Lead Exposure linked to Criminal Behavior

Exposure to lead in young age makes children more likely to develop criminal behavior when they grow up. According to two recent studies lead exposure in childhood is linked to a significant loss of critical brain matter and to a raised risk of criminal behavior.

The study involved young adults who grew up in poor, inner-city neighborhoods in Cincinnati. An average loss of 1.2 percent volume of gray matter in the brain was discovered in hundreds of children, whom the researchers followed from the womb into their 20s.

The research, led by Kim Cecil of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center also found that the loss of brain was greater among males; it was 1.7 percent.

Such deterioration could have consequences for the society since it affected regions of the brain that are responsible for critical executive functions, such as impulse control, emotional regulation, and judgment.

In another study, Dr. Kim Dietrich a professor of environmental health at University of Cincinnati and colleagues recorded the blood lead levels before the birth of a baby and during early childhood until the child was six-and-a-half years of age.

The level of lead exposure was then connected with local criminal justice records to find out how many times was each person arrested, from 18 years of his age until end of October 2005.

It was found that 55 percent of the subjects (63 percent of males) had been arrested at least once and the average was five arrests between 18 and 24 years of age.

Interestingly, the possibility of arrests was greater for people who had higher levels of lead in their blood.

“There are some data that suggest that in fact lead does run in parallel with crime trends over the past several decades. Lower income, inner-city children remain particularly vulnerable to lead exposure,” said Dietrich, in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Taken together, the two studies offer potent indication for the potentially destructive consequences of childhood lead exposure, said Ellen K. Silbergeld, professor of health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath.

“It’s a national disgrace that so many children continue to be exposed at levels known to be neurotoxic. The associations observed by Cecil and colleagues provide a clear warning sign that early lead exposure disrupts brain development in ways that are likely to be permanent,” Dr. David C. Bellinger of the Harvard Medical School wrote in an editorial accompanying the new reports in the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine.