From googling the first major study was released in 2000. Before that the connection to brain damage was known.
Was the connection to crime specifically discussed at all, even though it wasn’t proven?
Lead had been a known toxin since at least the Roman era. When Midgley and Kettering introduced tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive, it was already known to be acutely toxic. The plants that were set up to make TEL had numerous deaths due to lead poisoning. Midgley himself had to be treated for acute lead poisoning after stunts like washing his hands in TEL in front of the press so show how harmless it was. Why then was this known highly toxic substance allowed to be produced? It was deemed crucial for the war effort. It took until the mid 80s for it to be banned. Estimates hover around 7 million tons of lead was released into the atmosphere in the US alone. As an aside, Midgley was also he inventor of the first Cloroflorocarbons (CFCs, including freon) that would go on to create the hole in the ozone layer. He has been dubbed by some as “the single most destructive organism that has ever lived on earth.”
That’s kinda the point of my question, this was known on some level. But was there any discussion on the effect on crime specifically way back in the 1970s and 80s? They knew crime was out of control afaik and kept looking for reasons why. Was this discussed at all back then?
No the lead crime hypothesis started in the 70s as you mention. The difficulty is proving it though. There are several confounding factors that are all tied together, and very strongly correlated with poverty. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6980739/ Early childhood nutrition, early education, extracurricular activities, etc. Blood lead levels go up the poorer you are and especially in the rust belt in the Midwest. In addition the drop in crime is also directly correlated to abortion being legalized by Roe v Wade (with an approximately 20 year lag time). https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/
No the lead crime hypothesis started in the 70s as you mention.
Well I didn’t mention, I’m asking if it was hypothesized in the 70s. I’m asking if it was considered in the 70s. I’m asking if it was discussed in the 70s as a possible reason for the high crime rate.
I agree the proof didn’t come until much later, with the first big study in 2000. But before things are proven they can be hypothesized and discussed for a long time beforehand.
I agree with other factors also playing a role. For right now I’m just asking if lead specifically was discussed as a possible cause for the crime race.
No the 70s and 80s were all about blaming poor people for crime. I was a teenager when the ban on leaded gas started happening and I can’t remember anyone ever mentioning the effects of lead as a driver of crime. I do remember discussing it in science class, but it was just starting to be understood at the time that lead exposure could lower your IQ and was around that time that the “no safe levels of lead exposure” was established. Before that it was just one of those things you had to be careful around. It wasn’t until well after the crime rate started to drop so dramatically in the 90s that people went looking for the reasons why
We are at present letting millions of people die of starvation and lack of clean drinking water. Not to mention actually bombing and mass murder and genocides and wars.
Is it really so surprising we simply let toxic shit kill and cause brain damage to everyone if it was profitable or convenient?
All hail the mighty $ of Capitalism.
70s child here - we cleaned stuff in gasoline, washed our hands with it after getting greasy. My dad soaked charcoal briquets in it for 15 minutes and then dumped it all onto the pile of charcoal …threw a match. In the late 80s we started to hear all about the bad stuff. Oh yeah people either dumped their old motor oil down the storm drains or like my dad burying it in a hole in the yard. “Goes back to the earth that way son”.
Was everyones sense of smell just completely fried from all the cigarettes?
I remember when the smoking ban came in. A lot of local pubs had to do emergency renovations. It turns out, without the cigarette smoke, people could smell how bad the carpet etc were!
Basically yes
“It disperses into the local ground water and people’s wells and drinking water, son.”
The impossible dream of flamable drinking water eventually came true dad!
Wipes away tear
You can tell you reached your target audience with your question (me included) because the average reading comprehension level in here is shit 🤣
No, there was not a direct link to crime statistics at that time.
The social science college courses I took in the 80’s credited dropping crime rates to availability of abortion and birth control, not removal of lead from gasoline.
They’re all factors from what I’ve read.
I remember hearing about it, especially in paint and pipes. There were a lot of people tearing out both these as the dangers became more well known.
I must have consumed a lot of lead, because it took me a while to not read your title as containing a word rhyming with head.
read (reed) / read (red)
lead (lede) / lead (led)I was about to trot out the old “English needs diacritics argument” but then realised that “reade”, “readd”, “leade” and “leadd” would solve the problem the ways we usually do it.
Not specifically, no. That lead was toxic, and could lead to at least some health problems was well known by then, but it took years of studies to pinpoint precisely what those effects were, and those studies came out in the following years, including the one you’re referring to.
I remember back in the 70s hearing on the news about lead paint in apartments and children were eating the paint. Then it has been on the news ever since. Most likely I was young and only just realizing and hearing about this sort of thing.
Not from what I remember. Lead was taken out and we knew it was bad but I don’t recall people being like. we have a whole generations that effectively had brain damage. Man lead pipes since 1800 and then gas and paint from 1920 till the 70’s. kinda crazy.
I certainly didn’t hear about it before that study was released. We only worried about jabbing each other with graphite pencils 'cause “you’ll get lead poisoning!”
I’m going to guess, yes.
What we did NOT have was a libertarian media push to make all social problems have simple and cheap solutions that don’t require changing the fundamental relationship between government and capitalism, in which these little factoids play prominent roles.
