ascribable to the conscious and voluntary decisions of those directly affected: neither the infants and children exposed to lead, nor the victims of the criminal acts they transacted on a probabilistically greater scale, had entered into any sort of voluntary or legally recognized agreement with the manufacturers of leaded gas and paint. Punches a bit of a hole in that whole libertarian argument which promptly ... sinks like a lead balloon.
For those searching for a TL;DR of the article, here is a much shorter blog post by the same author talking about the different kinds of evidence supporting the thesis:
> There are now multiple rigorous studies using different methodologies that demonstrate this correlation at the city level, the state level, the national level, and in different countries at different times.
Lead paint really can't be mentioned without bringing up the name, work, and abuse heaped upon Herbert Needleman who drew many of the associations between the use of lead in paint and brain damage to children, especially inner-city and underprivileged youth:
For his efforts, Needleman endured years of attacks denigrating the quality of his research and his integrity as a scientist. In 1982 the industry-funded International Lead Zinc Research Organization (ILZRO) went to the Environmental Protection Agency to accuse Needleman of scientific misconduct. The EPA convened a committee of experts, which concluded that Needleman’s study had not proved a connection between lead exposure and a child’s mental development. Needleman countered that the committee report contained serious mistakes. The EPA agreed, reversed the committee’s findings, and lauded Needleman’s “pioneering study,” saying it confirmed a “significant association” between lead exposure and childhood intelligence.
The ILZRO hired the public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton to publicize the original committee’s criticisms of Needleman.
Two scientists led the next attack on Needleman. One was Sandra Scarr, a developmental psychologist at the University of Virginia who had been a member of the EPA committee that disputed Needleman’s study. The second was Claire Ernhart, a developmental psychologist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who called Needleman’s study “slipshod.” Beginning in 1983, Ernhart, who had conducted lead research, received about $50,000 a year from ILZRO for research support but denies being beholden to the lead industry or speaking on its behalf. Scarr claims not to have received money from ILZRO other than expert witness fees and likewise denied industry influence....
In all, the attacks on Needleman’s work and integrity and his defense against them dragged on for 15 years.
Intentional disinformation is a major theme of this (59 minute) lecture by Philip Mirowski, an economic historian (he focuses largely on global warming but the principles and rationale apply broadly to other cases of economically incentivized disinformation): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I
Among other things, it references the work of Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, and Robert N. Proctor's Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition.
It's been suggested that the removal of lead from fuels, paints, etc. may explain the fact that our IQs have risen since about the same time, and since leveled off somewhat.
Say what you will about environment, but the lead explanation seems to match historical data in all the ways we'd expect it to. Find something that lead does, and we find a trend showing its decline since we started eliminating lead.
I wonder how this interacts with IQ differences by ethnicity, given that historically some ethnic groups tended to live in inner cities where lead exposure would have been significantly greater.
Reading the Wikipedia article seems to indicate that most of the rises in IQ due to the Flynn effect happened during the period when fuel lead levels were high.
NPR just ran the story "Study: Half Of Jailed NYC Youths Have Brain Injury"
The study found nearly 50 percent of both boys and girls reported traumatic brain injuries that resulted in a loss of consciousness, amnesia or both. And they said 55 percent of those injuries were caused by assaults.
An estimated 60 percent of adult prisoners have a brain injury, according to a study of prisoners in South Carolina.
There's nothing unexpected here. Youths mostly go to jail for violence. The more fights you get into, the more likely you are to be injured. I'd imagine that there's a far larger percentage of number of jailed youths with knife scars than those in school. That doesn't mean knife scars cause people to end up in prison.
Yup, Cosmos was on tonight, subject: lead. It's nice to see it got some brains fired-up.
PBS also had a great series the Poisoner's Handbook about different poisonous elements and the one about lead was more in-depth about leaded gasoline. Charles Norris was an amazing person! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduc...
Or to say the introduction of violent video games in the mid to late 90s and the rise in gun violence in schools in the last few years? Young children growing up with the increase exposure to violence could be related?
I've read about a couple of different explanations for changes in crime rates. I think freakanomics has discussed greater prevalence of abortions[1], and one thing I've heard in academic circles is that crime reporting has gotten better. You could actually make predictions with this article's question. There may have been areas where lead was used in petrol for longer than others, one could compare across regions and see if the time at which petrol was changed also adheres to drop in crime to see if there is still a correlation.
Levitt and Dubner wrote down a number of interesting theories about lots of things, but I think they overthought this one.
