Study Finds Correlation Between Lead Exposure and Gun Violence Suspects AND Victims

Pure junk science....

Lead was used in everything from paints to eating utensils for several hundred years.
How can it all of a sudden increase long after it's use decreased?

I'd have to question the methodology used in this so -called study....

plus I learned a long time ago that anything from MS* is pure propaganda.
 
It’s simply not possible to evaluate the quality of a scientific study and its conclusions from a brief summary in the mainstream media. I followed the link to the article provided in the news story and found that it was published in Environmental Research, a reasonably well-regarded peer-reviewed international journal. That doesn’t mean the conclusions of the study are correct, of course, but I do think it takes it out of the category of “junk science.” Unfortunately, only the abstract is available online and it doesn’t include a great deal more information than presented in the MSN article.

Based on the limited amount of information in the news story and abstract, what concerns me here is the observation that the alleged effect of early childhood lead exposure appears approximately equivalent for both perpetrators and victims. I can postulate a mechanistic explanation for the former, along the lines of “early childhood lead exposure appears to be correlated with violent or antisocial behavior in later life, and gun violence is one manifestation of that behavior” (note that I don’t necessarily support that explanation, only that it at least passes the straight-face test). But how does one go about explaining why someone with early childhood lead exposure would end up becoming a victim of gun violence? Lead exposure lowers their IQ, so they don’t have the sense to run when they hear gunfire? I think not. What that tells me is that this is likely a correlation without causation, i.e., factors that we already know increase an individual’s probability of becoming either a perpetrator or victim of gun violence (e.g., poverty, race, inner city residence, etc.) are also factors that result in elevated lead exposure in childhood.
 
Maybe the study was conducted entirely within neighborhoods in which everyone was exposed to lead as a child. That's likely to be the case in many inner city areas.
 
It’s simply not possible to evaluate the quality of a scientific study and its conclusions from a brief summary in the mainstream media.
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You don't need to. There are numerous articles and studies.
 
Given that we nearly universally used lead paint in housing/structures for over 100 years, and in toys, ostensibly ending in the 1970s, I have to wonder about the lack of violence in non inner city areas.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
Given that we nearly universally used lead paint in housing/structures for over 100 years, and in toys, ostensibly ending in the 1970s, I have to wonder about the lack of violence in non inner city areas.
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We could go on and on about places where the crime level is rising and lead levels are falling but lets not go there.
 
spacemanspiff said:
We can fix the problem if we just ban poverty. :D
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Essentially poverty has already been eliminated in the US. Some people have more than others but people beg on the streets for drug money not food money. What we consider to be "poor" most countries of the world view as middle class.
 
MTT TL said:
Essentially poverty has already been eliminated in the US. Some people have more than others but people beg on the streets for drug money not food money. What we consider to be "poor" most countries of the world view as middle class.
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Maybe there is a correlation between aggressive panhandling and lead exposure.

I read some article on poverty a while back and it said something about the majority of what is considered impoverished in the USA, had a TV and refrigerator in their homes.

- 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
- Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
- Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
- Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
- Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
- More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
- 43 percent have Internet access.
- One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
- One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

https://www.heritage.org/poverty-an...erty-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about

There are people that live rough and then there are people that live rough. This country definitely has some serious poverty, but the difference is, the people here would not survive overseas or even south of the border.

I'm surprised the panhandlers down in Raleigh-Durham haven't organized yet and have union representation. They live in a patch of woods by every interstate intersection and rotate to the intersection in shifts... must have been the lead.
 
MTT TL said:
Essentially poverty has already been eliminated in the US.
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I'm certain there are some portion of children and the elderly who are not fed, clothed and housed adequately, but this has less to do with scarce materiel than a caretaker's poor decision.

Davidsog said:
In some places our poor would be considered wealthy.
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As a material matter, that's clearly true and reflects how we use the words "poor" and "poverty". A person can have a car, spaceous apartment with air conditioning, enough food, medical care and something approximating an academic education, but still make a range of life choices that will leave him without hope. When we discuss the poor, we seem to often be describing these people without a hope of a productive and independent future.
 
Essentially poverty has already been eliminated in the US. Some people have more than others but people beg on the streets for drug money not food money. What we consider to be "poor" most countries of the world view as middle class.
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I guess my hyperbole got lost in translation somewhere....
 
In some places our poor would be considered wealthy.
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I agree, and that’s something that has really stayed with me since my army days. I appreciate how good the majority of Americans have it and makes me appreciate our country more.

But, the USA’s infrastructure is in an atrocious state. We have rampant government corruption, mismanagement and wasteful use of funds. The poor areas of the country get less attention in maintenance budgets. And of course, the county commissioner has no potholes on their street. I got to see that first hand.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
Given that we nearly universally used lead paint in housing/structures for over 100 years, and in toys, ostensibly ending in the 1970s, I have to wonder about the lack of violence in non inner city areas.
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Lead paint wasn't universally used, lead was only used in high-end expensive paints. And in general homeowners that could afford lead paint could afford to keep their properties property maintained. Lead paint isn't a problem unless it begins to flake off the walls, or is rubbed off by friction as in a window opening and closing. So it wasn't a problem for the original inhabitants who installed it, but became a big problem years later when the once rich area became a poor area and maintenance was neglected and paint begins peeling off the walls and the old windows aren't replaced.
 
Lead paint wasn't universally used, lead was only used in high-end expensive paints. And in general homeowners that could afford lead paint could afford to keep their properties property maintained. Lead paint isn't a problem unless it begins to flake off the walls, or is rubbed off by friction as in a window opening and closing. So it wasn't a problem for the original inhabitants who installed it, but became a big problem years later when the once rich area became a poor area and maintenance was neglected and paint begins peeling off the walls and the old windows aren't replaced.
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Really? According to this company that does home inspections, lead paint usage in housing peaked in 1922.
https://www.joneswarren.com/single-...istory-Of-Lead-Paint-Use-In-The-United-States

Also by the 1920s, lead poisoning in children was recognized as a common ailment in the US. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.79.12.1668

While it was known by the 1900s that lead paint was a problem, in the 1930s, the industry rejected the science of lead causing problems in children, claiming the children were "sub-normal" to begin with...
https://scienceprogress.org/2008/10/a-brief-history-of-lead-regulation/
 
Lead paint wasn't universally used, lead was only used in high-end expensive paints.
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Rather than dispute your claim - I'm putting it on you to cite references.


In my 25 plus years of working in the paint and coatings industry - I never heard that one before....
 
I'm surprised the panhandlers down in Raleigh-Durham haven't organized yet and have union representation. They live in a patch of woods by every interstate intersection and rotate to the intersection in shifts... must have been the lead.
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I just moved to the Raleigh-Durham area from Southern Maine. If you want to see a real panhandler problem spend a day in Portland. They run that town. In August I spent three hours there and saw two overdoses on the street, dozens of open drug deals, a panhandler on every single traffic island, and people camping in store fronts. Haven't seen anything like that around here yet.

Any parent who hasn't been aware of the dangers of lead paint chips for the past couple of generations most likely wasn't aware of a number of other risk factors. Poor people in the United States are definitely well off compared to poverty in the rest of the world. However that doesn't mean that they're teaching their kids right from wrong.
 
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