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America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
2muchcoffeeman writes "The cause of the great increase in violent crime that started in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s may have been isolated: lead. This leads directly to the reason for the sharp decline in violent crime since then: lead abatement programs and especially the ban of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent in gasoline starting in 1996. There are three reasons why this makes sense. First, the statistics correlate almost perfectly. Second, it holds true worldwide with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Third, the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person's ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility. Another thing that stands out: if you overlay a map showing areas with higher incidence of violent crime with one showing lead contamination, there's a strikingly high correlation."
its not lead its the upbringing of people out of poverty
over the last 40 some years the poverty rate has fallen, lots of products are cheap now. 30 years ago if poor people were bored they would go rob or kill someone. They called it Wilding in NYC like when the central park jogger was raped and beaten. these days poor people have x-boxes and you just play call of duty to pass the time
poor people have so much stuff compared to 40-50 years ago there is almost no reason to rob and kill any more
Now criminals and social workers can add this to their pathetic excuse list which includes upbringing , enviroment , education , right-on-isms, basically anything except their own half witted feckless personalities.
I grew up in london in the 1970s which had millions of cars running on leaded vehicles. Yet strangely I didn't go out mugging old ladies or robbing banks or rioting.
is still suffering from lead poisoning? Talking of the genocides and the rampant insecurity in most parts of Africa.
What a crock of sh*t! I grew up around lead, lead pipes in the house, lead paint, lead-acid batteries, etc. I haven't tried to kill anyone, and last I knew, I had a very high IQ (well, at least in HS, many, many years ago anyway), so this study is BS! We need lead in every day life. We need lead in solder, batteries, electronics, weights, etc. Lead is a very important metal, we can not do without it.
I am so sick of these environmentalist freaks, so sick.
You know, except for the whole fact that we know lead sequestering directly affects mental function in ways that cause the individual to become more violent.
You're matching symptoms, like the autism anti-vaxers. Hitting your head with a hammer causes headache. Consuming mass quantities of beer causes headache. Conclusion, beer is obviously made out of hammers, after all they both cause the same symptoms therefore must be the same scientific effect.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Alternative theory: Hydrocarbon contamination causes brain damage. Duh. Different hydrocarbons cause different levels of damage. Duh.
WHY WAS LEAD ADDED TO GASOLINE? Talk to a competent chemist. Basically straight chain hydrocarbons are great liquid fuels other than the low octane pre-detonation thing, which can be fixed with a dose of TEL (which also is a great exhaust valve lube, as a side effect). So leaded gasolines were ridiculously straight chain... non-leaded has to be much higher quality fuel to get a decent octane number without the lead. Obviously different hydrocarbons are going to cause different brain damage levels. So I'd not be surprised to learn that inhaling tons of non-catalytic converter straight chain hydrocarbons Fs up the brain a lot worse than basically clean air coming our of catalytic converter cars powered by non-straight chain hydrocarbons. After all, whats likely to F someone up, 99.9% whats dumped into the environment that being the hydrocarbon, or the 0.1% additive of lead?
I would theorize that stuffing gasoline full of ethanol across various regions of the country would poison brains in a different way. Most seem to agree that modern psychiatric medicine causes most school shootings, but I'd theorize that maybe sniffing strange exhaust because of strange gasoline might have some effect. Possibly the rise in shootings is a direct result of ethanol in gasoline. Certainly long term ethanol consumption has never done a human brain any good, so breathing ethanol exhaust and leaks etc 24x7 probably does no good.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
More abortions = Lowering of violent crime
The single baby-mamas aren't having 3-7 illegitimate children as they were.
Raising the crotch-droppings on government assistance and payroll garnishments from the alleged baby-dadas, which had them strike with violent crime from poverty.
More abortions, making abortions easier to obtain = killing those future violent criminals before they start. And, those violent thugs won't be knocking up their generation of chicks.
What a moron. Seriously, fuck you.
(Disclaimer: As a kid, I fell into this lead cauldron...)
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