7 ms·

This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop i

by tmorton 13y ago

This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-linkfest http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...

outworlder 13y ago
But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. It seems clear that other factors play a more important role. Things like police effectiveness, or economics. Edit: reference for lead ban dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead Crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- weeksie 13y ago
  When was it effectively phased out in Brazil, though? Leaded gasoline was mostly gone in the US by the 1970s and there was a 20 year lag before the crime rate started dropping. The wikipedia article says lead was banned in the US in 1995, but it was definitely not widely available. However, if lead was widely used in Brazil right up until the ban date there (1989) then it would stand to reason that the crime rate wouldn't start dropping for another six or seven years.
  - RyJones 13y ago
    I was buying leaded gas in Indiana as late as 1990, and had no trouble finding it in the general Illiana area. I don't think it's fair to say it was "mostly gone" in the 70s.
    - weeksie 13y ago
      [By 1979 half of the gasoline in the US was unleaded](http://66.147.244.135/~enviror4/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/lead-history-timeline/ http://66.147.244.135/~enviror4/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/...). So by the early eighties it was mostly gone. So yeah, I slightly misspoke saying it was mostly gone in the 70s, but it was halfway gone by then.
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  There are other sources of environmental lead exposure besides leaded gasoline. Brazilian enforcement of environmental protections may not have been as successful as the US EPA was, especially in the past.
- anon1385 13y ago
  A 1989 ban means people now in their 20s were young children in an environment with use of leaded fuel. This article has some data about lead levels in children in Brazil: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1020-49892009000900011 http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1... In Brazil, Teixeira (32) has found that 11% of pipes used in the water distribution systems of 100 schools in São Paulo present lead levels above the limit considered safe by the WHO. In 2% of the water samples, the lead level was found to be five-fold higher than the highest acceptable value (< 10 µg/L, according to the WHO), thereby threatening the neuropsychiatric health of children. Several studies have shown that high BLL in preschool children are strongly correlated with high lead levels in house dust (33-35). This association has been attributed to dust intake from the frequent hand-to-mouth behavior of young children. Flaking lead-based paint, road dust, garden soil and airborne lead-bearing particles are believed to be the sources of lead in household dust (36). Leaded gas has caused more exposure to the metal than any other source worldwide (37). According to the São Paulo State Health Department (19), about 80% of the lead found in urban air samples before 1982 was derived from leaded gas. Car battery manufacture is the main source of secondary lead (38), but other sources cannot be discarded. None of that is to say that lead is the only factor of course, just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part.
  - duaneb 13y ago
    > just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part. Exactly: (Lead => Crime) =/> (Crime => Lead).
  - joe_the_user 13y ago
    The exact lag time doesn't matter. If lead was banned at different times in different countries, the bans can't be responsible for a crime drop that happened at the same time.
- Amadou 13y ago
  Lead bans in America varied by state, the end date on that wikipedia page is a misleading number in that leaded gasoline use had been substantially reduced starting many years earlier. There was a major drop in leaded gasoline starting in the early 70s, by 1980 it was down over 50% from peak. By 1986 it was down over 90%. I can't speak to the implementation of lead reduction leading to the outright ban in Brazil, but in the USA the outright ban was more of an after-the-fact recognition of the reality rather than an enforcement action.
  - taway2012 13y ago
    Oblig link on "after-the-fact-recognition": http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-a-short-sad-history http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lea...
    - Amadou 13y ago
      You misunderstand. I meant the federal law was an after-the-fact-recognition of what many states had already done. Kind of like the way DOMA (defense of marriage act) was struck down by SCOTUS only after a bunch of states started recognizing gay marriage or how marijuana is likely to be legalized at the federal level only after enough states have already legalized it.
- Legion 13y ago
  > But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. This is not logically sound. Brazil could have other factors which increase crime more than getting rid of lead reduces it. The fact that Brazil's crime has increased does not, in any way, tell us that the lead ban couldn't possibly be a major factor in the US's drop in crime.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Crime statistics across 100 years is a really complex beast - but lead in the atmosphere is something Occam's razor might suggest is not worth following up. http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/crimes-of-the-century/ http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olym...
bilbo0s 13y ago
