Lead: America's Real Criminal Element (2013)
motherjones.com
motherjones.com
"An Updated Lead-Crime Roundup for 2018", Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 1 Feb 2018.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
I don't find that especially unfortunate.
A different approach I find compelling involves those who look at different time scales. Especially, violent crime has been declining since colonial times in the US and around the globe - with specific exceptions. While the overall downward trend needs explanation, any moment where crime is declining is normal and the moments of upturn seem to be what needs explanation. And the explanation here is often the aftermath of war, soldiers who've learned to kill coming home.
Of course this isn't to claim lead pollution is in any way acceptable but whether it lead to violent crime is a fuzzy question.
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-...
I don't think the stats bear that out. Veterans may suffer PTSD and other ailments, but I don't think they contribute disproportionally to US crime statistics.
Brazil hasn't been at war recently, but they have high crime rate.
I wonder if drug trafficking and the global drug war counts? I mean it's in some ways even more violent, but I guess then I'm mixing up cause and effect... interesting to think about.
Veterans also face negative stereotypes which does not help anything either. Pro veteran groups tend to talk about all those openly, as they want to get more help to veterans before it all happens.
I wouldn't exactly say I have my thumb on the pulse of Australia, but I don't seem to observe a negative stereotype for ex service personnel here.
Lead level in blood is connected to crime in in state level inside the US and other countries. Different states and different countries had differentl levels of exposure and they stopped using leaded gas at different times.
There is also direct evidence of neurotoxicity of lead.
Years ago I had lead pipes replaced in the building where I lived. Zero difference... except for the fact that I'd actually drink tap water.
Surprisingly, it's not really a huge deal.
EDIT: I don't mean to be a dick or even argue, I'm just pointing out that these problems do affect people, just maybe not most people through an effective combination of factors that reduces risk (where you live, whether you can afford a filter, etc). I certainly grew up on tap water and I am mildly disturbed people are ok with it causing massive mental health issues.
EDIT 2: Finally, I don't filter water I cook with; I imagine lead would still be a problem there. I probably should filter that water too in Oakland....
Anyway, growing up middle class in the 80s and 90s, we had a filtered water spout on our sink. If you weren't poor, they were fairly common. Once lead was removed from the supply lines, we still continued to use them since it also stripped out chlorine etc.
My point is, work-arounds for leaded drinking water weren't impactful enough to cause crime themselves.
If you want to attribute a drastic decline in violent crime to drinking glasses filling slightly faster you're going to need some extraordinary evidence.
Ahh, I see your point. Places with high amounts of lead also have high numbers of old buildings predating lead paint laws, industrial runoff and/or dumping, and many other sources--see Fruitvale.
There certainly are other factors, but lead exposure seem like the strongest.
Not really, infrastructure changes of various sorts are often correlated with socio-economic factors. There's a reason Flint, MI's water system was wantonly destroyed and not that of a wealth Connecticut Suburb.
Anyway, there are still researchers doubting whether lead was the primary cause of the 80s-2000s rise and decline of violence. Just googling, see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3829390/
But the main thing is single causes are hard in complex things like human society.
If this is true, then why was the end of the largest war in human history associated with a period of historically low violence in the US?
I assume soldiers come home in waves.
Also consider that the US forces did not get the worst of the war in global terms. Plus, the relationship between the occupying forces and civilians was totally different for WWII / Vietnam.
It was less than 100 years ago that we thought it was a good idea to (1) put lead in paint, (2) put asbestos in building materials, (3) put x-ray machines in shoe stores so people could casually look at their feet (learned this from a relative).
We are only a few generations away from some literal dark age shit.
Sorry, but it seems you don’t actually know anything about diesels.
Diesel exhaust is a Group 1 carcinogen, which causes lung cancer and has a positive association with bladder cancer.[2][3][4][5][6] It contains several substances that are also listed individually as human carcinogens by the IARC.
And if it comes out of the exhaust ports on a dieeel engine is actual diesel exhaust.
All that aside, airosoled diesel still wouldn’t be something you’d want to inhale much of.
In the vein of: i know 98.5% of scientists agree X will harm me, my children, my loved ones and neighbors. The other 1.5% have questionable sponsors, but X is not yet illegal and costs half the price of X-alternative ... so i'm using it one last time. Anyway, if it was really that bad, the gov't would have banned it by now anyway, so ... and then i take another free plastic bag.
The way Americans may see that is the way Scandinavia sees lead pipes. I mean, flint was so many years ago, why haven’t you improved things?
