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America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

motherjones.com

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Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#61

Post by colomon »

greendestiny wrote: post #7

I'm tempted to repeat the oft said correlation is not causation. But really I have never thought that captures the problem I have with studies like this. Of course correlation does not necessarily imply causation. What I really find to be problematic is a small time series of data of a facet of a human behaviour across a population is probably going to correlate extremely well to many other time series across the sam…

Yeah, it just feels like the entire article is too convenient.

1) Everything seems to work out perfectly, no matter how it is considered. For instance, if lead contamination in the ground is such a big deal, why does lead in gas track so closely to the crime rate? Wouldn't it be the case that it would track on the upside but not the downside?

2) He keeps on emphasizing lead lowers IQ. But the Flynn Effect suggests that IQ started going up in the 1930s and has only (maybe) started to level off very recently. It's the exact opposite of what you'd expect based on lead exposure from leaded gas.

3) Long term crime rates have been mostly going down for centuries: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/lon...

Mind you, I'm fully in agreement that lead sucks and I sure as hell don't want my kid exposed to it. It's just that I'm far from convinced that the crime rates change mostly because of lead exposure. It seems far too tidy an explanation.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#63

Post by STRML »

The great blog Damn Interesting did a post about this about 5 years back. It's a great read. In fact I just read it yesterday and was very surprised to see the MotherJones article today.

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/

They tell a great story and reveal some interesting facts about Ethyl's creator, Thomas Midgley, who very unfortunately was also responsible for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The collective amount of economic and social damage this single man is responsible for is staggering. It would certainly be fun to total it up and compare to various wars, natural disasters, etc.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#64

Post by jere »

javert wrote: post #54
don_draper wrote: post #34

He says his article is not partisan and I believe it is not meant to be, but there are political lessons to be learned. The market left alone doesn't always pick the best product, leading to the best outcome for society. Devout readers of Ayn Rand should take heed.

Ayn Rand was not a market anarchist, as you seem to be suggesting. Ayn Rand believed that the role of the government should be to protect people from other people. Putting harmful chemicals in the air is no exception, if they are truly harmful (as in this case). People constantly misrepresent Ayn Rand and slander those who agree with her. Please stop.

>Objectivism holds that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism,[72] specifically what Rand described as "full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)#Politics...

And here's a freebie from some googling:

>As far as the role of government is concerned, there are laws--some of them passed in the nineteenth century--prohibiting certain kinds of pollution, such as the dumping of industrial wastes into rivers. These laws have not been enforced. It is the enforcement of such laws that those concerned with the issue may properly demand. Specific laws--forbidding specifically defined and proved harm, physical harm, to persons or property--are the only solution to problems of this kind.

So perhaps Rand had nuanced views on this, but I don't hear the same nuance in her followers. And I don't see how the two quotes can be reconciled either.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#65

Post by gpcz »

javert wrote: post #54
don_draper wrote: post #34

He says his article is not partisan and I believe it is not meant to be, but there are political lessons to be learned. The market left alone doesn't always pick the best product, leading to the best outcome for society. Devout readers of Ayn Rand should take heed.

Ayn Rand was not a market anarchist, as you seem to be suggesting. Ayn Rand believed that the role of the government should be to protect people from other people. Putting harmful chemicals in the air is no exception, if they are truly harmful (as in this case). People constantly misrepresent Ayn Rand and slander those who agree with her. Please stop.

I'm concerned about what level of evidence an Objectivist society would need to pass such a law. According to Chapter 33 of "The Passion of Ayn Rand," Ayn Rand demanded a "rational" explanation of why to stop smoking and said the statistical evidence of the link between smoking and lung cancer wasn't proof. It took an X-ray of her own lung cancer to get her to stop. Since the lead/crime hypothesis bases its conclusion heavily on statistics, I don't think it would pass the Rand test.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#66

Post by rayiner »

htf wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not illegal to spread poison in the air. Every time you drive your car you're spreading harmful chemicals into the air. Every factory or industrial operation spreads harmful chemicals into the air and water. You could theoretically ban pollution. That actually used to be the law in the 1600's. E.g. if you owned land on a river, the water had to leave your property as clean as it came in. As the industrial revolu…

If I may ask a second question: what do you think of emissions trading as a solution instead of bans on specific sources like leaded gasoline?

