
Lead Water Pipes in 1900 Caused Higher Crime Rates in 1920? - curtis
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/lead-water-pipes-1900-caused-higher-crime-rates-1920
======
bpchaps
Lead poisoning is especially strange. I'm convinced that I have it, in
contrast to the bipolar diagnosis I've been given. I used to do competitive
shooting where I'd practice five days out of the week and compete on average
of maybe once each weekend. The projectiles we shot were entirely lead, there
was never any push for cleaning our hands, and the lead trap was never, ever
cleaned (lead dust yay).

Problem is, every time I describe the problem and the reasoning behind it, no
doctor takes me seriously to the point of laughing sometimes. It's ridiculous
that lead's been researched so much, yet no doctor I've talked to understands
it enough to even humor the idea. Not trying to self diagnose, but a little
bit of "Hmm... yeah, maybe", would be nice.

I've also reached out to researchers in the field. The modern ones who've done
extensive research have all moved to different fields and aren't willing to
help out. Really frustrating. If anybody has any sources for help, I'd love
it.

~~~
colanderman
Have you considered a blood test? [1] You could probably get a referral for
generic blood work easily (claim you're concerned about vitamin levels or
something), and then ask the testing agency to check for lead levels.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Diagnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning#Diagnosis)

~~~
bpchaps
Blood tests are useless after a certain point, as far as I know. The tests for
neurological effects are a bit more complicated and require bone biopsies.
Been a while since I've looked into it, so I might be wrong.

~~~
irremediable
Just from quickly skimming the literature, it looks like you can measure it in
vivo with X-ray fluorescence. Getting access to one of those would be hard,
but you might be able to persuade a researcher to use you in a trial? I
imagine you've already looked into this a fair bit.

Are you on medication to help with the (diagnosed) bipolar disorder? Do you
find that e.g. lithium eases your symptoms? If so, I'd be inclined to think
you're bipolar -- irrespective of whether you also have low-level lead
poisoning.

------
ves
How is this even remotely good science? So far as I can tell, they didn't
admit the possibility that this can be either complete noise (if you have, say
100 diseases, and you're looking for time-series correlations, or performing
tests with too low an alpha or power) or caused by a confounder.

The task of making causal claims is a difficult one, and not one to be made
lightly. The literature is replete with examples of this going terribly wrong,
even with perceived physical justifications. See

[0]: tylervigen.com

[1]:
[http://nerdsonwallstreet.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/datamin...](http://nerdsonwallstreet.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/dataminejune_2000.pdf)

[2]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff-
aus...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff-austerity-
research-errors_n_3094015.html)

[3]:
[http://www.economist.com/node/5246700](http://www.economist.com/node/5246700)

~~~
josu
The article is bad (MotherJones), the paper may be better [1]. I've only
skimmed it, but it looks at the correlation between distance from a lead
factory and homicide rate, which probably increases the signal/noise ratio.

[1]
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbau...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf)

~~~
ves
Do you not admit the confounder that proximity to a lead factory should also
correlate with socioeconomic status?

I don't have time to check out the article this week, but will soon.

~~~
Steko
_3 Which cities used lead pipes?

An important concern in a cross-sectional study such as ours is that the
cities that installed lead pipes in the nineteenth century might have differed
from the cities that did not in unobserved ways that were correlated with
their homicide rates. Based on available data on the characteristics of the
cities in our sample, we find little evidence that the cities that used lead
pipes differed in observable ways from the cities that did not. Although
larger cities, denser cities, and cities with comparatively low rates of home
ownership were more likely to have used lead pipes, so were better-educated
cities. High-homicide southern cities, meanwhile, were less likely to have
used lead pipes. When we predict whether cities used lead pipes using all
covariates, the only difference that remains statistically significant is the
city population.

Using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) sample of the 1900
census, we calculate several city-level covariates that could be correlated
with both lead pipe use and crime.17 These include each city’s population,
population density, home ownership rate, and literacy rate, the share of each
city’s population composed of African Americans, foreign-born residents, and
single men aged 18 to 40, and the share of each city’s employed population
working in manufacturing. We also create covariates for cities’ latitude and
longitude..._

> I don't have time to check out the article this week, but will soon.

Maybe reading first before accusing them of bad science is a good idea?

------
ori_b
> _Cities that used iron pipes, in contrast, had higher rates of death from
> circulatory disease, cancer, and cerebral hemorrhage. We know of no
> scientific literature to motivate these latter relationships._

Is it possible that this is just because people weren't dying of other things
first?

~~~
padiyar83
Correlation between two variables, does not imply one causes the other.[1] [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)

~~~
Hondor
Do you agree that human's use of fossil fuels caused global warming? We only
know that they're correlated, right? It was a singular event without a control
that we discovered by analyzing historical data. A lot like this article's
subject.

------
curtis
The blog post links to this paper: Lead Exposure and Violent Crime in the
Early Twentieth Century --
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbau...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf)

------
brownbat
Crime trends are hard, and every theory we have seems to have its own set of
weird statistical quirks.

