Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity

[MountainLaurel]

Rudy Giuliani never misses an opportunity to remind people about his track record in fighting crime as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.

"I began with the city that was the crime capital of America," Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox's Chris Wallace. "When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent."

snip

Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html?hpid=topnews

There goes Giuliani's New York miracle.

:rofl: :rofl:

[NoodleyAppendage]

1. A = C, but what about "B"? Poverty! Duh.

Lead exposure is more likely in economically depressed areas, which are populated by peoples with poor educational opportunities. Poverty is a greater predictor of criminal activity and is the likely shared, but unmeasured, third variable in the lead = criminals equation.

J

[papau]

2. classic logic problem of A is true, B is true, are they related? Correlation deserves

investigation - but is not a great proof of anything.