Lead Poisoning Linked to Violent Crime

for very long time this country we've been trying to figure out why we saw crime increase over happily between about the nineteen sixties to the early nineteen nineties and kevin drum for mother jones wrote this unbelievable article uh... about how my could've possibly played a role in advise rents and crime in this country now it's ridiculous you know you led to really how's that going to make people more violent house i can increase crime well there was a researcher up back in nineteen ninety-four by a team of return event he studied as a a consultant for the u_s_ department of housing and urban development and with that out was that uh... ladd was having a negative impact on of brain development sweater came to high q_ whether it came to dot the prefrontal cortex which actually manages your behavior uh... in your impulses things like that and he started realizing that there was eight correlation uh... between uh... alleged in the environment and violent crime in fact let's take a quick look at this you know if you shaped uh... graph and it shows you how with the increase of leg in the environment you sign increase of crime so again this is just establishing a correlation not causation but will get to causation just a second with had wanted that huge gipp in violent crime in the nineteen nineties and so many different theories and i remember covering it and all the ferry was for example in new york while my dad dramatically was uh... the broken windows theory that if you have one broken window leading many broken windows so if you fix with small little things like people jumping a turnstiles in some way of getting rid of the squeegee men is guiliani did when he was mayor of new york and build brand uh... did when he was a police commissioner there it'll actually lead too that etc asking positive effect and everybody like that theory i like that because it was logical intimate sense of that would work here's the part that nobody ever explain and i always thought but we demand there is there's a big problem here because it wasn't just new york that crime went down and nobody could ever explain it to me and in fact in washington l_a_ dallas it went down to seventy seventy five percent and bill bradley was in all those places the investing one of the on allied but they can do all those same programs in the nineties impact in new york wives are going on in nineteen ninety which is three years before guiliani in brighton got their so there was something always fishy about that it whenever you go to any explanation is kevin drum explain in their own you don't dozens of explanations of why crime went up in the white crime went down you would never match the data perfectly and going into this article i was skeptical website land i'd no one really uh... you know the assumption or they're not trying to prove that leg is the only reason why crime happens of course there are different factors that play a role but today denied that lead does not play a role at all would be naive and there's overwhelming evidence that proves that so as i mentioned al you know i rating that and was able to prove or to shell correlation however in the nineteen ease another researcher from harvard university came along jessica radius that want to show causation and the way that she did that was she pointed to p_p_ regulations so that you can get involved in the realize that lead is harmful to our brain development uh... and it has a negative impact on the white matter on the brain matter so recent do whatever is possible to get rid of it from the environment we started banane leading our gasoline in nineteen ninety six which was fairly recently on and we also started taking action against leg in housing okay so homes built built before nineteen sixty uh... had lead-based paint and there was also alleged cult on windows so as a result that was having an impact it wasn't forcing us to too much work as soon as the e_p_a_ got involved we started seeing more regulations but it was not uniform throughout the entire country ok so i wanted to great things about that number one ivy leasing that was the lead in the pain but it turns out that's not will cause the most fun and it was the leaded gasoline yes that was the primary driver of all the so it actually literally went up in the air and whatever he was for his wife were date because the partly assume is a big city there's more people there's nothing to be more crime it turns out since we have removed the lead from gasoline that's not true small towns and big cities have the same crime rate and one possible reason that lead would have had a bigger effect in the big cities is this is more cars in a smaller area and so the lead to from the gasoline built up more yet affected people more right and so what and enter in the second one is there a point sublet you know like for example by the crisis go down in nineteen ninety that you know we said six elections in ninety six her point is here let me show you the different places where we took different action on wed and what it led to so and this is when you look at all these different studies what really swung the isn't just new york isn't just one of the studies it's a cabin mission two or three studies part of whatever smashing here they did it by city they did it by state lead levels crime up down okay big by country yeah no matter where the d_n_a_ you see lead levels go up crime goes up blood levels go down crime goes down now you know i mean correlation all day long but it was to look at the data and by the way when you show the data on how light affects the human mind well that it becomes at event of an overwhelming to end by the way lab as i mentioned wendy's act anti letter regulations were implemented they weren't implemented uniformly so even within the united states you would see these variations right where you would see crimes decrease as soon as you add take that lead regulations uh... you know in in that area what would you implement them so so that's when the harvard university press uh... researcher kids involved and she shows she provides further proof to show that it's more than just a correlation and and you can see how my closet if eight really leads to these effects in the right in the mind which apparently dot and let me let me be clear as to why it would make people more violent it's because of what it does in the prefrontal cortex write the great matter of the brain now this is the part that regulates your behavior so if you gain if you are exposed to too much lead at an early age and you have that much damage to your prefrontal cortex then you can control impulses you're more likely to be violent and this is tough disproven by m_r_i_ scans and more ice can sign yet and so when you look at uh... and one of the studies the breakdown or elan's within the city district by district and wherever they see the highest lead that contamination is with the cedar heights about a crime bill but it's a seat that it's you know if this same areas are poor etcetera but where there's more lead there's more crime and so the evidence mounts and mounts a mass and by the way cc women now working on we've been at unleaded gasoline so we should be the others that you see of course crime depict but the lead is not god unfortunately it has settled in the sort yak exiled in the soil we ask that we have to take further uh... efforts to endeavor to dot legends line also keep in mind that in the summertime when the weather gets extremely dry out what happens is that so gets picked up into the air novice and we have that atmospheric lead playing a role in our environment so and of course that has an impact on our brains search was first established in the early in the mid-nineteen ninety so why is it coming up now twice kevin from bring it up now and how come criminologist never focused on it it's because for instance law enforcement they wanna make sure that the work that they're doing is important right private prison cos they wanna make sure that incarceration incarcerating more people has led to the decrease in crime he made another great pointed out of that so we're just over the top on this employees an article uh... looked at it pops wanna say it's all because of the cops and what about the drug warriors to right any other drug war it's a it's always the drugs give us more money to do more war on drugs yeah brands in the guiliani for politicians wanted credit nobody wins politically if it turns out it's the lead and so ever resort don't know where they're headed over all the evidence of but those are encircled the cleanup in oregon and other so it's not a rat would take about twenty billion dollars uh... sounds like a lot of money but uh... kevin drum except compelling case that you would save many multiples of that and by the way things are quiet in canton and i don't like and brief cortex being overweight vital and can we also just give a quick big ups to the e_p_a_ mhm because the e_p_a_ is the reason why we saw change and regulations when he came to eleven or gasoline for the one for the e_p_a_ we would continue to see leaded gasoline let let me and go further on that point possessive twitterrific point always has already mentioned kozol somewhat deceptive the e_p_a_ had not dc eric push to go towards a common gasoline give the let out literally uh... out of our society that chart one and that you that shortly disputed kept going up or at least able lies when this levels of violent crime which is the level of it devastating effect you would have on our society will cost us billions of got trillions of dollars in lost income yani atlas lines analyst goes on our so that you can see this and they won't know eliane suffering by going in that direction and by the way you know people always say of progressives their week they can't get anything done na na na high that's why we studied money in politics the weather data mass level in nineteen seventy eight when the supreme court said corporations have the right to spend on limited money in politics and they didn't have the unlimited right to give political donations of full citizens united but they could have taken to make political camp they could do lobby in the could use some donations the senate that night was quorum court right was established in nineteen seventy eight before then ralph nader dot nixon to pass the e_p_a_ you know so welfare has done some questionable things later in august the famous in two thousand costing more that election and people are strong opinions about that either way right but you have a detonator credit man he the radar mainers at the time they got pushed uh... that's what they were called the guy who should they got seat belts they got the dvd n_b_c_ on called millions of lives so man whatever they tell you by mel regulation is not necessary don't believe the height local what a difference this man