Rudy Giuliani claims to have cleared up crime in New York, but new research claims it could be down to cutting levels of lead in the air, writes Tony Kinsella.
The US Republican Party is well into a period of profound decomposition. What kind of recomposed product it will be able to offer the US electorate in 2008 remains to be seen. One central question the party needs to answer is the role which faith or ideology, as substitutes for science and fact, can, or should, play in its new-look pitch.
Dr Richard Cramona, US surgeon general in 2002-2006, described an internal president George Bush administration research discussion as having been "driven by theology, ideology and preconceived beliefs that were scientifically incorrect" in remarks to the US Congress house committee on oversight and reform on July 10th last.
A recoil from such faith-based politics has helped former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, to become one of the frontrunners in the race for the Republican nomination.
One pillar of Giuliani's appeal is that he is not a linear successor to Bush. Another rests on his active self-promotion as New York's effective crime-buster. Giuliani and his police commissioner William Bratton, helped launch the "Zero Tolerance" approach. This involves reacting strongly against small offences from litter to vandalism, which can poison communities' lives and generate a climate of insecurity. One of his most recent crime-buster pitches came when he told Fox television that he had begun "with the city that was the crime capital of America. When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 per cent. I reduced overall crime by 57 per cent".
This proud boast sits comfortably astride two defining arguments of the political right: a) that the only effective method for dealing with crime is to crack down on potential offenders, and b) that such potential offenders are likely to be poor. In US cities there tends to be a higher concentration of African Americans and Hispanics in poorer areas. Poverty thus serves as a thin, yet instantly comprehensible, substitute for politically unacceptable racial labels.
A growing body of, what has been up until now, largely ignored scientific research suggests an altogether different culprit for high crime levels in inner city communities - lead. Lead is a metallic neurotoxin which can promote brain dysfunctions. Inhaled, or swallowed, tiny particles are directly absorbed into the bloodstream and transmitted to the brain. In 1993 the US National Academy of Sciences determined that children under six are particularly vulnerable to lead because their nervous systems are still developing.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in 1997 that blood levels above 10mg/dL (micrograms per decilitre) could lead to "harmful effects on children's learning and behaviour". This 10 mg/dL limit is the threshold for a condition known as Elevated Blood Lead (EBL).
The neurotoxic effect is both cumulative and delayed. The more lead a young child ingests over a long period, the greater the damage will be some 10-20 years later. Adolescents suffering from acute EBL have difficulty intellectually correlating actions and their consequences. In crude terms, they behave as drunks - except their nervous systems are permanently inebriated through no fault of their own.
One of the research pioneers into the effects of lead poisoning, Dr Herbert Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh, whose work has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms that EBL triggers impulsive behaviour.
The main traditional sources for lead particle pollution were fumes from leaded petrol, paints with a lead content, lead water pipes, lead solder in food and beverage cans, and lead handling industries.
Leaded petrol was phased out in the US from 1970 onwards, its use having grown by some 400 per cent between 1945 and 1975. In California juvenile crime rose by almost 300 per cent from 1965-1975, before dropping off, matching the time lag between peak lead air pollution levels, and their subsequent decline. A similar curve appears in New York statistics. City health authorities found that the number of children heavily poisoned by lead fell by more than 80 per cent between 1970 and 1974. The New York murder rate fell from 31 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1990, to 7 per 100,000 in 2004.
A 2001 study of the relationship between lead exposure and homicide by Dr Paul Stretsky, a sociologist at the Colorado State University, and Dr Michael Lynch, a criminologist at the University of South Florida, found that the incidence of homicide was nearly 4 times higher in US counties with high air lead concentrations (0.17 ug/m3) than in counties which had low, or zero, lead concentrations.
The Chicago housing estate, Robert Taylor Homes, was built over that city's Dan Ryan expressway, a motorway which carries some 150,000 cars every day. The estate opened in 1962, and a 1980 study found that its residents were 22 times more likely to commit murder than people living elsewhere in Chicago.
In the July 2007 edition of the Environmental Researchjournal, Rick Nevin an economic consultant at the US National Center for Healthy Housing, published a peer-reviewed article on "Understanding international crime trends: The legacy of preschool lead exposure."
The study demonstrates a chilling correlation between lead poisoning levels and subsequent adolescent crime and arrest rate shifts for burglary, assault, and murder in all of these countries.
The scientific evidence suggests that the dramatic falls in inner-city crime rates over recent decades may be more due to the banning of leaded petrol, the replacement of lead water pipes, and the fitting of replacement windows without lead paint, than to aggressive policing and sentencing policies.
One criminological study (Rosenfeld and Messner) suggests that at most 20 per cent of the recent reduction in New York crime can be attributed to Giuliani's actions.
Scientific fact may be of more relevance to our political actions than ideological or faith-based certainties. As Dr Cramona warned the US Congress last Tuesday ". . . in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring or marginalising the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds".
If the history of lead pollution is anything to go by, it is a warning we would do well to heed.