Showing posts with label violent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violent. Show all posts
Friday, 30 September 2022
Saturday, 12 January 2013
Lead Poisoning - The Grime Behind The Crime?
Could an astonishing explanation for the rise and fall of violent crime be correct?
I don’t mean bullets. The crime waves that afflicted many parts of the world and then, against all predictions, collapsed, were ascribed, in an article published by Mother Jones last week, to the rise and fall in the use of lead-based paint and leaded petrol (1).
It’s ridiculous – until you see the evidence. Studies between cities, states and nations show that the rise and fall in crime follows, with a roughly 20-year lag, the rise and fall in the exposure of infants to trace quantities of lead (2,3,4). But all that gives us is correlation: an association that could be coincidental. The Mother Jones article, based on several scientific papers, claimed causation.
I began by reading the papers. Do they say what the article claims? They do. Then I looked up the citations: the discussion of those papers in the scientific literature. The three whose citations I checked have been mentioned, between them, 301 times (5). I went through all these papers (except the handful in foreign languages), as well as dozens of others. To my astonishment, I could find just one study attacking the thesis (6), and this was sponsored by the Ethyl Corporation, which happens to have been a major manufacturer of the petrol additive tetraethyl lead. I found many more supporting it. Crazy as this seems, it really does look as if lead poisoning could be the major cause of the rise and fall of violent crime.
The curve is much the same in all the countries these papers have studied. Lead was withdrawn first from paint and then from petrol at different times in different places (beginning in the 1970s in the US in the case of petrol and the 1990s in many parts of Europe), yet, despite these different times and different circumstances, the pattern is the same: violent crime peaks around 20 years after lead pollution peaks (7,8,9). The crime rates in big and small cities in the US, once wildly different, have now converged, also some 20 years after the phase-out (10).
Nothing else seems to explain these trends. The researchers have taken great pains to correct for the obvious complicating variables: social, economic and legal factors. One paper found, after 15 variables had been taken into account, a four-fold increase in homicides in US counties with the highest lead pollution (11). Another discovered that lead levels appeared to explain 90% of the difference in rates of aggravated assault between US cities (12).
A study in Cincinnati finds that young people prosecuted for delinquency are four times more likely than the general population to have high levels of lead in their bones (13). A meta-analysis (a study of studies) of 19 papers found no evidence that other factors could explain the correlation between exposure to lead and conduct problems among young people (14).
Is it really so surprising that a highly potent nerve toxin causes behavioural change? The devastating and permanent impacts of even very low levels of lead on IQ have been known for many decades. Behavioural effects were first documented in 1943: infants who had tragically chewed the leaded paint off the railings of their cots were found, years after they had recovered from acute poisoning, to be highly disposed to aggression and violence (15).
Lead poisoning in infancy, even at very low levels, impairs the development of those parts of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex) which regulate behaviour and mood (16). The effect is stronger in boys than in girls. Lead poisoning is associated with attention deficit disorder (17,18), impulsiveness, aggression and, according to one paper, psychopathy (19). Lead is so toxic that it is unsafe at any level (21, 22).
Because they were more likely to live in inner cities, in unrenovated housing whose lead paint was peeling and beside busy roads, African Americans have been subjected to higher average levels of lead poisoning than white Americans. One study, published in 1986, found that 18% of white children but 52% of black children in the US had over 20 milligrammes per decilitre of lead in their blood (23); another that, between 1976 and 1980, black infants were eight times more likely to be carrying the horrendous load of 40mg/dl (24). This, two papers propose, could explain much of the difference in crime rates between black and white Americans (25), and the supposed difference in IQ trumpeted by the book The Bell Curve (26).
There is only one remaining manufacturer of tetraethyl lead on earth. It’s based in Ellesmere Port in Britain, and it’s called Innospec. The product has long been banned from general sale in the UK, but the company admits on its website that it’s still selling this poison to other countries ( 27). Innospec refuses to talk to me, but other reports claim that tetraethyl lead is being exported to Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Sierra Leone and Yemen (28,29), countries afflicted either by chaos or by governments who don’t give a damn about their people.
In 2010 the company admitted that, under the name Associated Octel, it had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq and Indonesia to be allowed to continue, at immense profit, selling tetratethyl lead (30). Through an agreement with the British and US courts, Innospec was let off so lightly that Lord Justice Thomas complained that “no such arrangement should be made again.” (31) God knows how many lives this firm has ruined.
The UK government tells me that because tetraethyl lead is not on the European list of controlled exports, there is nothing to prevent Innospec from selling to whoever it wants (32). There’s a term for this: environmental racism.
If it is true that lead pollution, whose wider impacts have been recognised for decades, has driven the rise and fall of violence, then there lies, behind the crimes that have destroyed so many lives and filled so many prisons, a much greater crime.
