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[mag1]

Lead apparently caused an overwhelming amount of social pathology at global scale in the 20th Century. The peak of this catastrophe occurred ~1994 when homicide rates in some urban American inner city environments approached 1%: Total social collapse.

 

Now that tetraethyl lead has been removed from car gasoline, blood lead levels have declined to values never before seen; along with these super low lead levels we are now experiencing super low crime rates as well as several other socially important outcomes in youth cohorts. One mechanism of action of lead relates to brain damage to the executive functioning part of the brain which controls impulse control. Without functioning impulse control one would expect civilization to collapse (as happened in the last quarter of the 20th Century). Lead has been a known neurotoxin for thousands of years. The CDC considers there to be no safe level of lead.

 

Comments Please!

Edited by mag1, 01 September 2022 - 09:54 PM.

[mag1]

For those interested in the statistical evidence here are some urls.

 

https://www.ojjdp.go...2&rdoDataType=3 ojj site with time series selectable by crime type; juvenile/adult; count/percent;rate

https://www.ojjdp.go...asp?table_in=1 selectable by crime type( drop down menu); male/female; count/percent/rate

 

https://www.ojjdp.go...rime/faqs.asp#1 This is the master selection url

 

Bureau of Justice Statistics is another good site. Here is a report that provides interesting additional perspectives on crime. Consider Figure 22B.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/...tates-1980-2008

 

FBI Uniform Crime Reports are another great resource:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/...rintable-files Table 46 is a good one (though note that these are not rates). Table 45 shows year over year change; compare with other years

 

As can be seen (especially with the ojjdp website) there has an enormous decline in crime rates across demographics over the last quarter century.

Lead might explain why the crime rate increased so much and then decreased so much.

 

 

The attached figure is from the ojjdp site that shows an enormous decline in US white juvenile larceny rates from 1980-2020. The drop shown is massive amounting to a 93.2% decline from the peak to the present. Almost every year is lower than the last.

 

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•  trends-in-arrest-rates-b.png   45.48KB   0 downloads

Edited by mag1, 01 September 2022 - 11:12 PM.