IF ECONOMETRIC STUDIES WERE ALL THERE were to the story of lead, you'd be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look. Even when researchers do their best—controlling for economic growth, welfare payments, race, income, education level, and everything else they can think of—it's always possible that something they haven't thought of is still lurking in the background. But there's another reason to take the lead hypothesis seriously, and it might be the most compelling one of all: Neurological research is demonstrating that lead's effects are even more appalling, more permanent, and appear at far lower levels than we ever thought. For starters, it turns out that childhood lead exposure at nearly any level can seriously and permanently reduce IQ. Blood lead levels are measured in micrograms per deciliter, and levels once believed safe—65 μg/dL, then 25, then 15, then 10—are now known to cause serious damage. The EPA now says flatly that there is "no demonstrated safe concentration of lead in blood," and it turns out that even levels under 10 μg/dL can reduce IQ by as much as seven points. An estimated 2.5 percent of children nationwide have lead levels above 5 μg/dL.
Is There Lead in Your House?
But we now know that lead's effects go far beyond just IQ. Not only does lead promote apoptosis, or cell death, in the brain, but the element is also chemically similar to calcium. When it settles in cerebral tissue, it prevents calcium ions from doing their job, something that causes physical damage to the developing brain that persists into adulthood.
Only in the last few years have we begun to understand exactly what effects this has. A team of researchers at the University of Cincinnati has been following a group of 300 children for more than 30 years and recently performed a series of MRI scans that highlighted the neurological differences between subjects who had high and low exposure to lead during early childhood.
High childhood exposure damages a part of the brain linked to aggression control and "executive functions." And the impact turns out to be greater among boys.
One set of scans found that lead exposure is linked to production of the brain's white matter—primarily a substance called myelin, which forms an insulating sheath around the connections between neurons. Lead exposure degrades both the formation and structure of myelin, and when this happens, says Kim Dietrich, one of the leaders of the imaging studies, "neurons are not communicating effectively." Put simply, the network connections within the brain become both slower and less coordinated.
A second study found that high exposure to lead during childhood was linked to a permanent loss of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex—a part of the brain associated with aggression control as well as what psychologists call "executive functions": emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility. One way to understand this, says Kim Cecil, another member of the Cincinnati team, is that lead affects precisely the areas of the brain "that make us most human."
So lead is a double whammy: It impairs specific parts of the brain responsible for executive functions and it impairs the communication channels between these parts of the brain. For children like the ones in the Cincinnati study, who were mostly inner-city kids with plenty of strikes against them already, lead exposure was, in Cecil's words, an "additional kick in the gut." And one more thing: Although both sexes are affected by lead, the neurological impact turns out to be greater among boys than girls.
Other recent studies link even minuscule blood lead levels with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Even at concentrations well below those usually considered safe—levels still common today—lead increases the odds of kids developing ADHD.
In other words, as Reyes summarized the evidence in her paper, even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ. And right there, you've practically defined the profile of a violent young offender.
Needless to say, not every child exposed to lead is destined for a life of crime. Everyone over the age of 40 was probably exposed to too much lead during childhood, and most of us suffered nothing more than a few points of IQ loss. But there were plenty of kids already on the margin, and millions of those kids were pushed over the edge from being merely slow or disruptive to becoming part of a nationwide epidemic of violent crime. Once you understand that, it all becomes blindingly obvious. Of course massive lead exposure among children of the postwar era led to larger numbers of violent criminals in the '60s and beyond. And of course when that lead was removed in the '70s and '80s, the children of that generation lost those artificially heightened violent tendencies.
Police chiefs "want to think what they do on a daily basis matters," says a public health expert. "And it does." But maybe not as much as they think.
But if all of this solves one mystery, it shines a high-powered klieg light on another: Why has the lead/crime connection been almost completely ignored in the criminology community? In the two big books I mentioned earlier, one has no mention of lead at all and the other has a grand total of two passing references. Nevin calls it "exasperating" that crime researchers haven't seriously engaged with lead, and Reyes told me that although the public health community was interested in her paper, criminologists have largely been AWOL. When I asked Sammy Zahran about the reaction to his paper with Howard Mielke on correlations between lead and crime at the city level, he just sighed. "I don't think criminologists have even read it," he said. All of this jibes with my own reporting. Before he died last year, James Q. Wilson—father of the broken-windows theory, and the dean of the criminology community—had begun to accept that lead probably played a meaningful role in the crime drop of the '90s. But he was apparently an outlier. None of the criminology experts I contacted showed any interest in the lead hypothesis at all.
