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Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

economist.com

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Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#81

Post by jumasheff »

smolder wrote: post #67
PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

I wonder if there are specific components of the polluted air that have effects, like human body odor, pheremones, or just allergens.

Lead, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#82

Post by d--b »

PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

Well yeah, but they have to remove all the other factors like heat, wind and rain, which are correlated to air pollution.

There is likely less violent crimes on rainy days, just because more people stay home.

To do this properly, they would have to do a controlled experiment with people in rooms with or without air pollution. And measure how sanguine they get or something of that nature.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#83

Post by dannykwells »

mnw21cam wrote: post #3

The main problem I see with this study is that it could be confounded by the fact that high air pollution areas have other problems too that could be causing the bad behaviour instead, like overcrowding, noise, frustration at slow traffic, etc.

They controlled for this!!!

Read the study before instantly dismissing it, maybe.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#84

Post by huffmsa »

ljf wrote: post #34
huffmsa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Lead moreso that other pollutants. Areas with higher concentrations of ground lead (older, poorer parts of cities) are pretty strongly linked with violent crime. Pretty well documented, don't have the citations handy though. It's been thoroughly discuss on HN. Rudimentary citation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

Interested - what would be causing the high lead levels in those areas, not that lead has been removed from petrol? Is it legacy contaminants or other ways that lead is released into the environment? I was warned off eating the food I grew in my garden in London as historically people threw their ash into their gardens, so the soil their can be pretty polluted.

A lot of it is air pollution which settled into the soil decades ago. Hard to clean up

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#85

Post by OJFord »

PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

That's crazy though, and makes the headline tamer than it need be doesn't it?

'Exposure to' makes me think it's more prolonged, and over time the effect is[...] but actually it's suggesting that it has a reversible, quickly reacting/short-term impact, which (naively) I find much more surprising.

Relevant excerpt:

> They find that a 10% increase in same-day exposure to PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter) is associated with a 0.14% increase in violent crimes, such as assault. An equivalent increase in exposure to ozone, an air pollutant, is associated with a 0.3% jump in such crimes. Pollution levels can easily rise by much more than that.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#87

Post by huffmsa »

Armisael16 wrote: post #37
huffmsa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's not a case of ice cream and summer time. Lead fucks people up. Always has, always will. Pretty easy to trace a relationship between lead concentrations and societal disfunction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

The article specifically mentions the lead-crime hypothesis as a different example of hypothesized linkages between air pollution and crime. It seems exceptionally likely that it isn’t what they’re looking at. This paper specifically looks at short term air pollution effect (ie, the kinds that will measurably rise and fall in different parts of a city over an 8-year span). Lead takes so long to affect a single person…

Of course I didn't read the article. I hear it's paywall, and I and the economist's paywall really don't get along.

But, it being a short term study doesn't change much. A temporary increase in pollutants will serve to exacerbate underlying conditions. Supposing areas which experience the largest increase in the short term were also susceptible to higher levels historical, and most impacted by previous short term increases and we're back where we started.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#88

Post by BurningFrog »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #80

It's such a typical kneejerk "skeptical" reaction at this point to be like "oh well maybe correlation doesn't imply causation" as if there are no causal relationships ever in life itself. But really if the rationalists just took a few seconds to think about it maybe they'd find a some plausibility in the notion that exposure to harmful pollution could trigger a stress response; stress is intimately wrapped up with ag…

Well, I think it's a fact¹ that a large majority of "science" stories that go viral turn out to be wrong.

So the rational approach to them is "what might be wrong with this one?".

¹ Citation Missing

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#89

Post by rockinghigh »

d--b wrote: post #82
PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

Well yeah, but they have to remove all the other factors like heat, wind and rain, which are correlated to air pollution. There is likely less violent crimes on rainy days, just because more people stay home. To do this properly, they would have to do a controlled experiment with people in rooms with or without air pollution. And measure how sanguine they get or something of that nature.

They obvious control for these factors. They actually report that the effects are stronger at lower temperature.

Re: Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increase in violent crime

#90

Post by hrktb »

PeterStuer wrote: post #35

For all those commenting on 'aren't more polluted areas just more criminal due to other factors", as far as I can tell the researchers examined crime rates for the same place and find correlation with whether there was more Ozone and PM 2,5 on a particular day or not. So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days. https://www.sciencedai…

> particular emphasis on aggressive behavior. To identify this relationship, we combine detailed daily data on crime, air pollution, and weather for an eight-year period across the United States. Our primary identification strategy employs extremely high dimensional fixed effects and we perform a series of robustness checks to address confounding variation between temperature and air pollution. We find a robust positive effect of increased air pollution on violent crimes, and specifically assaults, but no relationship between increases in air pollution and property crimes. The effects are present in and out of the home, at levels well below Ambient Air Pollution Standards, and PM2.5 effects are strongest at lower temperatures

This seems pretty extensive and serious

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