I’d ask how it feels to be such a puppet of someone else’s game... but that would require some self awareness.
Sorry
Detroit ends it's contract with flint, flint moves to water from the flint river, change in water chemistry has disastrous effects (not just lead).
Are you saying instead of engineers screwing up the water treatment (failing to match new water to old) the city managers told them to let the water chemistry change? Do you have any evidence of that?
http://www.newsweek.com/pruitt-trump-asbestos-chemicals-trum...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-epa-allowing-asbestos-p...
Lead had a huge lobby during its heyday. The inventor of leaded fuel [1] would have exhibitions where he would sit and huff leaded fuel, pour it on his hands, and so on. And there was extensive corporate backed science arguing that it was all perfectly safe. Incidentally he's also the guy who invented CFCs, which also ended up banned. Interesting character!
lesson: interpreting corporate funded science inversely is sometimes a faster route to the truth than waiting for them to come around.
Late in life he was disabled by polio. After inventing a system of ropes and pulleys to assist his aides in lifting him from his bed, he became entangled in it and died of strangulation.
He's almost a real-world version of Pratchett's Discworld inventor Bloody Stupid Johnson.
What's really sad is that this method isn't too far off from the way the pharma industry works today.
A good example is electromagnetic radiation. We know quite well the effects of specific wavelengths at defined intensity on living organisms. Some wavelengths are lethal at certain doses, some seem to have no visible effect. Given how ubiquitous radio communication is these days, one would think it's in our best interests to conduct large-scale studies on long-term effects of the wavelengths most commonly used on living cells. It would be tragic to discover the effects are there but because the related EMR is so widespread it's hard to correlate these factors in the population.
the in vitro data we have is uninspiring. you can prompt cells to lose viability if you expose them to EMR (radio from what i remember) in very contrived and artificial conditions with exposure far beyond what humans would absorb.
yeah, it probably would be better for you to not have all these waves bouncing around/through us. but i think it could be much worse.
While I agree that we shouldn't be wrapping every hot water pipe in asbestos and painting kids bikes with led paint there's got to be a more flexible middle ground between outright ban and allowing widespread use. Leaded brass plumbing fittings are everywhere (and labeled to indicate they should not be used for potable water) and nobody complains.
I wish asbestos in particular were still available for situations where you need insulation that's really hard to catch on fire, there's really no replacement for it that I'm aware of.
This is a statement that's technically true, and at the same time practically wrong. If the context is that I'm going to be eating tomatoes from my garden, what's likely to happen is that if my yield doubles, my consumption doubles (unless I have a massive garden and can't eat everything I grow). So now I'm eating the same amount of lead, just in a bigger package!
Store bought food isn't actually "perfect." I limit my rice consumption in part because it contains arsenic.[1]
Antibiotic resistant infections are a serious and growing threat. The CDC indicates that one in five such infections are "caused by germs from food and animals." This is from info they put out about antibiotic resistant infections and food safety. [2]
There are lots and lots of articles out there about unsafe cookware. The ones that pop to the top are mostly from disreputable sources. I've tried to find one that doesn't sound too nutty. [3]
I began avoiding aluminum cookware long before it was some kind of hot trend. I strongly favor glass bakeware and enamel cookware. It gets dismissed as nutty on forums like HN to talk about things like the dangers of teflon cookware, but if you are really seriously concerned about food safety (and metal poisoning in specific), you need to stop and think about the chemical impact on your food of the kind of cookware you use.
We actively recommend that people cook with iron pots and pans to treat anemia.[4] So it's not like we are unaware that the materials your cookware are made of can imbue your food with metals. But we typically downplay the seriousness of using things like aluminum cookware and anyone who adheres too strictly to such a guideline or too loudly advocates such a guideline is dismissed as a nutter.
I have a genetic disorder, a form of Cystic Fibrosis. I exchanged emails with a PhD biologist met through HN who kindly answered some of my questions. My belief is that my genetic disorder predisposes me to retain metals at a higher rate than normal. This guy said that given the function of the CFTR (the defective cell channel responsible for CF symptoms), that did not sound like crazy talk to him.
So I am pretty careful about exposure to metals in food and other details of food chemistry while also trying to not just make myself absolutely nuts.
My "professional opinion" -- as a former homemaker and person who never completed my BS in Environmental Resource Management :) -- is that if you have contaminated soil in your yard and you want to garden, then you should pursue a "square foot" gardening style approach and create fresh elevated beds from imported clean soils and compost for whatever small plants you desire to grow.
