Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...
It seems clear that other factors play a more important role. Things like police effectiveness, or economics.
Edit: reference for lead ban dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead
This article has some data about lead levels in children in Brazil: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1...
In Brazil, Teixeira (32) has found that 11% of pipes used in the water distribution systems of 100 schools in São Paulo present lead levels above the limit considered safe by the WHO. In 2% of the water samples, the lead level was found to be five-fold higher than the highest acceptable value (< 10 µg/L, according to the WHO), thereby threatening the neuropsychiatric health of children.
Several studies have shown that high BLL in preschool children are strongly correlated with high lead levels in house dust (33-35). This association has been attributed to dust intake from the frequent hand-to-mouth behavior of young children. Flaking lead-based paint, road dust, garden soil and airborne lead-bearing particles are believed to be the sources of lead in household dust (36).
Leaded gas has caused more exposure to the metal than any other source worldwide (37). According to the São Paulo State Health Department (19), about 80% of the lead found in urban air samples before 1982 was derived from leaded gas. Car battery manufacture is the main source of secondary lead (38), but other sources cannot be discarded.
None of that is to say that lead is the only factor of course, just that I don't think your data disproves the theory that lead plays a significant part.
If lead was banned at different times in different countries, the bans can't be responsible for a crime drop that happened at the same time.
Exactly: (Lead => Crime) =/> (Crime => Lead).
I can't speak to the implementation of lead reduction leading to the outright ban in Brazil, but in the USA the outright ban was more of an after-the-fact recognition of the reality rather than an enforcement action.
However, if lead was widely used in Brazil right up until the ban date there (1989) then it would stand to reason that the crime rate wouldn't start dropping for another six or seven years.
This is not logically sound. Brazil could have other factors which increase crime more than getting rid of lead reduces it. The fact that Brazil's crime has increased does not, in any way, tell us that the lead ban couldn't possibly be a major factor in the US's drop in crime.
There are reasons to be skeptical of any claim based on correlations between such widely separated variables as lead exposure (the cause) and crime (the effect). Consuming lead does not instantly turn someone into a criminal in the way that consuming vitamin C cures scurvy. It affects the child’s developing brain, which makes the child duller and more impulsive, which, in some children, and under the right circumstances, leads them to grow up to make short-sighted and risky choices, which, in some children and under the right circumstances, leads them to commit crimes, which, if enough young people act in the same way and at the same time, affects the crime rate. The lead hypothesis correlates the first and last link in this chain, but it would be more convincing if there were evidence about the intervening links. Such correlations should be far stronger than the one they report: presumably most kids with lead are more impulsive, whereas only a minority of impulsive young adults commit crimes. If they are right we should see very strong changes in IQ, school achievement, impulsiveness, childhood aggressiveness, lack of conscientiousness (one of the “Big Five” personality traits) that mirror the trends in lead exposure, with a suitable time delay. Those trends should be much stronger than the time-lagged correlation of lead with crime itself, which is only indirectly related to impulsiveness, an effect that is necessarily diluted by other causes such as policing and incarceration.
http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_o...
On the other hand, if a convincing causal chain can't be identified, it shouldn't be assumed true either. It should go into the (very large) pool of interesting possibilities that may or may not be substantiated if someone wants to invest in the time and energy to research.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olym...
http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-...
Also, most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead. The FAA, AOPA and others are working on developing alternatives, but it takes time. Perhaps they should have done this sooner.
Your points about engines and fuel make sense, though.
I pay about $85/hour to fly and don't own a plane. If I lived in the USA it would be $68/hr due to lower gas prices. I think the majority of Americans can afford to spend $68/month on their hobby (assuming they flew once a month).
I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of dollars into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?
I often wondered the same thing, given that neither I nor my parents had anywhere near that much money to fritter away.
I think it comes down to parents directly or indirectly though. You can make a fair amount of money with a summer job and part-time job the rest of the year, when you don't have to pay for rent, food, etc.
It becomes harder to maintain a hobby once you have to move out and live on your own.
So they could change engines, but would rather continue to poison us to save the cost/loss of performance. AOPA is fighting against it in the bureaucratic way, via numerous stalling tactics, for 40 years now:
http://www.aopa.org/Media-Relations/Position-Papers/Issues-r...
If your toys cost as much as new cars, you are rich and can afford to stop poisoning us.
The majority of private pilots I've met are hardworking people (not rich) who love aviation. They either rent from a flying club or partnership, or own a cheap cessna 150/172 or homebuilt. You can buy a decent buck 50 for about $20k, which doesn't make you rich if you own one. The average HN programmer earns $150k+ if they work at Microsoft (like you), Google or facebook in silicon valley. That's fairly rich, and it's a bit hypocritical of you to be calling me rich when my income for the past few years has been around $40k. I used to earn over 100k 15 years ago, but I chose lifestyle over stress and being rich.
I pay $50/hr dry to fly a friend's plane, and he's not rich. He is retired and never earned much money during his career. He can only afford to own a plane because he was left money by his father, and also because his wife has a good pension. He absolutely loves flying, so that is what he has decided to spend his retirement money on. He drives a falling-apart car from the early 90s.
