Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6

Author Topic: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates  (Read 7206 times)

Reelya

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« on: December 05, 2014, 03:20:56 am »

tl;dr version. Medical experts know that exposing babies to lead causes brain damage + violent tendencies in later life. In the past, we exposed everyone to a lot of lead, and violent crime rates always rise and fall ~20 years later, closely tracking the exposure levels, regardless of place and time, which should have been obvious but nobody put 2+2 together before recent years. Of course, the guys who sell lead for a living are the only people who don't buy the science. The following are links to articles and studies and a couple of country-specific predictions.

===

Detailed version with citations:

This was inspired by a conversation I had with a nurse in Australia claiming that violent movies and video games are primarily responsible for high levels of violent crime in Australia in recent years. She's seen the numbers of people coming into the hospital who have been beaten up, and if it's not movies and games causing it then "what else could it be?". I'm dropping this here to possible bring the issue to some peoples attention and as a space to collect my thoughts and some links on the issue.

Most people are aware of industrial pollutants and their negative effects on people and the environment. Individual lead poisoning in developing children has been found to be strongly associated with later lower IQ, aggressive tendencies and conduct of violent crimes in adulthood. It sort of makes sense that if poisoning one child with lead makes them more likely to commit violent crimes, then if you poison a whole lot of children at the same time with lead, then you'd expect the whole lot of them to end up committing a lot of violent crimes. But, of course, we would never do that, would we? Poison everyone with lead at the same time? How could that happen? Very easily in fact, since every road vehicle was a massive lead pumping machine back in the day, before they banned lead. Required reading

Forbes, summary of the evidence
Motherjones, this is really the definitive article on the issue

Of course, a correlation between lead and crime itself wouldn't be very convincing, no more convincing than global warming is correlated with falling rates of piracy. But lead levels aren't the same everywhere, different people have different exposures, different places introduced and banned lead at different times. So, let's look at the breakdown of evidence instead:

First we have individual studies,  where "Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes."

Then, we have neighborhood studies, where "Mielke has even studied lead concentrations at the neighborhood level in New Orleans and shared his maps with the local police. "When they overlay them with crime maps," he told me, "they realize they match up." "

There are inter-city studies (which I lack a spiffy quote for), but also state-vs-state studies, where "use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states <...> In states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime declined slowly. Where it declined quickly, crime declined quickly."

Then, you have international studies comparing countries. Each country has totally different times and rates at which they industrialized, had cars running on leaded gasoline, and later removed the lead: "in 2007 he published a new paper looking at crime trends around the world <...> what are the odds of that same something happening at several different times in several different countries? <...> Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn't fit the theory. "No," he replied. "Not one." "

So ... rather than a coincidental "good data fit" for the lead poisoning / crime theory "We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level" which ALL tell the same story about lead vs crime.

Back to Australia, we started bringing in unleaded fuel 10 years after the USA did, 1985 in Australia vs 1975 in the USA. But on top of that, America was much more aggressive with reducing lead levels in remaining leaded fuels than we were. In 1995 USA's average lead levels in leaded fuel were 0.026 grams/liter vs Australia's 0.3 grams per liter, and our total lead emmissions were 27 times the entire USA that year, not bad for a small population. So in terms of removing lead poisoning due to fuels, Australia was actually something like 20 years behind, since America made big efforts to reduce emissions in the early 1980s, and we did no such thing until a full ban in 2002. The prediction for Australia is therefore that violent crime due to lead poisoning should be spiking right about now, and will have dropped off heavily by 2020. I'll be checking in on this prediction over the years. You can bet that whoever is in political power in the next 5 years will get undeserved credit.

Now, lets put the theory to the test with a prediction based on unrelated data. Let's predict that the currently most violent countries will all have had a lot of leaded in the gasoline, at a point of 20 years ago (the lead time from babies with lead poisoning to adults with mental problems).

The top 4 countries by homicide are Honduras, Venezuela, United States Virgin Islands and Belize.

