In a startling report, a recent Mother Jones article claims there is a strong connection between lead levels in the environment and violent crime.
“Lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America,” researchers wrote. “Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the ‘40s and ‘50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.”
The report tracked leaded gas consumption and found crime declining at the same rate as consumption. “Where it declined quickly, crime declined quickly,” the researcher found.
Researchers continued the study by examining several states and different countries at different times and found the same results—“where consumption of leaded gasoline declined quickly, crime would decline quickly too.”
Canada, Great Britain, France, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, and West Germany showed the same correlation between lead levels and violent crime, according to researcher Rick Nevin.
When the Mother Jones reporter asked Nevin if he had ever found a county that didn’t fit the theory, he replied, “No, not one.”
“Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century,” Mother Jones reports.
The effect of lead on people is worse than thought, Mother Jones claims. Neurological research shows early childhood exposure to lead “at nearly any level can seriously and permanently reduce IQ.”
Parts of the brain that control aggression and “executive functions” are damaged from high childhood exposure to lead, “and the impact turns out to be greater among boys,” the researchers assert. Childhood exposure to lead damage parts of the brain “that makes us most human.”
Not much attention has been paid to the medical reasons for violent crime because researchers traditionally have focused on behavioral causes to explain crime and therefore expect to find a behavioral connection to violent crime, not a medical connection, the Mother Jones article concludes.