Getting back to the discussion: the high compression engines that run avgas tend to be in light twins, which are mostly used to train airline pilots, air-taxis, medevac, etc. There certainly are some rich people with high performance piston planes, but that is probably a minority. At the moment there simply isn't any viable engine replacement for these planes. AOPA is actually working hard with industry groups to find a drop-in replacement for avgas, which will work in all these engines. It's not an easy thing to do, as you have to make sure the new fuel isn't going to damage the engine, cause an engine failure, etc.
Perhaps they should have started looking for a replacement earlier. Part of the problem is that there isn't too much innovation in aircraft engines, in order to avoid possible problems and because it's very expensive to develop (and aircraft sales are a few orders of magnitude lower than car sales). Even new aircraft piston engines don't tend to have ECU/FADECs (or even electronic timing).
2) Small airplanes aren't necessarily expensive, so you don't necessarily have to be rich to afford them. For instance, there's a Cessna 150 in good condition for sale on ebay for $16500 right now.
3) The FAA is actively working on unleaded replacements.
4) Many small planes can already run on unleaded.
Something should probably be done about the use of leaded fuel in general aviation. However, trying to turn it into class warfare (while every single pilot I know, and I know a lot of them, is middle-class) severely hurts your argument.
I would still say "rich jerks" is overstating things, but there's not zero relevance.
Give me an electric powered tri (trash) cycle anyday.
If the effects of chemical substances on the brain are indeed a factor... and yes, they probably are. Then there is probably a far more simple explanation.
Drugs.
Instead of police being faced with impoverished young men of the 70s, 80s and 90s who are hyped up on cocaine, crack or pcp and trolling for their next hit. They are dealing with the impoverished young men of today, high on pot and trolling for snacks. That is, they would be trolling for snacks if the munchies are ever able to override their desire to keep playing whatever video game.
If we consider the issue in a rational fashion for a moment, it's not terribly surprising that Rodney King was hyped up on PCP and trolling for another hit, whereas Trayvon Martin was high on pot and trolling for snacks.
And, again, when one tries to consider the matter rationally, these two people represent two fundamentally different elements. With predictable impact on statistics when their stories are "writ large" in a society.
If your crime is coming from demographic groups like this... then your crime will probably change with the changing drug use pattern.
It's not a popular notion, because it smacks of "evil"... but drugs really can be used to determine and direct the course of a society.
Reaching???
There was strong evidence that lead caused widespread and permanent damage to children's brains. Therefore the USA spent billions to remove it from our environment. After it is removed, asking whether this made a difference IS NOT a reach.
PARTICULARLY NOT when compared to a hypothesis of differences in drug use over time that you've provided no evidence for.
>asking whether this made a difference
You're equivocating here, intentionally. The question is whether it made a difference in crime, not whether it "made a difference."
My standard is that I don't use phrases like "reaching" unless I either am quite positive of what I will say, or am somewhat certain then did a Google search to verify.
You're equivocating here, intentionally. The question is whether it made a difference in crime, not whether it "made a difference."
I assure you that any equivocation was absolutely unintentional. I have been aware for years from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07... and other articles that the correlation between lead exposure and criminal statistics has been examined and proved very strong. And, of course, we have the known causal links between lead exposure and behavioral problems that could potentially lead to criminal acts.
Thus we have strong evidence of both correlation and causation between lead poisoning in childhood and criminal behavior decades later.
Downvoted for being hilarious while talking out of your ass. FYI, pot has a (very) mellowing and relaxing effect. The idea of the munchies as some sort of dangerous rampage in search of food is hilarious; it usually involves more sitting on the couch and putting some Pink Floyd on (or Flying Lotus if you like rap, whatever), than presenting menaces to racially prejudiced vigilantes.
PCP is a dissociative anaesthetic. You aren't going to be very dangerous on it. More like dizzy, and confused, and very clumsy. Hardly killer stuff, for others at least.
Now, what's funny is the drugs you don't mention. Some people on cocaine, or alcohol, usually white Wall Street guys and other posh denizens, can behave like assholes. The kind of people who'll be self-aggrandizing, selfish douches, and hit you on the neck from behind if they get angry. But, since neighborhood watchers don't kill white drunkards, there's no need to rationalize retroactively our racism with those drugs.
I'm not sure why he's been downvoted to gray. I don't know that his ideas extend well to areas outside of NYC, but there's at least one (fairly large) data point lending credence to his notions.
I wonder if marijuana used by teenagers could sometimes have a similiar effect; the actual payload is peaceful and gentle, but seen as part of the broader system of someone's emotional development, there might be a net-negative effect of antisocial behavior. (Hippies may smoke pot, but so do violent gangsters.)
I'm not reflexively pot-negative; it's absolutely nothing compared to alcohol, and should not be illegal (among other things, street dealers don't ask for ID). But like you, I'd be very interested to see the data.
We aren't reaching. There is strong evidence for lead being a major factor
Sounds like a totally unrelated issue.
In my country we had a 400% raise in burglaries etc in the course of 15 years, and it was all due to poverty (including an iflux of poor unskilled illegal immigration).
Oh, and that was AFTER the "lead cleanup".
Crime can go up and down with no relation to lead whatsoever, as it has in tons of places.