The crime rate rose and dropped pretty neatly along with the proportion of young men in society. The median age is much higher now than it was 30 years ago. Crime, especially violent crime, is a young man's game.
Perhaps they are right and roe vs wade was one of the factors in raising the median age, but it seems that people today want smaller families, and have more control over this than a generation ago. You can't assume that if a woman has an abortion, a miscarriage and two kids over her lifetime, she would have had four children if it hadn't been for the abortion and the miscarriage.
It is probably more accurate that allowing unwanted children to be aborted resulted in the drop of crime 20 years later than the removal of lead. This was mentioned in Freakonomics the movie as yukichan linked.
Maybe there is an interesting story to be written concerning another heavy metal - mercury and its use in dental amalgam.
Aside from whether it's prudent - irrespective of current evidence - to permanently store a compound containing 50% of a neurotoxin an inch or two from your brain, the release of almost 3,000 kilograms (6,613 lbs.) of mercury (data for 2005 alone) into the atmosphere from crematoria is cause for worry. Wikipedia notes that 'Good empirical data on the magnitude of mercury emissions from crematoria, however, are lacking'. No one is interested I guess.
This is relevant. Always use cold water from your pipes to cook with and drink especially if you live in an older home. Also let the water run for a minute to flush out the pipes if it hasn't been used in a while.
The EPA states:
>Flush your pipes before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, "flush" your cold-water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.
>Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.
It's significant that there is this advice, and it supports the point of the article, but this is really insufficient. If you can't be sure of the water quality at the tap (as parent notes, different from the quality at the plant where the utility measures contaminant levels), then it's best to use a filter that removes metals (as well as biological contaminants).
Also people should be aware: the government somehow allows pipes and fittings to be sold as "lead free" when in reality they contain up to a few percent of lead.
I don't doubt that the reduction of lead in our environment has reduced the amount of mental illness. But I also think changes to truancy laws in the US in the 70s helped, advancements in psychotherapies, and drugs for the treatment of mental illness helped. Identification of treatments for ADD and ADHD helped.
Changes in the economy helped, we had more women in the workforce which meant we had more ability for families to survive father's unemployment.
Wider adoption of TV meant people became more aware of crime, and criminals were easier to catch.
So yes, lead removal was probably a contributor, but I think it was bigger than that.
I wonder if the result could be less about the lead itself having a direct effect on behaviour, and the action of the removal of lead being identified as "something obvious and beneficial which would be good to do" as being coincident with a greater enlightenment amongst those making the rules?
I.e. to what extent "we should remove lead from petrol as that is obviously bad" is actually a handy indicator of more considered minds running the shop, those minds also being more predisposed to the kind of other "obviously good" decisions which could also have brought about an eventual reduction in crime.
I grew up in the 90s and can affirm that violence was substantially higher than now. It was common to get into 'street fights' just for something to do. But, I'm also curious whether there were higher death rates for the potentially violent, which could have also rapidly reduced crime rates.
Of my friends in the 80s / 90s, I've had around 20 of them die over the course of 20 years. Of those who've died, I can say the great majority were in the 'violence prone' category. They generally seemed to have lower ability to gauge risks and sought out risky behavior, frequently.
I've never seen a study correlating the rise and ubiquity of video games with the drop in crime.
Before video games, bored young males ran around the neighborhood making mayhem. Today they sit in front of an xbox. I personally think the people who would be out committing violent crimes are still in society they just have a way doing it virtually.
I can't find a link at the moment, but I've seen articles where parents in bad neighborhoods talk about buying their sons video game consoles specifically to keep them sitting at home, rather than out on the dangerous streets.
[+] [-] spingsprong|12 years ago|reply
The places that reduced lead pollution first, saw the drop in crime first, the places that reduced it later saw the drop later. The eras that initially had high levels of lead had a larger drop in crime than areas that always had a low level.
And it's not just the USA either. The pattern holds pretty accurately for various nations around the world, like in Europe. Those who banned leaded fuel first, saw the drop in crime first, those who banned later, saw the drop later.
And these nations had massively differing crime policies. Some nations increased prison sentences to try and deter crime, and crime went down. Some nations put a huge effort into reforming criminals, and crime went down. And some nations cut prison sentence, and crime went down.
[+] [-] mixmax|12 years ago|reply
Here's a link (2 minutes of googling..) showing the difference. http://www.victimsofcrime.org/library/crime-information-and-...