Why not? Mark Kleiman, a public policy professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied promising methods of controlling crime, suggests that because criminologists are basically sociologists, they look for sociological explanations, not medical ones. My own sense is that interest groups probably play a crucial role: Political conservatives want to blame the social upheaval of the '60s for the rise in crime that followed. Police unions have reasons for crediting its decline to an increase in the number of cops. Prison guards like the idea that increased incarceration is the answer. Drug warriors want the story to be about drug policy. If the actual answer turns out to be lead poisoning, they all lose a big pillar of support for their pet issue. And while lead abatement could be big business for contractors and builders, for some reason their trade groups have never taken it seriously.
More generally, we all have a deep stake in affirming the power of deliberate human action. When Reyes once presented her results to a conference of police chiefs, it was, unsurprisingly, a tough sell. "They want to think that what they do on a daily basis matters," she says. "And it does." But it may not matter as much as they think.
SO IS THIS ALL JUST AN INTERESTING history lesson? After all, leaded gasoline has been banned since 1996, so even if it had a major impact on violent crime during the 20th century, there's nothing more to be done on that front. Right?
Wrong. As it turns out, tetraethyl lead is like a zombie that refuses to die. Our cars may be lead-free today, but they spent more than 50 years spewing lead from their tailpipes, and all that lead had to go somewhere. And it did: It settled permanently into the soil that we walk on, grow our food in, and let our kids play around.
That's especially true in the inner cores of big cities, which had the highest density of automobile traffic. Mielke has been studying lead in soil for years, focusing most of his attention on his hometown of New Orleans, and he's measured 10 separate census tracts there with lead levels over 1,000 parts per million.
To get a sense of what this means, you have to look at how soil levels of lead typically correlate with blood levels, which are what really matter. Mielke has studied this in New Orleans, and it turns out that the numbers go up very fast even at low levels. Children who live in neighborhoods with a soil level of 100 ppm have average blood lead concentrations of 3.8 μg/dL—a level that's only barely tolerable. At 500 ppm, blood levels go up to 5.9 μg/dL, and at 1,000 ppm they go up to 7.5 μg/dL. These levels are high enough to do serious damage.
"I know people who have moved into gentrified neighborhoods and immediately renovate everything. They create huge hazards for their kids."
Mielke's partner, Sammy Zahran, walked me through a lengthy—and hair-raising—presentation about the effect that all that old gasoline lead continues to have in New Orleans. The very first slide describes the basic problem: Lead in soil doesn't stay in the soil. Every summer, like clockwork, as the weather dries up, all that lead gets kicked back into the atmosphere in a process called resuspension. The zombie lead is back to haunt us.
Mark Laidlaw, a doctoral student who has worked with Mielke, explains how this works: People and pets track lead dust from soil into houses, where it's ingested by small children via hand-to-mouth contact. Ditto for lead dust generated by old paint inside houses. This dust cocktail is where most lead exposure today comes from.
Paint hasn't played a big role in our story so far, but that's only because it didn't play a big role in the rise of crime in the postwar era and its subsequent fall. Unlike gasoline lead, lead paint was a fairly uniform problem during this period, producing higher overall lead levels, especially in inner cities, but not changing radically over time. (It's a different story with the first part of the 20th century, when use of lead paint did rise and then fall somewhat dramatically. Sure enough, murder rates rose and fell in tandem.)
And just like gasoline lead, a lot of that lead in old housing is still around. Lead paint chips flaking off of walls are one obvious source of lead exposure, but an even bigger one, says Rick Nevin, are old windows. Their friction surfaces generate lots of dust as they're opened and closed. (Other sources—lead pipes and solder, leaded fuel used in private aviation, and lead smelters—account for far less.)