First, Virgin Islands was reported to use 26 times as much lead in gasoline as the entire United States 20 years ago, data from page 4 of this report. So US Virgin Islands did not remove lead from gasoline at the same time or rate as mainland USA. For an island of 100,000 people to pump out 26 times the lead from gasoline as the entire USA is staggering. Virgin Islands was also putting in much more lead / liter than any other country, 1.12 grams / liter.

Second, in 1995 the only countries in Latin America which hadn't yet begun phasing out leaded gasoline were (from north to south) Belize, Honduras, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay. (page 3 here)

Bolivia and Paraguay don't top the list of homicides like the others. But a quick hypothesis would be that those two countries don't have a high number of cars per person compared to the other 3. 1/6 have a car in Belize, 1/7 have a car in Venezuela, 1/10 have a car in Honduras (but the country is tiny so the pollution is extra concentrated), whereas 1/16 have a car in Bolivia, and 1/20 have a car in Paraguay. So this also fits the hypothesis. Countries with a higher degree of car ownership and/or high population density, which didn't start phasing out leaded gasoline before 1995 have the highest murder rates now, 20 years later.

Belize, Honduras and US Virgin Islands did act to reduce lead levels soon after these reports, which under the lead theory should mean their murder rates have peaked already, and that is what we see in news reports, with rates still high but starting to drop off. Venezuela was the last country in the Americas to ban leaded gasoline, in 2005, although they reduced lead concentrations by 2/3 from 1989 - 1999. Therefore, Venezuela should see homicide rates peaking about 2009 and heavily dropping off by ~2019. 2019 is also the year that President Maduro of Venezuela is up for re-election, so this is good news for Mr Maduro's re-election chances :/ although the coming drop in homicide rates will have nothing to do with his policies, politicians always end up getting credit for whatever happens on their term.

This is an interesting article about the murder rate in Venezuela. The government has one figure, and the opposition has a different, much huger figure (estimated in a pretty silly way though, exponentially extrapolating a short-term trend towards infinity). There is a third set of figures collected by a group which has gone completely unnoticed by the two political camps, which makes it more plausible that it's raw data not affected by politicking - the country's Ministry of Health collects information on births and deaths, and their count of violent deaths is in the middle of the two conflicting estimates, though this figure has never been cited by politicians from either party in the country. The Ministry of Health data suggests murders peaked in 2008 and have fallen ever since.

Who else hadn't started bringing in unleaded gas by 1995? Almost all of Africa and the Middle East, basically.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2017, 04:09:17 am by Reelya »
Logged

Helgoland

  • Bay Watcher
  • No man is an island.
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2014, 05:45:47 am »

PTW, but your last paragraphs are kinda dubious - I doubt that drug cartels fight because they got too much lead when they were little.

I don't have the time to read the articles you posted: Is the data corrected for population density and income levels?
Logged
The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

smjjames

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2014, 10:20:45 am »

You know, I wonder about the Romans. I mean, they used lead for so many things, pipes, food bowls..... and they had quite the appetite for violence.
Logged

Reelya

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2014, 12:44:14 pm »

The medical profession has known about the negative effects on lead in individuals for a long time:
http://www.mwph.org/services/effects_lead_poisoning.htm
Which includes lower IQ and more aggression, there is no conjecture here, it's just what the stuff does. Clearly, the individual effects are the key, and the population-effects flow as an inevitable effect of exposing large groups of people to the stuff:

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/get_the_lead_out/pdfs/health/Lead_Exposure_Linked_to_Violent_Crime.pdf
Quote
Medical research has established a connection between early childhood lead exposure and future criminal activity, especially of a violent nature
(Needleman et al. 1996;Needleman et al.2002;Wright et al. 2008). Numerous studies link elevated bone or blood lead levels with aggression, destructive and delinquent behavior, at tention deficit hyperactivity disorder and criminal behavior(Bellinger et al. 1994;Nevin 2000;Needleman et al. 2002;Needleman 2004;Braun et al.2006;Wright et al. 2008). Broader research links lead exposure to antisocial and destructive behavior in humans and animals(Canfield et al. 2004;Froehlich et al. 2007;Surkan and Zhang 2007).