[+] [-] jrochkind1|12 years ago|reply
I think the conclusion is obvious: Removing lead from petrol lead to legalized abortion. Or was it vice versa?
But seriously, I think we need statistical analysis showing the correlation between legalized abortion and unleaded gasoline. Perhaps it would actually show that places that legalized abortion first actually WERE correlated with places that unleaded gasoline first.
It would be silly to assume causation there, even if the correlation were just as strong. Which would be a useful reminder about correlation and causation. Just because you have a correlation where causation is _plausible_ still doesn't mean causation.
[+] [-] achy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlieflowers|12 years ago|reply
Take say 50 specific individuals ... actually look at where they lived each year of their lives, and estimate as accurately as possible their lead exposure. If they move cross country, "follow" them and estimate the change in lead exposure accordingly.
Once you have an assessment of the lifetime lead exposure of the 50 people, see if it predicts their levels of criminal behavior or aggression.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flow|12 years ago|reply
I wonder if the lead could leave the body, and if the effects it had are somewhat reversed over time, for those that lived in environments with much traffic.
Do you have any idea about this?
[+] [-] shawkinaw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abandonliberty|12 years ago|reply
Thank you.
[+] [-] FranOntanaya|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|12 years ago|reply
Except: "So in 1923 three of America’s largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive “ethyl” because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than “lead” and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.
Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, the Ethyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab , when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: “These men probably went insane because they worked too hard.” Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills, and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility. ..."
[+] [-] dredmorbius|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.
This story is also a very strong argument toward both regulation of markets due to externalities (lead in gasoline and paint were defended vigorously by their respective industries for decades), and of the argument that there are some products and services which, despite being profitable to those dealing in them directly, impose a net negative cost to society as a whole.
Such activities are often difficult to recognize strictly because of the nature of externalities: they're diffuse, affecting many individuals, often incrementally in a small way, often indirectly and, in the case of environmental lead, with impacts lagging cause by decades.
This is also a very powerful case of negative impacts accruing largely due to socioeconomic circumstances not ascribable to the conscious and voluntary decisions of those directly affected: neither the infants and children exposed to lead, nor the victims of the criminal acts they transacted on a probabilistically greater scale, had entered into any sort of voluntary or legally recognized agreement with the manufacturers of leaded gas and paint. Punches a bit of a hole in that whole libertarian argument which promptly ... sinks like a lead balloon.
[+] [-] lostlogin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curtis|12 years ago|reply
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...
One quote:
> There are now multiple rigorous studies using different methodologies that demonstrate this correlation at the city level, the state level, the national level, and in different countries at different times.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|12 years ago|reply
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/health/why-is-lead-sti...
For his efforts, Needleman endured years of attacks denigrating the quality of his research and his integrity as a scientist. In 1982 the industry-funded International Lead Zinc Research Organization (ILZRO) went to the Environmental Protection Agency to accuse Needleman of scientific misconduct. The EPA convened a committee of experts, which concluded that Needleman’s study had not proved a connection between lead exposure and a child’s mental development. Needleman countered that the committee report contained serious mistakes. The EPA agreed, reversed the committee’s findings, and lauded Needleman’s “pioneering study,” saying it confirmed a “significant association” between lead exposure and childhood intelligence.
The ILZRO hired the public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton to publicize the original committee’s criticisms of Needleman.
Two scientists led the next attack on Needleman. One was Sandra Scarr, a developmental psychologist at the University of Virginia who had been a member of the EPA committee that disputed Needleman’s study. The second was Claire Ernhart, a developmental psychologist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who called Needleman’s study “slipshod.” Beginning in 1983, Ernhart, who had conducted lead research, received about $50,000 a year from ILZRO for research support but denies being beholden to the lead industry or speaking on its behalf. Scarr claims not to have received money from ILZRO other than expert witness fees and likewise denied industry influence....
In all, the attacks on Needleman’s work and integrity and his defense against them dragged on for 15 years.
Intentional disinformation is a major theme of this (59 minute) lecture by Philip Mirowski, an economic historian (he focuses largely on global warming but the principles and rationale apply broadly to other cases of economically incentivized disinformation): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I
Among other things, it references the work of Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, and Robert N. Proctor's Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition.
I discuss these at more length here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/deep_ecology/comments/1yum2c/life_an...
[+] [-] downandout|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ignostic|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Say what you will about environment, but the lead explanation seems to match historical data in all the ways we'd expect it to. Find something that lead does, and we find a trend showing its decline since we started eliminating lead.