I don't know if we have to go reaching for lead as the reason. If the effects of chemical substances on the brain are indeed a factor... and yes, they probably are. Then there is probably a far more simple explanation. Drugs. Instead of police being faced with impoverished young men of the 70s, 80s and 90s who are hyped up on cocaine, crack or pcp and trolling for their next hit. They are dealing with the impoverished young men of today, high on pot and trolling for snacks. That is, they would be trolling for snacks if the munchies are ever able to override their desire to keep playing whatever video game. If we consider the issue in a rational fashion for a moment, it's not terribly surprising that Rodney King was hyped up on PCP and trolling for another hit, whereas Trayvon Martin was high on pot and trolling for snacks. And, again, when one tries to consider the matter rationally, these two people represent two fundamentally different elements. With predictable impact on statistics when their stories are "writ large" in a society. If your crime is coming from demographic groups like this... then your crime will probably change with the changing drug use pattern. It's not a popular notion, because it smacks of "evil"... but drugs really can be used to determine and direct the course of a society.
- btilly 13y ago
  I don't know if we have to go reaching for lead as the reason. Reaching??? There was strong evidence that lead caused widespread and permanent damage to children's brains. Therefore the USA spent billions to remove it from our environment. After it is removed, asking whether this made a difference IS NOT a reach. PARTICULARLY NOT when compared to a hypothesis of differences in drug use over time that you've provided no evidence for.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Is there some evidence somewhere that brain damage causes robbery? It's entirely reasonable to say that the lead explanation is "reaching," although it may turn out to be true. >asking whether this made a difference You're equivocating here, intentionally. The question is whether it made a difference in crime, not whether it "made a difference."
    - 13y ago
coryrc 13y ago
Small planes still run leaded fuels so the (rich) owners can save money not changing their engines. This is 50% of our current exposure, needlessly! http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-globe-except-small-airplanes.html http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-...
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  Are you so sure they're rich? All the small airplane owners I have known drove beat-up old cars (often with a "My other car is an airplane" bumper sticker) in order to afford their aviation habit.
- fixedd 13y ago
  1) There are enough factual errors in that article to show that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. 2) Small airplanes aren't necessarily expensive, so you don't necessarily have to be rich to afford them. For instance, there's a Cessna 150 in good condition for sale on ebay for $16500 right now. 3) The FAA is actively working on unleaded replacements. 4) Many small planes can already run on unleaded.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Talk to the FAA, who have made it so expensive to upgrade/update anything related to airplanes. There is a marginally viable aftermarket parts market for these engines now, but for a long time owners were strictly limited to OEM, salvage, and remanufactured parts. Also, the number of older GA Airplanes, and antique/warbirds in service are so small, it's got to be nothing compared to the exposure from thirty years ago.
  - pekk 13y ago
    If it's 50% of our current exposure, it's not "nothing".
    - mpyne 13y ago
      50% of approximately nothing is still approximately nothing. What's our current exposure nowadays?
zootar 13y ago
Steven Pinker on the lead theory: There are reasons to be skeptical of any claim based on correlations between such widely separated variables as lead exposure (the cause) and crime (the effect). Consuming lead does not instantly turn someone into a criminal in the way that consuming vitamin C cures scurvy. It affects the child’s developing brain, which makes the child duller and more impulsive, which, in some children, and under the right circumstances, leads them to grow up to make short-sighted and risky choices, which, in some children and under the right circumstances, leads them to commit crimes, which, if enough young people act in the same way and at the same time, affects the crime rate. The lead hypothesis correlates the first and last link in this chain, but it would be more convincing if there were evidence about the intervening links. Such correlations should be far stronger than the one they report: presumably most kids with lead are more impulsive, whereas only a minority of impulsive young adults commit crimes. If they are right we should see very strong changes in IQ, school achievement, impulsiveness, childhood aggressiveness, lack of conscientiousness (one of the “Big Five” personality traits) that mirror the trends in lead exposure, with a suitable time delay. Those trends should be much stronger than the time-lagged correlation of lead with crime itself, which is only indirectly related to impulsiveness, an effect that is necessarily diluted by other causes such as policing and incarceration. http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_o...
- jessaustin 13y ago
  This caution makes sense in general, and it is good to be skeptical of long chains of causation. However, we know so little about the brain that it's possible we're missing a much shorter chain of causation. It's possible that impulsiveness, IQ, aggression, etc. is only tenuously related to whatever aspect of the brain actually affects criminality. A very strong circumstantial case shouldn't be dismissed just because we can't think of a mechanism.
  - _greim_ 13y ago
    > A very strong circumstantial case shouldn't be dismissed just because we can't think of a mechanism. On the other hand, if a convincing causal chain can't be identified, it shouldn't be assumed true either. It should go into the (very large) pool of interesting possibilities that may or may not be substantiated if someone wants to invest in the time and energy to research.
vacri 13y ago
The drop in crime also correlates very well with the massive upswell of incarceration in the US, not to mention that 'entertainment-on-demand' swelled over the same period (crime is frequently a result of boredom).
coldtea 13y ago
>This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Sounds like a totally unrelated issue. In my country we had a 400% raise in burglaries etc in the course of 15 years, and it was all due to poverty (including an iflux of poor unskilled illegal immigration). Oh, and that was AFTER the "lead cleanup". Crime can go up and down with no relation to lead whatsoever, as it has in tons of places.