We're talking about dozens of studies over 5-6 decades linking lead to mental problems. That's why they took the stuff out of gasoline in the 1970's in the first place. The only "new research" is people thinking about group behavior in terms of what lead is known to do to individuals.

http://www.lead.org.au/lanv8n2/Nevin.pdf
Quote
The Nevin study also examined the individual components of violent crime since 1960: aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. For each of these components, and for the overall violent crime rate, Nevin tested the effect of childhood lead exposure and the effect of teen unemployment, the overall unemployment rate, and the proportion of the population in age brackets associated with higher crime rates (ages 15 to 25). Nevin’s statistical analysis found that childhood lead exposure explained 88% of the variation in the overall violent crime rate, while teen unem-
ployment explained just 2%. The effect of overall unemployment and the proportion of the population in younger age brackets were found to be
insignificant.

So, childhood lead poisoning looks like a great predictor of violence in adulthood, whereas youth unemployment is useless as a predictor. This is especially clear when you realize lead poisoning can account for property crime rates better than the unemployment rate does (which is a rough barometer of the number of people living in poverty at the time).

Also in that pdf they talk about lead paint as well. There's a spike in crime that followed lead in gasoline almost perfectly with a ~20 year time lag, but 100 years ago there was also an earlier spike in lead paint, and that was also followed 20 years later by an unexplained spike in the violent crime rate which petered out once lead paints started to be phased out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-barber/lead-poisoning-linked-to-_b_3423272.html
Quote
Some 30 years ago, scientists in Boston discovered that children exposed to lead from gasoline exhausts, dust and paint became impulsive, aggressive and had trouble learning in school.

Now scientists report that when those children grew up, they unleashed a wave of crime on the country.
<...>
In 1979 I interviewed Dr. Herbert Needleman of Harvard University Medical School, the visionary doctor who suspected that lead was having a terrible impact on the children of poor neighborhoods, often laced with busy roads spewing lead in auto exhaust.

He invited local parents to send him their children's baby teeth when they fell out. In cross-sections of the teeth, he was able to discover the record of their lead exposure. Lead is similar to and may replace calcium in the human body.

When he compared the school reports on these children with their record of lead exposure what he found was explosive. High-lead children were much more likely to be out of control and learn poorly in their classes.

Sergarr

  • Bay Watcher
  • (9) airheaded baka (9)
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2014, 12:50:34 pm »

You know, I wonder about the Romans. I mean, they used lead for so many things, pipes, food bowls..... and they had quite the appetite for violence.
So that's the super-serum which turns normal people into battle-hungry maniacs!

Lead.

I wonder if somebody already tried to make super-soldiers by lead?
Logged
._.

Graknorke

  • Bay Watcher
  • A bomb's a bad choice for close-range combat.
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2014, 01:05:41 pm »

Kind of curious, who exactly is "selling lead"?
Logged
Cultural status:
Depleted          ☐
Enriched          ☑

Reelya

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2014, 01:19:10 pm »

http://f1000research.com/articles/2-156/v2

Quote
The first observations of the neurological effects of childhood lead exposure were made in Brisbane in the early 1890s12. For much of the 20th century, lead-based paint was the most common source of lead poisoning in children13. In the 1970s, epidemiologists found that elevated blood lead levels were associated with lower IQ and increased rates of behavioural disturbance14–16. Lead in petrol was then identified as the primary source of environmental lead exposure14,16.

The peak body of the lead industry contested these findings. The industry argued that: lead only caused harm at the high blood levels (80 g/dL) found in cases of lead poisoning; that lower lead levels did not cause harm because lead was a "natural" substance that the human body could efficiently excrete

^ these people, spokespersons for the lead industry. It's not something I made up. For a more recent statement, there's this by the ILA: "International Lead Association":

http://www.ila-lead.org/UserFiles/File/ILA%20Position%20Statement_Lead%20and%20crime%20rates.pdf

Quote
“Presently however, none of the authoritative reviews into this subject have conclusively linked lead exposure to criminal behaviour, so further research is still needed.”

