on lead poisoning
The link to this Mother Jones article on America's Real "Criminal Element" has been going around, and I finally clicked on the one in 
jjhunter's blog because they included this excerpt:Experts often suggest that crime resembles an epidemic. But what kind? Karl Smith, a professor of public economics and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once-as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be-the cause is a molecule.
A molecule? That sounds crazy. What molecule could be responsible for a steep and sudden decline in violent crime?
Well, here's one possibility: Pb(CH2CH3)4.
I found it more convincing (and less ethically troubling) than the Freakonomics argument about legalized abortion, at any rate!
And then I felt immediately compelled to go look up lead soil test results for Philadelphia, and sigh. (Other major cities are probably comparable. The article attributes the now-nonexistent difference between crime in major and minor cities to air pollution levels in the days of leaded gasoline, aggravated by the use of cars and buses rather than rail, so it ties closely to every other urban issue.)
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jjhunter's blog because they included this excerpt:Experts often suggest that crime resembles an epidemic. But what kind? Karl Smith, a professor of public economics and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once-as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be-the cause is a molecule.
A molecule? That sounds crazy. What molecule could be responsible for a steep and sudden decline in violent crime?
Well, here's one possibility: Pb(CH2CH3)4.
I found it more convincing (and less ethically troubling) than the Freakonomics argument about legalized abortion, at any rate!
And then I felt immediately compelled to go look up lead soil test results for Philadelphia, and sigh. (Other major cities are probably comparable. The article attributes the now-nonexistent difference between crime in major and minor cities to air pollution levels in the days of leaded gasoline, aggravated by the use of cars and buses rather than rail, so it ties closely to every other urban issue.)
This entry has
comments. Leave a comment? (Click "Log in with OpenID?", top right corner.)