Lead is a very potent neurotoxin, says Gesch. It has a range of effects on the brain that have been demonstrated through hundreds of different biological studies. Lead alters the formation of the brain. It reduces the grey matter in areas responsible for things such as impulse control and executive functioning - meaning thinking and planning. In other words - lead poisoning leads to bad decisions. The lead theorists say the poison has a time-lag effect which could not be understood until recently. In the early 1990s, economist and housing consultant Rick Nevin was pondering whether it would be worth the US spending vast sums cleaning leaded paint out of old housing in American cities. By then, everyone knew that lead did bad stuff to the brain and took years to leave the body. And that got Nevin thinking. Would the accumulation of lead over time play a role in behaviour that would ultimately become criminal? Nevin calculated the rise and fall of the presence of lead from petrol and he compared that curve to the modern history of violent crime. What he came up with was rather startling. When the amount of lead in the environment increased, Nevin showed a corresponding rise in violent crime two decades later. And when the amount of lead in the environment fell, violent crime also tracked down - again about 20 years later.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 04:41:33 +0000
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