They're sounding a hell of a lot like the tobacco industry and cancer about now ...
« Last Edit: December 07, 2014, 01:23:01 pm by Reelya »
Logged

Graknorke

  • Bay Watcher
  • A bomb's a bad choice for close-range combat.
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2014, 01:21:40 pm »

Ah, in paint. Okay. I forgot about that because it's been banned in this country since, I think, before I was born.
Logged
Cultural status:
Depleted          ☐
Enriched          ☑

Reelya

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2014, 01:28:03 pm »

I wasn't talking about paint, but lead in general. The International Lead Association today is still denying well-established links between lead exposure and criminal bahavior in individuals that was established back in the 1970's and 1980s, in language very similar to tobacco lobby claims that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

The argument they use is that no-one has "conclusively proved" that lead causes the things that high lead exposure children suffer from. But the problem with that is that it would be downright evil to do double-blind trials of lead poisoning to see what happens. This is the reason it can't be "proven" in a clinical science sense. The Lead Industry is basically crying "correlation doesn't prove causation" over and over again in the face of the mounting data.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2014, 01:33:38 pm by Reelya »
Logged

smjjames

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2014, 01:34:30 pm »

I wasn't talking about paint, but lead in general. The International Lead Association today is still denying well-established links between lead exposure and criminal bahavior in individuals that was established back in the 1970's and 1980s, in language very similar to tobacco lobby claims that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

The argument they use is that no-one has "conclusively proved" that lead causes the things that high lead exposure children suffer from. But the problem with that is that it would be downright evil to do double-blind trials of lead poisoning to see what happens. This is the reason it can't be "proven" in a clinical science sense.

What about animals? I realize what the ethics of that would be, but it's the next best thing we have.
Logged

Empiricist

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2014, 01:37:17 pm »

I wasn't talking about paint, but lead in general. The International Lead Association today is still denying well-established links between lead exposure and criminal bahavior in individuals that was established back in the 1970's and 1980s, in language very similar to tobacco lobby claims that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

The argument they use is that no-one has "conclusively proved" that lead causes the things that high lead exposure children suffer from. But the problem with that is that it would be downright evil to do double-blind trials of lead poisoning to see what happens. This is the reason it can't be "proven" in a clinical science sense.

What about animals? I realize what the ethics of that would be, but it's the next best thing we have.

I have a feeling that they would argue that the innate physiological and behavioral differences between species make it inconclusive.
Logged
Quote from: Caellath (on Discord)
<Caellath>: Emp is the hero we don't need, deserve or want

Frumple

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Prettiest Kyuuki
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2014, 01:39:11 pm »

I'd rather imagine they've already done animal testing, or intend to sooner or later. Poisoning (inflicting cancer upon, whatever) and torturing non-human animals for science is basically standard operating procedure.
Logged
Ask not!
What your country can hump for you.
Ask!
What you can hump for your country.

redwallzyl

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2014, 03:38:40 pm »

one of the Cosmos by neil degrasse tyson episodes, 7 i think, covered the initial discovery and research on lead. it's all animate and such to. that gives a good recounting of the lead industry's arguments and such.
Logged

Graknorke

  • Bay Watcher
  • A bomb's a bad choice for close-range combat.
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2014, 06:21:10 pm »

I wasn't talking about paint, but lead in general.
What I was asking is what consumer products actually contain lead. It's not exactly the most day-to-day useful metal.
Logged
Cultural status:
Depleted          ☐
Enriched          ☑

Helgoland

  • Bay Watcher
  • No man is an island.
    • View Profile
Re: Lead poisoning and violent crime rates
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2014, 06:26:46 pm »

Eh, it may not have many high-profile applications, but it is fairly useful: To keep water out of your attic, to keep your curtains going straight down, to make bullets, to go diving... Basically any application where you either need an easily malleable metal that's less expensive than gold or a very heavy material in places where there's little space.
Logged
The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6