[+] [-] api|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gretful|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ern|12 years ago|reply
Would they have risen faster without lead?
[+] [-] parfe|12 years ago|reply
The study found nearly 50 percent of both boys and girls reported traumatic brain injuries that resulted in a loss of consciousness, amnesia or both. And they said 55 percent of those injuries were caused by assaults.
An estimated 60 percent of adult prisoners have a brain injury, according to a study of prisoners in South Carolina.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3045728...
The US justice system has become extreme in the pursuit of punishment vs treatment and rehabilitation.
[+] [-] AlexMuir|12 years ago|reply
There's nothing unexpected here. Youths mostly go to jail for violence. The more fights you get into, the more likely you are to be injured. I'd imagine that there's a far larger percentage of number of jailed youths with knife scars than those in school. That doesn't mean knife scars cause people to end up in prison.
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhughes|12 years ago|reply
PBS also had a great series the Poisoner's Handbook about different poisonous elements and the one about lead was more in-depth about leaded gasoline. Charles Norris was an amazing person! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduc...
[+] [-] maxerickson|12 years ago|reply
Whenever I see stories like this, I wonder what sort of impact it has had.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] taf2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yukichan|12 years ago|reply
http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-sh...
[+] [-] wobbleblob|12 years ago|reply
The crime rate rose and dropped pretty neatly along with the proportion of young men in society. The median age is much higher now than it was 30 years ago. Crime, especially violent crime, is a young man's game.
Perhaps they are right and roe vs wade was one of the factors in raising the median age, but it seems that people today want smaller families, and have more control over this than a generation ago. You can't assume that if a woman has an abortion, a miscarriage and two kids over her lifetime, she would have had four children if it hadn't been for the abortion and the miscarriage.
[+] [-] dayyan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vixin|12 years ago|reply
Aside from whether it's prudent - irrespective of current evidence - to permanently store a compound containing 50% of a neurotoxin an inch or two from your brain, the release of almost 3,000 kilograms (6,613 lbs.) of mercury (data for 2005 alone) into the atmosphere from crematoria is cause for worry. Wikipedia notes that 'Good empirical data on the magnitude of mercury emissions from crematoria, however, are lacking'. No one is interested I guess.
[+] [-] aestra|12 years ago|reply
The EPA states:
>Flush your pipes before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, "flush" your cold-water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.
>Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8615/is-there-an...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html?_r=0
[+] [-] ds9|12 years ago|reply
Also people should be aware: the government somehow allows pipes and fittings to be sold as "lead free" when in reality they contain up to a few percent of lead.
[+] [-] frik|12 years ago|reply
Airplanes are still allowed to used leaded petrol!! [1]
And the immigration movement to Europe increased the crime. [2]
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorenbenzin#Verbleites_Benzin
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Symmetry|12 years ago|reply
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/18/proposed-biological-exp...
[+] [-] drakaal|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye_CableSystem
I don't doubt that the reduction of lead in our environment has reduced the amount of mental illness. But I also think changes to truancy laws in the US in the 70s helped, advancements in psychotherapies, and drugs for the treatment of mental illness helped. Identification of treatments for ADD and ADHD helped.
Changes in the economy helped, we had more women in the workforce which meant we had more ability for families to survive father's unemployment.
Wider adoption of TV meant people became more aware of crime, and criminals were easier to catch.
So yes, lead removal was probably a contributor, but I think it was bigger than that.
[+] [-] jamesbrownuhh|12 years ago|reply
I.e. to what extent "we should remove lead from petrol as that is obviously bad" is actually a handy indicator of more considered minds running the shop, those minds also being more predisposed to the kind of other "obviously good" decisions which could also have brought about an eventual reduction in crime.
[+] [-] ballard|12 years ago|reply
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ap22213|12 years ago|reply
Of my friends in the 80s / 90s, I've had around 20 of them die over the course of 20 years. Of those who've died, I can say the great majority were in the 'violence prone' category. They generally seemed to have lower ability to gauge risks and sought out risky behavior, frequently.
[+] [-] ap22213|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwhitman|12 years ago|reply
Before video games, bored young males ran around the neighborhood making mayhem. Today they sit in front of an xbox. I personally think the people who would be out committing violent crimes are still in society they just have a way doing it virtually.
[+] [-] akgerber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NAFV_P|12 years ago|reply
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/fritz-haber-f...