We know that the cost of all this lead is staggering, not just in lower IQs, delayed development, and other health problems, but in increased rates of violent crime as well. So why has it been so hard to get it taken seriously?
There are several reasons. One of them was put bluntly by Herbert Needleman, one of the pioneers of research into the effect of lead on behavior. A few years ago, a reporter from the Baltimore City Paper asked him why so little progress had been made recently on combating the lead-poisoning problem. "Number one," he said without hesitation, "it's a black problem." But it turns out that this is an outdated idea. Although it's true that lead poisoning affects low-income neighborhoods disproportionately, it affects plenty of middle-class and rich neighborhoods as well. "It's not just a poor-inner-city-kid problem anymore," Nevin says. "I know people who have moved into gentrified neighborhoods and immediately renovate everything. And they create huge hazards for their kids."
Tamara Rubin, who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, learned this the hard way when two of her children developed lead poisoning after some routine home improvement in 2005. A few years later, Rubin started the Lead Safe America Foundation, which advocates for lead abatement and lead testing. Her message: If you live in an old neighborhood or an old house, get tested. And if you renovate, do it safely.
Another reason that lead doesn't get the attention it deserves is that too many people think the problem was solved years ago. They don't realize how much lead is still hanging around, and they don't understand just how much it costs us.
It's difficult to put firm numbers to the costs and benefits of lead abatement. But for a rough idea, let's start with the two biggest costs. Nevin estimates that there are perhaps 16 million pre-1960 houses with lead-painted windows, and replacing them all would cost something like $10 billion per year over 20 years. Soil cleanup in the hardest-hit urban neighborhoods is tougher to get a handle on, with estimates ranging from $2 to $36 per square foot. A rough extrapolation from Mielke's estimate to clean up New Orleans suggests that a nationwide program might cost another $10 billion per year.
We can either get rid of the remaining lead, or we can wait 20 years and then lock up all the kids who've turned into criminals.
So in round numbers that's about $20 billion per year for two decades. But the benefits would be huge. Let's just take a look at the two biggest ones. By Mielke and Zahran's estimates, if we adopted the soil standard of a country like Norway (roughly 100 ppm or less), it would bring about $30 billion in annual returns from the cognitive benefits alone (higher IQs, and the resulting higher lifetime earnings). Cleaning up old windows might double this. And violent crime reduction would be an even bigger benefit. Estimates here are even more difficult, but Mark Kleiman suggests that a 10 percent drop in crime—a goal that seems reasonable if we get serious about cleaning up the last of our lead problem—could produce benefits as high as $150 billion per year.
Put this all together and the benefits of lead cleanup could be in the neighborhood of $200 billion per year. In other words, an annual investment of $20 billion for 20 years could produce returns of 10-to-1 every single year for decades to come. Those are returns that Wall Street hedge funds can only dream of.
Wow, If I had known it was gonna be this long I would have just posted the link?
I am confused by this post.
Is it about led in the home or crime in NYC? It doesn't seem to explain the connection.
My friends were aghast that I liked Giuliani, but I did and still do.
I remember being in NYC in the seventies and not feeling safe at all and returning with two of my children (ages 10 and 12) in the nineties. We had a lot of fun. We stayed at a youth hostel in Harlem and went by subway to Times Square after midnight. Lots of people on the street, cops patrolling, I felt very safe.
Of course those were just my brief experiences.
From what Im getting is there is a correlation between lead, adhd, and crime. It makes you wonder if this may be the origin of autism as well. I mean it just makes you wonder since they have no clue of its origin. I dont see it as a stretch if they are linking things like adhd, why not autism?
It may be better to read the original article from the link. lol I may have buggered it up in copying and pasting the darn thing!
In April of 2010 we bought a 1959 bungalow. We are slowly renovating, and I can tell you, this is a huge concern. Thanks for the reminder Teko, we need to have some testing done. Even our water is potentially a concern given the old pipes - we have neglected this.
Having worked in water treatment for 20 years, I readily admit that lead is an issue that needs to be taken seriously, but one that I think can be easily dramatized.
