Lead poisoning

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that global crime levels have continued to fall.

There is a fascinating theory that this has to do with the amount of lead pollution, so crime levels rose markedly between the 1940s and 1970s when more and more people were driving cars with leaded petrol, then most countries started phasing in lead-free petrol, and once the last babies born during the leaded era had passed the prime age for turning to a life of crime (between 15 and 20), crime levels started falling in the 1990s and continue to fall to this day.

It might be complete hokum or coincidence, or it might actually be true, who knows?

Read up at The Telegraph or The Guardian according to political taste.

Rather amusingly, the man who originally suggested putting lead in petrol (strictly speaking, tetraethyl lead) to make the engine run more smoothly was also the man who developed chloro-fluourocarbons (CFC gases), a one Mr Thomas Midgely, Jr.

UPDATE. BobE alerts us to other links between lead and crime: for example Britain's most prolific church lead theft gang jailed or Lithuanian gang who ran Britain's most prolific church lead thefts jailed.