A desire to grow fruit trees is not conducive to that approach and most homeowners will not have the means to remove all contaminated soils on their property and replace them for purposes of planting trees. At that point, you can try to remediate the soil to some degree or give up on having food producing trees or have soil testing and make a judgement call.
There are no 100% safe foods on the planet. Over the years I've read a lot of things about what is in our food that really turned my stomach and made me lose my appetite. Then I developed some best practices to try to limit the damage, and I put my blinders on and I try to not think about those details too much while actually eating.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/from-farm-to-table...
https://www.cdc.gov/features/antibiotic-resistance-food/inde...
https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/challenges/antibiotic-resista...
[3] http://aspenintegrativemedicine.com/how-safe-is-your-cookwar...
[4] https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/energy/use-cast-iron-...
And plants tend not to absorb it. So your tomatoes are okay.
Amendment is adding something to improve the soil. Manure or peat or whatever.
" Do not grow leafy vegetables or root or tuber crops (carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips) in lead-contaminated soils. Grow them in raised beds filled with clean soil, where the clean soil cannot become contaminated with paint flakes, chips, or dust.
Fruits that are marketed as vegetables, such as tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, and squash, may be grown in lead-contaminated soils will not accumulate significant concentrations of lead.
The primary risk of lead consumption from eating a plant grown in a lead-contaminated soil is from ingesting lead-rich soil that adheres to the surface of the plant. Therefore, washing and peeling greatly reduces the risk of ingesting lead deposited on surfaces of vegetables and fruits "[0]
You were probably just pissed off that you lived in a shitty apartment building.
So if the only factor in aggression is the amount of lead in the body, then we would have to assume it takes time for the symptoms to subside as well.
This can also be seen in big fish such as Tuna, which eat lots of small fish (which have consumed various heavy metals) and live for many years.
For most of these old toxic things, where plausible, the best option is to just seal it and leave it alone.
/s
The guy who invented lead-in-petrol also invented CFCs. He also died quite horribly from some contraption he made to hoist himself out of bed.
The downside to not having lead in petrol is that the raw material for the disturbing U.S. movies of the 70's has gone away, so if 'Dirty Harry' was made today then the rogues in it would not be as plausible.
You don't magically get better if you end up with heavy metal poisoning. Without treatment, it tends to remain in your tissues permanently. (However, life is chemistry and there are some foods that can promote the removal of metals, such as cilantro which is commonly found in Mexican fare.)
My guess would be the old building had mold or fungus issues. If you are otherwise in good health and don't wind up with a bona-fide fungal infection, moving out of such a situation would go a long ways towards resolving your issues.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-09-21/news/960921009...
https://www.neatorama.com/2012/10/15/Salem-Witch-Trials-The-...
You've pretty much described every old house in the US.
Vitamins for convicts could save taxpayers' money
Our reward structures aren't always lined up with optimal responses to current conditions.
For example, lots of communist countries had ridiculous levels of lead pollution. Does this show up in their crime & IQ stats, as articles like this suggest it should? They also (sometimes) took great effort to mix up the population, putting all social classes in the same building... which would help avoid one complaint here, that obviously people who could afford to do so chose not to live in the most polluted bits of American cities.
This could be the source of "smart Asian" stereotype.
But, I don't know if atmospheric lead pollution is uniform globally or localized.
I find it interesting that lead use also seems to follow the trajectory of drug usage / permissiveness in the '70s: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/06/15/grass-roots-the-rise-and-...
The same thing happened in Flynt, but the city cheaped out on the pH control chemicals, the protective layer was dissolved, and eventually the pipes with lead in them started leaching.
They also used lead cook pots to reduce grape juice to Defrutum.
And the Romans used to smelt lead in Italy and banned the practice eventually. I've never seen a description of a Roman lead smelting operation but I can imagine.
On the other hand I haven't seen anyone trying look for lead poisoning in Roman era bones. Just looked found this.
http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2012/01/lead-poisoning-in-ro...
Incidentally, the list of countries where leaded petrol is still used, or was banned most recently, is basically a list of countries where bad things happen: "Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, and Afghanistan". But the causality probably goes the other way; leaded petrol is cheaper.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4843640/Roman...
Just remembered an ex gf worked in a museum. She said they used to dust taxidermist specimens with arsenic powder to prevent pests and decay. So a lot of display items are problematic. Toxic, irreplaceable, and you can't just throw them out either.
Is there directional data to suggest a connection? Sure. But there have been plenty of theories like this that have turned out to be complete bunk.
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."