Supposed new evidence published in the Public Library of Science Medicine has linked the amount of lead in a child’s blood to the likelihood he or she will commit a future crime. The study looked at 20 years of data from Cincinnati medical clinics and tracked down 250 subjects. They found that the more lead in the child’s blood from birth to age 7 the more likely there were to be arrested as an adult. The lead author Kim Dietrich stated that, “We need to be thinking about lead as a drug and a fairly strong one”. Good call. Oh, wait a minute, didn’t we get rid of lead from our paints? Also haven’t we been checking children’s lead levels regularly for years? That’s right. We have. In fact, any high lead level information is given to the state where both medical action and environmental changes occur. What more can we do? Other than give more fodder for lawyers to get criminals off, it just seems to me that this study is a waste as we are as vigilant as we can be. The good news: they got their paper published with some nice publicity. Hooray for tenure!
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