Yes, when renovations are done, caution needs to be taken, because the lead particles may linger in the air. There are certain rules pertaining to asbestos removal that should also be applied to removal of lead based paint.
The biggest issue I have with the article is the amount of lead in soil. Yes, there will be some and yes, walking on the ground, stirring up the dirt could cause people to ingest some lead....... however, lead, like many other contaminants will be taken down through the soil each time it rains, so over time, there will be less and less at the surface.
I was really disappointed that the article didn't take the lead testing down into the water supplies. Almost any contaminant released to the air, dumped on the ground or flushed into a sewer or septic system will eventually end up in aquifers that provide drinking water.
EPA enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974; the Lead and Copper Act in 1991and since then, all public water systems have had to test for lead and copper in drinking water on a regular basis....
Another problem I have with it, is the number of us who were exposed to both lead in gasoline, lead based paint AND lead in our water supplies, that have not ended up in prison or with ADHD, autism, etc; nor did we end up in prison....... I'm not saying there's "no" link; I'm only saying that there are other things that may need to be taken into consideration, as well.
Adgal -- check the water pipes in that bungalow...... they probably all need to be replaced, unless they are galvanized (could also present a problem) ....... If they are copper, you probably want to get rid of them, because they would most likely have lead based solder. You might want to hire a company to come in and get rid of the lead based paint.
Next thing to plague us? Drugs in the water supply....... yep, as I mentioned everything that gets dumped or flushed can eventually end up in the aquifers. We're seeing it here. We were always told to flush old meds, so we did........ not to mention that we take these meds, then use the toilet.... yeah, a percentage of it goes down the drain.......and ultimately into the water supply.
Yesterday, lead; today, drugs - who knows what tomorrow will bring?
That is terrible. So filtered water really is the way to go then. Geez, hate to think my dogs are drinking ribavirin and who knows what else... I usually don't drink tap water.
Does it help to boil it?
Ironically I took some old meds to a disposal site today. It said they incinerate them. Guess that keeps it out of the water.
I thought lead poisoning was well known.
Wasn't it lead plates that made the Romans mad ?
Filtering water won't take out all/many of the contaminants, either.
Boiling water only gets rid of bacterias.
Best practice? Of course, you can't help using the bathroom, so nothing to be done about that, but don't flush old meds down the toilet; it only compounds the issue. If your county has a disposal site for old meds, that's the best way to go.
When my Auntie passed away, the hospice nurse had me get very hot water, into which we put all the leftover meds, then let them dissolve; she then poured the liquid into a zip lock bag with fresh coffee grounds, to be thrown away. Supposedly, the coffee grounds absorb the medication and render them harmless. I'd never heard of that before, but that's hospice practice, at least here.
Very interesting idea...I will try that if I don't find the toxic waste place that OH mentioned.
I feel terrible when I think of all the toxins that have been flushed away. We had this mentality that somehow it all just "vanishe" and here we are killing and sickening other life forms and ourselves in the end.
So, how do you drink water Barb? Filtering and boiling is limited there must be someway to get it relatively clean.
I usually buy bottled water, but that doesn't always guarantee anything any better; I've watched a lot of water being bottled....lol I do drink my tap water, also.
Municipal/public water supplies absolutely HAVE to be tested on a regular basis for a lot of contaminants and if certain levels are too high, they are required to implement treatment processes that will eliminate the harmful contaminants. These are EPA requirements and are nationwide, though some states supercede if their rules are more stringent than EPA's rules.
Reverse osmosis is about the only way to remove the majority of contaminants and I'm not sure if that will get the drugs, etc out. It will remove lead particles.
This article was a bit rambling and not very well tied together IMO.
The blogger is trying to correlate lead exposure with violent crime, lower IQs and ADHD. This is HIS theory.
Teko.....you didn't "bugger" it up.....it wasn't written very clearly.
Lead is one of the MANY things to worry about in regards to our soil and water.
Londres, I am so glad its not my copy and paste work because I too was trying to make heads and tails out of it.
Barb I am so glad you shared the coffee grounds trick with us. I too have dumped countless bottles of meds and flushed down the toilet and even back then, remember wondering if they actually knew what they were talking about.