A lot of people like emissions trading, but I think it's a bit oversold. Implementing an emissions trading scheme is phenomenally complex, and it doesn't really reduce the regulatory apparatus required. You still have to have people figuring out what the total cap should be on a harmful substance, you still have to have people who go out and enforce to make sure nobody is exceeding their emissions limits, etc. You open yourself up to all sorts of gaming the system--people trying to claim emissions credits for things that don't actually reduce emissions. It also, as the sibling comment mentions, doesn't work for pollutants like lead, sulfur, etc, whose effects are highly localized. It doesn't really do anyone any good if polluters in L.A. buy up all the sulfur credits that result from people in the middle of Montana reducing their emissions.

The EPA generally doesn't ban things. Leaded gasoline was an unusual case because it was so harmful and also, in the grand scheme of things, quite replaceable. Usually what they'll do is specify that polluters that emit particular kinds of air pollution (sulfur, etc) must use a certain level of control technology. This creates certain market incentives for polluters to make this control technology as cheap as possible. However, this approach doesn't really reduce pollution as much as it should, since the EPA is usually quite sensitive to cost issues. But as a practical matter, some polluters should go out of business if the cost of thoroughly cleaning up their emissions outweighs the revenue from the polluting activity.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#67

Post by MichaelSalib »

htf wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not illegal to spread poison in the air. Every time you drive your car you're spreading harmful chemicals into the air. Every factory or industrial operation spreads harmful chemicals into the air and water. You could theoretically ban pollution. That actually used to be the law in the 1600's. E.g. if you owned land on a river, the water had to leave your property as clean as it came in. As the industrial revolu…

If I may ask a second question: what do you think of emissions trading as a solution instead of bans on specific sources like leaded gasoline?

Emissions trading regimes can be effective for some pollutants, but not others. I'd support them for CO2 because CO2 disperses rapidly and widely, but I oppose them for mercury emissions from coal fired power plants because mercury is much heavier and much more localized; in practice, an emissions trading regime for Hg would mean that children who grew up near power plants (i.e., poor children) would have much higher Hg exposure than richer children.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#68

Post by rayiner »

clavalle wrote: post #55
baddox wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can use private litigation (sue someone for poisoning you) but that is wholly impractical. I'll never understand how people can suppose that a government solution, which consists of a massive nation-wide bureaucracy as well as an immense violent army of what I endearingly call "the conflict resolvers" (law enforcement, courts, etc.) funded mostly by compulsory financial levies on working residents, is by any de…

'Private litigation' is my new favorite oxymoron. Litigation cannot exist without your so-called 'conflict resolvers'.

I love how lawyers suddenly become libertarian heroes in this particular debate.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#69

Post by jwess »

It's scary to think that the transition to unleaded aviation fuel, or avgas, only began a couple years ago, and is scheduled for 2018 [0].

Currently, Avgas, which is different than jet fuel in that it's mainly used by private single-engine planes (ICE instead of turbine), can still contain up to 2.12 grams of lead per gallon [1]. Surprisingly, this 2.12 grams of lead/gal is termed 100LL, for 100-octane "low-lead". Up until the 1970's avgas could contain up to 4 grams of lead per gallon.

I believe that lead exposure caused by the widespread use of avgas is a serious public health concern. Unfortunately most private plane owners are strongly against it due to the higher price of unleaded fuel. I really hope that the EPA succeeds in meeting their deadline.

[0] http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas/ [1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-04-28/html/2010-9603.ht...

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