Podcast
Stuff You Should Know
It was discussed as a controversial but riveting article that explored the correlation between the rise in crime rates and lead usage in gasoline, with a 20-year lag.
It's a super interesting article. Very controversial like when it came, well it still is. But yeah, it's very interesting.
— Episode: Selects: What Makes Lead So Poisonous?
Episode: Selects: What Makes Lead So Poisonous?
It was discussed as a controversial but riveting article that explored the correlation between the rise in crime rates and lead usage in gasoline, with a 20-year lag.
It's a super interesting article. Very controversial like when it came, well it still is. But yeah, it's very interesting.
And I think I've mentioned it before but I strongly encourage anybody, it doesn't even matter if lead's the most boring thing in the world to you, go read this article. You will just be riveted by it.
Kevin Drum does a lot of, he does a very good job of keeping his extrapolations down as low as possible. Although anybody can see by the evidence that he lays out that this is, it's pretty clear that lead is some sort of culprit in this.
It was written by Kevin Drum who's one of the all time greats working today.
And the whole idea is that when we started emitting lead into the atmosphere, kids started suffering these cognitive and antisocial behaviors. And then about 20 years after these kids were born, they started actually carrying out criminal activity and we saw a tremendous rise in everything from like murder to rape to muggings to everything.