First published in the Guardian. Courtesy: www.monbiot.com
References:
1. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
2. Rick Nevin, May 2000. How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, Vol.83, Issue 1, pp1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/enrs.1999.4045
3. Rick Nevin, 2007. Understanding international crime trends: the legacy of preschool lead exposure. Environmental Research Vol. 104, pp315–336.
doi:10.1016/j.envres.2007.02.008
4. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, May 2007. Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 13097. http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097
5. The three papers whose citations I checked were Rick Nevin, May 2000, as above;
Rick Nevin, 2007, as above and Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, May 2007, as above.
6. Patricia L. McCalla and Kenneth C. Land, 2004. Trends in environmental lead exposure and troubled youth, 1960–1995: an age-period-cohort-characteristic analysis. Social Science Research Vol.33, pp339–359.
7. PB Stretesky and MJ Lynch, May 2001. The relationship between lead exposure and homicide. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, vol.155, no.5, pp579-82.
8. Paul B. Stretesky and Michael J. Lynch, June 2004. The Relationship between Lead and Crime.Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol.45, no.2, pp214-229. doi: 10.1177/002214650404500207
9. Howard W. Mielke and Sammy Zahran, 2012. The urban rise and fall of air lead (Pb) and the latent surge and retreat of societal violence. Environment International Vol. 43, pp 48–55. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2012.03.005
10. Bureau of Justice, no date given. Homicide Trends in the U.S. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/city.cfm
11. PB Stretesky and MJ Lynch, May 2001, as above.
12. Howard W. Mielke and Sammy Zahran, 2012, as above.
13. Herbert L. Needleman et al, 2002. Bone lead levels in adjudicated delinquents: a case control study. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Vol. 24, pp711 –717.
14. David K. Marcus, Jessica J. Fulton and Erin J. Clarke, 2010. Lead and Conduct Problems: a Meta-Analysis. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, vol.39, no.2, pp234-241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15374411003591455
15. R.K. Byers and E.E. Lord, 1943. Late effects of lead poisoning on mental development, American Journal of Diseases of Children, Vol. 66, pp. 471– 483.
16. Kim M Cecil et al, 2008. Decreased Brain Volume in Adults with Childhood Lead Exposure. Decreased Brain Volume in Adults with Childhood Lead Exposure. PLoS Medicine, vol. 5, no. 5. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050112
17. Joel T. Nigg et al, January 2010. Confirmation and Extension of Association of Blood Lead with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and ADHD
Symptom Domains at Population-Typical Exposure Levels. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. Vol. 51, no.1, pp.58–65. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02135.x.
18. Joe M. Braun et al, 2006. Exposures to Environmental Toxicants and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in U.S. Children. Environmental Health Perspectives vol. 114, pp.1904–1909. doi:10.1289/ehp.9478
19. John Paul Wright, Danielle Boisvert and Jamie Vaske. July 2009. Blood Lead Levels in Early Childhood Predict Adulthood Psychopathy. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, vol.7, no.3, pp.208-222. doi: 10.1177/1541204009333827
20. Rick Nevin, 2007, as above, reports that “there is no lower blood lead threshold for IQ losses”.
21. David Bellinger concludes that “No level of lead exposure appears to be ‘safe’ and even the current ‘low’ levels of exposure in children are associated with neurodevelopmental deficits.”. April 2008. Very low lead exposures and children’s neurodevelopment. Current Opinion in Pediatrics, Vol.20, no.2, pp172-177. doi: 10.1097/MOP.0b013e3282f4f97b
23. Royal Society of Canada, 1986. Lead in the Canadian Environment. Science and Regulation. Cited by Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.
24. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 1988. The Nature and Extent of Lead Poisoning in Children in the United States. US Department of Health and Human Services. Cited by Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.
25. Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.
26. Rick Nevin, February 2012. Lead Poisoning and The Bell Curve. Munich Personal RePEc Archive MPRA Paper No. 36569. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/
27. http://www.innospecinc.com/octane-additives.html
28. http://www.economist.com/news/21566385-lead-tantalisingly-close-death-2013-world-meant-stop-using-leaded-petrol-toxin
29. Anne Roberts and Elizabeth O’Brien, 2011. Supply Chain for the Lead in Leaded Petrol. LEAD Action News, vol.11, no.4.
30. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/18/firm-bribes-banned-chemical-tetraethyl
31. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead
32. I was passed by Defra to the Department for Transport, then by the DfT to the Department for Business, which told me it was all down to the European list. It was clear that none of them were remotely interested in the issue, or had considered it before.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Rape victims must have flawless pasts to get justice
Sexual predators often choose their victims with care, selecting girls and women who are 'vulnerable' and likely to make less convincing witnesses
Joan Smith in The Independent Wednesday, 24 August 2011
The surprising thing about the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the alleged sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid isn't that all charges have been dropped. It's that he was arrested and charged in the first place, given how unlikely it was that he would be convicted. Even if DSK hadn't been one of the world's most powerful, well-known men, the chances of his being found guilty and going to prison were always low, as they are for most men who find themselves accused of rape or sexual assault.
"Rapists who end up being convicted in a court of law must regard themselves as exceptionally unlucky," Professor Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck College argued in her magisterial book Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present. "Rape in this country [the US] is surprisingly easy to get away with," a special report for CBS News concluded in 2009.
Nationwide figures for the US are hard to track down but an analysis of Department of Justice statistics by two of the country's leading sexual assault experts in 2009 found that conviction rates hadn't improved since the 1970s; their study suggested that only two per cent of rapes reported to police in the US ended in a defendant being sent to jail. Across a number of countries, a rising number of reported rapes has not led to a corresponding increase in convictions.
There is no mystery about this. The hunt for the ideal rape victim is never-ending but fruitless, for the simple reason that it requires unimpeachable conduct on the part of the victim in every area of her life, past and present. Women who have been drinking, who know their alleged attacker or who've ever told a lie to a public official, even in an unrelated matter, are not victims prosecutors want to put before juries. Bourke makes a similar point in her book: "Jurors, defence counsel and judges not only expect a much higher level of resistance than required by law, they also require a greater degree of consistency in rape testimonies than they require from victims of other violent crimes."
Indeed what's fascinating about the case, which comes down to the word of the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) against that of an immigrant from West Africa, is that in the beginning prosecutors clearly believed her story about a violent sexual assault. Strauss-Kahn's semen on Nafissatou Diallo's uniform and the carpet of his suite proved beyond doubt that a sexual encounter had taken place, while medical evidence and Diallo's evident distress appeared to support her claim that it wasn't consensual.
So confident was the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, that he proceeded to charge Strauss-Kahn, turning him into one of the world's most high-profile defendants. Even on Monday, when Vance asked a judge to dismiss the charges, he used an ambiguous formulation to explain his change of heart: "The nature and number of the complainant's falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter between the complainant and the defendant." [my italics]
This is an absolutely classic outcome, signalling not the vindication of the defendant but the prosecution's judgement that the accuser would not make a good witness. "Dismissal does not mean he is innocent, simply that the district attorney doesn't believe the case can go to trial," observed a French lawyer, Pierre Hourcade.
Vance's own words suggest that his decision was based not on Diallo's account of the alleged assault, which contains only minor discrepancies about her behaviour immediately after her encounter with DSK, but lies she told when she arrived from Guinea and claimed asylum in the US. Such behaviour is not uncommon when would-be immigrants are trying to improve their chances of being allowed to stay; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch MP, resigned from parliament five years ago after admitting that she lied on her application for asylum in the Netherlands. Ali later moved to the US where her views are treated with respect and she is regarded as a trenchant critic of radical Islam.
If Diallo's persuasive account of a violent sexual assault is to be dismissed because she lied to get into the US, the implications for other immigrants are alarming. Are prosecutors really saying that anyone who has lied on an asylum application cannot be considered a credible witness in an unrelated matter, no matter how many years later and regardless of forensic evidence supporting their claims? This is surely setting the bar too high, as well as sending a message that some potential victims cannot expect the protection of the law. It's well known that sexual predators often choose their victims with care, selecting girls and women who are "vulnerable" in some way – black, poor, working-class – and likely to make less convincing witnesses.
In the case of DSK, there is also a nagging question of double standards. Some of his more excitable supporters in France have already floated the idea that he could resume pursuit of his ambition to become the Socialist party's candidate in the presidential election, as though he has emerged from this affair with a spotless reputation. But fairness demands that his past conduct should also be examined with equally rigorous standards, and the picture that's emerged is far from edifying.
The French writer Tristane Banon has given a graphic account of what she claims was an attempt by Strauss-Kahn to rape her when she went to interview him in 2003; her mother, Anne Mansouret (a Socialist politician and colleague of Strauss-Kahn) claims that he "took me with the vulgarity of a soldier" during a consensual encounter three years earlier. It is possible that the former IMF boss is the victim of a truly dreadful coincidence, becoming the victim of slander by women who don't know each other on two continents. But it is also possible he is a sexual predator who targets women who are reluctant to report him or unlikely to make a good impression on a jury. The cards have always been stacked in favour of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but we still don't know for certain that Nafissatou Diallo wasn't the victim of a serious sexual assault.
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