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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.
Lead(Pb) in the air maybe?
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
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.
So they are not comparing clean air neighborhoods to highly polluted neighborhoods, but the same neighborhood on different days.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191003114007.h...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of one of the prototypical sociological study examples of correlation vs causation where something akin to icecream sales correlated highly with murder rates. The fact air pollution, in many cases, directly correlates with population density, make the results seem less surprising. It would be more interesting if less populated areas with high air pollution (perhaps near industrial plants, etc.) had a high…
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
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 (since it mostly harms brain development in children, but crimes are mostly not committed by children) that it almost certainly being meaningfully measured here.
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…
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…
Eating prison for also associated. Correlation does not equal causation.
The researchers were careful to correct for other possible explanations, including weather, heat waves, precipitation, or more general, county-specific confounding factors."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191003114007.h...
Is not there some common denominator, something simple like - there is both more crime and pollution in cities?
Even if it's just a correlation, it's not really a result worth publishing otherwise.