"As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades later," reports
Mother Jones in "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead." As it turns out, contact with lead can give rise to aggressive and delinquent behavior, not to mention learning disabilities and lower IQ scores. When leaded gasoline was phased out in the 1970s, an interesting phenomena occurred: the crime rate substantially and consistently dropped. All the same, exposure to the heavy metal hasn't disappeared completely as it still hides in the most ordinary of places - and, predictably, continues to bring about a spectrum of health and behavioral disorders.
The link between lead and criminality
Kim N. Dietrich, director of epidemiology and biostatistics at the
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, believes that lead can "miswire" developing brains in children, affecting areas of judgement, impulse control and anticipation of consequences - which ultimately can provoke aggressive behavior. In the late 1970s, Dietrich and a team of other investigators began to study some 300 pregnant women who lived in Cincinnati neighborhoods (usually the inner city) that were known for high numbers of lead poisoning cases. According to
Chemical and Engineering News:
