Clean Air Act fights crime?

LordFu · 10-24-2007

Quote:

Reyes found that the rise and fall of lead-exposure rates seemed to match the arc of violent crime, but with a 20-year lag — just long enough for children exposed to the highest levels of lead in 1973 to reach their most violence-prone years in the early ’90s, when crime rates hit their peak.

Such a correlation does not prove that lead had any effect on crime levels. But in an article published this month in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, Reyes uses small variations in the lead content of gasoline from state to state to strengthen her argument. If other possible sources of crime like beer consumption and unemployment had remained constant, she estimates, the switch to unleaded gas alone would have caused the rate of violent crime to fall by more than half over the 1990s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/ma...Iw&oref=slogin

Of course, correlation does not equal causation. However, the implication is frightening, and the scenario highly probable. There's a mountain of research connecting lead poisoning to a whole host of mental problems.

St. Louis, Missouri, which is only two hours from where I live, has a huge lead poisoning problem, to this day, and numerous smaller communities in Southern Missouri (part of the so-called "lead belt") have been contaminated by lead mining activities.

LordFu · 10-25-2007

As usual, the article has lead (haha) me to look a little further into what the hell lead was doing in gasoline, in the first place.

Well what do you know, the usual suspects are involved. The Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Mellons, etc.

The robber-barons strike again. The story of leaded gas reads like a goddamn who's-who of the Anglo-American establishment.

The Secret History of Lead

kevmartin · 10-29-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordFu

As usual, the article has lead (haha) me to look a little further into what the hell lead was doing in gasoline, in the first place.

Well what do you know, the usual suspects are involved. The Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Mellons, etc.

The robber-barons strike again. The story of leaded gas reads like a goddamn who's-who of the Anglo-American establishment.

The Secret History of Lead

You make it sound like there was no good reason for adding lead (actually Tetra-ethyl lead) to petrol in the first place. I think there was a reason though - as a preventative for 'engine knocking'. It was subsequently phased out (and other additives used in its place) as a result of the discovery of lead's harmful effects. (I read page one of the article you linked but it didn't captivate me enough to convince me to read 23 pages of it)

LordFu · 10-30-2007

There were known alternatives to lead. Lead was known to be harmful long before it was added to gas. It wasn't suddenly discovered to be harmfull, as you imply.

If you read that article, it goes into great detail on the pains taken by the manufacturers of tetra-ethyl lead to leave out any mention of lead, marketing it instead under the name "Ethyl". The government was happy to oblige, using the same nomenclature in all it's documents.

Quote:

Consider:

§ the severe health hazards of leaded gasoline were known to its makers and clearly identified by the US public health community more than seventy-five years ago, but were steadfastly denied by the makers, because they couldn't be immediately quantified;

§ other, safer antiknock additives--used to increase gasoline octane and counter engine "knock"--were known and available to oil companies and the makers of lead antiknocks before the lead additive was discovered, but they were covered up and denied, then fought, suppressed and unfairly maligned for decades to follow;

§ the US government was fully apprised of leaded gasoline's potentially hazardous effects and was aware of available alternatives, yet was complicit in the cover-up and even actively assisted the profiteers in spreading the use of leaded gasoline to foreign countries;

§ the benefits of lead antiknock additives were wildly and knowingly overstated in the beginning, and continue to be. Lead is not only bad for the planet and all its life forms, it is actually bad for cars and always was;

§ for more than four decades, all scientific research regarding the health implications of leaded gasoline was underwritten and controlled by the original lead cabal--Du Pont, GM and Standard Oil; such research invariably favored the industry's pro-lead views, but was from the outset fatally flawed; independent scientists who would finally catch up with the earlier work's infirmities and debunk them were--and continue to be--threatened and defamed by the lead interests and their hired hands;

§ confronted in recent years with declining sales in their biggest Western markets, owing to lead phaseouts imposed in the United States and, more recently, Europe, the current sellers of lead additives have successfully stepped up efforts to market their wares in the less-developed world, efforts that persist and have resulted in some countries today placing more lead in their gasoline, per gallon, than was typically used in the West, extra lead that serves no purpose other than profit;

§ faced with lead's demise and their inevitable days of reckoning, these firms have used the extraordinary financial returns that lead additive sales afford to hurriedly fund diversification into less risky, more conventional businesses, while taking a page from the tobacco companies' playbook and simultaneously moving to reorganize their corporate structures to shield ownership and management from liability for blanketing the earth with a deadly heavy metal.

RTFA

kevmartin · 10-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordFu

There were known alternatives to lead. Lead was known to be harmful long before it was added to gas. It wasn't suddenly discovered to be harmfull, as you imply.

Perhaps I should have used the word acceptance rather than discovery.

As for 'RTFA', it wasn't an article, it was more like a long essay. For the hell of it, I did a word count on the first of 23 pages. 944 words, implying the 'article' was over 20,000 words long. I would hazard a guess that I am not alone in not finding enough interest in the subject to waste the time on reading the whole thing. As I said, I read the first page - it was enough for me. If it goes on to paint some direct connection between commerce and exploitation etc, great - but I would see that as a given anyway.

10-25-2007	#2 (permalink)
LordFu I see the Fnords. Join Date: May 2007 Location: Columbia, MO Posts: 830	Re: Clean Air Act fights crime? As usual, the article has lead (haha) me to look a little further into what the hell lead was doing in gasoline, in the first place. Well what do you know, the usual suspects are involved. The Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Mellons, etc. The robber-barons strike again. The story of leaded gas reads like a goddamn who's-who of the Anglo-American establishment. The Secret History of Lead
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