by tmorton 13y ago

outworlder 13y ago

But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. It seems clear that other factors play a more important role. Things like police effectiveness, or economics. Edit: reference for lead ban dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead Crime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
weeksie 13y ago
When was it effectively phased out in Brazil, though? Leaded gasoline was mostly gone in the US by the 1970s and there was a 20 year lag before the crime rate started dropping. The wikipedia article says lead was banned in the US in 1995, but it was definitely not widely available. However, if lead was widely used in Brazil right up until the ban date there (1989) then it would stand to reason that the crime rate wouldn't start dropping for another six or seven years.
- RyJones 13y ago
  I was buying leaded gas in Indiana as late as 1990, and had no trouble finding it in the general Illiana area. I don't think it's fair to say it was "mostly gone" in the 70s.
  - weeksie 13y ago
    [By 1979 half of the gasoline in the US was unleaded](http://66.147.244.135/~enviror4/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/lead-history-timeline/ http://66.147.244.135/~enviror4/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/...). So by the early eighties it was mostly gone. So yeah, I slightly misspoke saying it was mostly gone in the 70s, but it was halfway gone by then.
MichaelSalib 13y ago
There are other sources of environmental lead exposure besides leaded gasoline. Brazilian enforcement of environmental protections may not have been as successful as the US EPA was, especially in the past.
anon1385 13y ago
A 1989 ban means people now in their 20s were young children in an environment with use of leaded fuel. This article has some data about lead levels in children in Brazil: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1020-49892009000900011 http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1... In Brazil, Teixeira (32) has found that 11% of pipes used in the water distribution systems of 100 schools in São Paulo present lead levels above the limit considered safe by the WHO. In 2% of the water samples, the lead level was found to be five-fold higher than the highest acceptable value (< 10 µg/L, according to the WHO), thereby threatening the neuropsychiatric health of children. Several studies have shown that high BLL in preschool children are strongly correlated with high lead levels in house dust (33-35). This association has been attributed to dust intake from the frequent hand-to-mouth behavior of young children. Flaking lead-based paint, road dust, garden soil and airborne lead-bearing particles are believed to be the sources of lead in household dust (36). Leaded gas has caused more exposure to the metal than any other source worldwide (37). According to the São Paulo State Health Department (19), about 80% of the lead found in urban air samples before 1982 was derived from leaded gas. Car battery manufacture is the main source of secondary lead (38), but other sources cannot be discarded. None of that is to say that lead is the only factor of course, just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part.
- duaneb 13y ago
  > just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part. Exactly: (Lead => Crime) =/> (Crime => Lead).
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  The exact lag time doesn't matter. If lead was banned at different times in different countries, the bans can't be responsible for a crime drop that happened at the same time.
Amadou 13y ago
Lead bans in America varied by state, the end date on that wikipedia page is a misleading number in that leaded gasoline use had been substantially reduced starting many years earlier. There was a major drop in leaded gasoline starting in the early 70s, by 1980 it was down over 50% from peak. By 1986 it was down over 90%. I can't speak to the implementation of lead reduction leading to the outright ban in Brazil, but in the USA the outright ban was more of an after-the-fact recognition of the reality rather than an enforcement action.
- taway2012 13y ago
  Oblig link on "after-the-fact-recognition": http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-a-short-sad-history http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lea...
  - Amadou 13y ago
    You misunderstand. I meant the federal law was an after-the-fact-recognition of what many states had already done. Kind of like the way DOMA (defense of marriage act) was struck down by SCOTUS only after a bunch of states started recognizing gay marriage or how marijuana is likely to be legalized at the federal level only after enough states have already legalized it.
Legion 13y ago
> But lead by itself can't be the major factor behind the crime drop. Countries such as Brazil have banned leaded gas even before the United States, and crime rates are still rising dramatically. This is not logically sound. Brazil could have other factors which increase crime more than getting rid of lead reduces it. The fact that Brazil's crime has increased does not, in any way, tell us that the lead ban couldn't possibly be a major factor in the US's drop in crime.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Crime statistics across 100 years is a really complex beast - but lead in the atmosphere is something Occam's razor might suggest is not worth following up. http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/crimes-of-the-century/ http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olym...

bilbo0s 13y ago

I don't know if we have to go reaching for lead as the reason. If the effects of chemical substances on the brain are indeed a factor... and yes, they probably are. Then there is probably a far more simple explanation. Drugs. Instead of police being faced with impoverished young men of the 70s, 80s and 90s who are hyped up on cocaine, crack or pcp and trolling for their next hit. They are dealing with the impoverished young men of today, high on pot and trolling for snacks. That is, they would be trolling for snacks if the munchies are ever able to override their desire to keep playing whatever video game. If we consider the issue in a rational fashion for a moment, it's not terribly surprising that Rodney King was hyped up on PCP and trolling for another hit, whereas Trayvon Martin was high on pot and trolling for snacks. And, again, when one tries to consider the matter rationally, these two people represent two fundamentally different elements. With predictable impact on statistics when their stories are "writ large" in a society. If your crime is coming from demographic groups like this... then your crime will probably change with the changing drug use pattern. It's not a popular notion, because it smacks of "evil"... but drugs really can be used to determine and direct the course of a society.

