Today's @bopinion post is about the silent pollution crisis that is damaging American kids' brains and raising levels of violent crime.
LEAD.
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Lead is in American water pipes.
sciline.org/evidence-blog/…
Lead is in American houses.
epa.gov/lead/protect-y…
Lead is in American soil.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Lead is colorless, odorless, tasteless. It lodges itself in your brain.
who.int/news-room/fact…
And it damages your brain. And the brains of your kids. And the brains of the kids down the street.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Lead damages kids' brains even in far lower amounts than the official threshold for lead poisoning!!
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002379
And what does lead do to kids when it damages their brains.
It makes them grow up to commit violent crime.
motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201…
Check out this new paper on lead and juvenile delinquency, which uses natural experiments and sibling comparisons to isolate causality.
mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.116…
Or check out this thread about another important recent paper on the lead/crime link:
I would be willing to bet a lot of money that there are high levels of lead exposure in St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and other unusually violent American cities.
Oh look, Detroit has very high lead levels!
WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED??
detroitnews.com/story/news/loc…
Oh look, St. Louis has very high lead levels!
WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED??
stltoday.com/lifestyles/hea…
Oh, look, Baltimore has...well, you get the point.
medium.com/@BmoreDoc/balt…
So far, only one presidential candidate has made lead cleanup a top priority: Julian Castro: julianforthefuture.com/news-events/en…
But ALL the Democratic candidates - and Republicans too, and state and local governments too - need to make lead cleanup a priority!
It's damaging the brains of American kids!! This must not stand!!
CLEAN UP ALL LEAD RIGHT NOW!!
(end)
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
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