Did the Clean Air Act Also Lower Crime Rates?

We just came upon this interesting New York Times piece from last October that reports on a plausible link between high levels of lead and crime. Because of a surge in the number of teenagers in the 1990s, people were predicting a spike in crime.  But it never happened.  In fact, crime rates steadily decreased. 

This phenomenon baffled experts, but economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes discovered a possible answer: lead, or lack thereof.

Reyes, who knew that even small amounts of lead in the blood of children was linked to brain damage and aggressive behavior, 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."

It seems that the switch to unleaded gasoline in the U.S. in the 1970s, promtped by regulations from the Clean Air Act, dramatically lowered the levels of the toxin in this generation of children, and unintentionally made our communities safer.

Add that to the growing list of reasons to go green.

  

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