btilly 13y ago
I don't know if we have to go reaching for lead as the reason. Reaching??? There was strong evidence that lead caused widespread and permanent damage to children's brains. Therefore the USA spent billions to remove it from our environment. After it is removed, asking whether this made a difference IS NOT a reach. PARTICULARLY NOT when compared to a hypothesis of differences in drug use over time that you've provided no evidence for.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Is there some evidence somewhere that brain damage causes robbery? It's entirely reasonable to say that the lead explanation is "reaching," although it may turn out to be true. >asking whether this made a difference You're equivocating here, intentionally. The question is whether it made a difference in crime, not whether it "made a difference."
  - 13y ago

coryrc 13y ago

Small planes still run leaded fuels so the (rich) owners can save money not changing their engines. This is 50% of our current exposure, needlessly! http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-globe-except-small-airplanes.html http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-...

HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
Are you so sure they're rich? All the small airplane owners I have known drove beat-up old cars (often with a "My other car is an airplane" bumper sticker) in order to afford their aviation habit.
fixedd 13y ago
1) There are enough factual errors in that article to show that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. 2) Small airplanes aren't necessarily expensive, so you don't necessarily have to be rich to afford them. For instance, there's a Cessna 150 in good condition for sale on ebay for $16500 right now. 3) The FAA is actively working on unleaded replacements. 4) Many small planes can already run on unleaded.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Talk to the FAA, who have made it so expensive to upgrade/update anything related to airplanes. There is a marginally viable aftermarket parts market for these engines now, but for a long time owners were strictly limited to OEM, salvage, and remanufactured parts. Also, the number of older GA Airplanes, and antique/warbirds in service are so small, it's got to be nothing compared to the exposure from thirty years ago.
- pekk 13y ago
  If it's 50% of our current exposure, it's not "nothing".
  - mpyne 13y ago
    50% of approximately nothing is still approximately nothing. What's our current exposure nowadays?

zootar 13y ago

Steven Pinker on the lead theory: There are reasons to be skeptical of any claim based on correlations between such widely separated variables as lead exposure (the cause) and crime (the effect). Consuming lead does not instantly turn someone into a criminal in the way that consuming vitamin C cures scurvy. It affects the child’s developing brain, which makes the child duller and more impulsive, which, in some children, and under the right circumstances, leads them to grow up to make short-sighted and risky choices, which, in some children and under the right circumstances, leads them to commit crimes, which, if enough young people act in the same way and at the same time, affects the crime rate. The lead hypothesis correlates the first and last link in this chain, but it would be more convincing if there were evidence about the intervening links. Such correlations should be far stronger than the one they report: presumably most kids with lead are more impulsive, whereas only a minority of impulsive young adults commit crimes. If they are right we should see very strong changes in IQ, school achievement, impulsiveness, childhood aggressiveness, lack of conscientiousness (one of the “Big Five” personality traits) that mirror the trends in lead exposure, with a suitable time delay. Those trends should be much stronger than the time-lagged correlation of lead with crime itself, which is only indirectly related to impulsiveness, an effect that is necessarily diluted by other causes such as policing and incarceration. http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_o...

jessaustin 13y ago
This caution makes sense in general, and it is good to be skeptical of long chains of causation. However, we know so little about the brain that it's possible we're missing a much shorter chain of causation. It's possible that impulsiveness, IQ, aggression, etc. is only tenuously related to whatever aspect of the brain actually affects criminality. A very strong circumstantial case shouldn't be dismissed just because we can't think of a mechanism.
- _greim_ 13y ago
  > A very strong circumstantial case shouldn't be dismissed just because we can't think of a mechanism. On the other hand, if a convincing causal chain can't be identified, it shouldn't be assumed true either. It should go into the (very large) pool of interesting possibilities that may or may not be substantiated if someone wants to invest in the time and energy to research.

vacri 13y ago

The drop in crime also correlates very well with the massive upswell of incarceration in the US, not to mention that 'entertainment-on-demand' swelled over the same period (crime is frequently a result of boredom).

coldtea 13y ago

>This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Sounds like a totally unrelated issue. In my country we had a 400% raise in burglaries etc in the course of 15 years, and it was all due to poverty (including an iflux of poor unskilled illegal immigration). Oh, and that was AFTER the "lead cleanup". Crime can go up and down with no relation to lead whatsoever, as it has in tons of places.