That "we don't know much" nuance rarely makes it into short articles. The
closest I've seen is in the Atlantic, where they basically have a whole series
devoted to problems with no easy answers.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-
cau...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-caused-the-
crime-decline/477408/)

Maybe the lead theory is right, but these are tough issues that are well
studied, full of methodological hazards, so it's worth being extremely
cautious when interpreting results about anything that drives crime trends.

~~~
Steko
> That "we don't know much" nuance rarely makes it into short articles.

Well it made it into this one:

 _Click on my post from last year to get more details about both the strengths
and weaknesses of this paper. As with any retrospective study like this, there
are reasons to be cautious about the results._

Clicking the link gives us a pretty nuanced discussion:

 _On the negative side, it 's risky to look solely at homicide numbers. This
is because the absolute number of murders is small, especially on a city-by-
city basis, and that means there's a lot of noise in the numbers. This is
especially true when you're limited to a period of time as short as 15 years.
There's also the fact that this was an era when lead paint was widely used,
and that's very hard to tease out from the use of lead in pipes. Finally,
there's the usual problem of any study like this: what do you control for? The
use of lead pipes is plausibly unrelated to anything else related to crime,
but it's impossible to know for sure. The authors do control for black
population, foreign-born population, occupations, home ownership, and gender
breakdown, and that reduces their effect size from 11.4 percent to 8.6
percent. Might some other control reduce it even further?

Plus there's the anomaly of Southern cities. Very few of them used lead pipes,
but some did, and their murder rates were essentially no different from any
other Southern cities. Why? It's possible that this is because their use of
lead pipes was small (F&M have data on lead pipe use by city, but not on how
much lead piping was used in each city). But it's still odd._

~~~
brownbat
On the other hand,

> it looks like lead really is the culprit

And yes,

> there are reasons to be cautious about the results

But that's immediately followed by,

> However, the main strength of this study is unquestionably important: it
> verifies the lead-crime link in [a new] environment...

That's not the level of nuance I'm looking for.

More specifically, I think articles tend to be stronger when they acknowledge
that there are multiple theories for crime trends, several of which have some
explanatory power, none of which really gives a complete picture.

If the title were "Lead contributed to higher crime rates" rather than "Lead
caused higher crime rates," that would be the sort of concession I'm looking
for.

Unreservedly agree with you about the older piece though. Even without
discussing alternative theories, Drum's earlier article is a good example of
science journalism that puts a paper in perspective, (titled "some new
evidence" rather than "X causes Y"), and the content is really well balanced.

------
jamesash
Around 1900, the "tin" in tin cans contained about 12% lead, which leached
into fruits and vegetables. You have to wonder if there's any way of
correcting for that. [Source: "The Great A&P" by Marc Levinson, page
50.][Edit: read the paper cited and they make no mention of this]

~~~
blatherard
Do you suspect that lead to be distributed in a way that would confound the
results? In the absence of a theory, I'd expect lead to be fairly evenly
distributed amongst cities in that particular way.

~~~
lostlogin
I read the parent as pondering whether it would be possible to compare
populations that have had leaded canned food to those that haven't.

------
astrodust
No doubt we'll find an unfortunate blip in twenty years in Flint.

~~~
bluedino
Speaking of Flint (and Chicago as well), why are murders/shootings at new
highs when they went down in the 90's like in every other area? Did they
starting using lead paint again in the 80's?

~~~
sudojudo
Pretty sure the up-tick has more to do with socioeconomics and the drug war
than anything else.

I don't have any sources at hand, so take this with a grain of salt. But, I've
often seen it argued that Reagan era drug policies were detrimental to poor
minorities, especially black men. The problems we see today are the trickle-
down effects (couldn't resist) of turning an entire generation of fathers into
disenfranchised criminals.

~~~
astrodust
Throwing a generation of fathers in jail for trivial offenses not only erodes
confidence in the judicial system, it leaves children without a role model.

Like if dad's in jail, who cares if you end up there eventually.

Prison isn't a deterrent any more. In some communities doing time is just part
of growing up.

------
dzink
Mentioned this to a doctor in the family and their instant reply back was
"Lead poisoning medically results in lower IQ". Then found some info about it
here: [http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/iq-
eff...](http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/iq-effects-
childhood-lead-exposure-persist-in-adults/)

~~~
lostlogin
Should have asked him/her what the medical IQ scale looks like. I'd guess it's
the same but more expensive.

------
askyourmother
Well the lead removal has reduced crime, but the plastic replacement pipes and
the hormone disrupting chemicals contained within are certainly having a great
effect! Wonder if they will start to chart that?

------
madengr
The media refuses to say where the Flint, MI lead is coming from. It's coming
from lead pipes in private residences, since the minerals in the water have
changed.

------
rdancer
I wonder what else may have been happening circa 1814–1818 that could make
people more violent in its aftermath?

------
tacos
I get all my science from motherjones.com! From fluoride to sugar to weed,
this is where Pulitzer meets Nobel.

Seriously though: a motherjones.com post of this quality as #1 on HN is a new
low. I miss the days of pg obsessively micromanaging everything 'round these
parts.

~~~
yarou
If memory serves, pg was actually pretty hands off - unless a submission was
politically controversial, most topics were allowed.

I haven't really noticed anything different, other than dang commenting more
publicly on moderation decisions.

~~~
tacos
pg was downright addicted and glued to this site, and pulled levers at all
hours.

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qaq
Yes it's so easy to isolate all other possible factors, and correlation is
obviously a definitive proof of causation.

~~~
dredmorbius
There _is_ a causal relation between lead and brain development, with strong
relations between brain development and causal activity.

This is _yet another_ corralative relation between introduction of leaded
plumbing and long-term behavioral impacts.

False premise on your part.

~~~
qaq
Yes obviously prohibition and organized crime are minor factors in homicide
rates very convenient time period chosen. In larger urban areas using more
lead pipes is obviously a dominating factor and obviously not being a major
black markets in prohibition era and thus center for organized crime.

~~~
dredmorbius
You know, if you'd conceed points _and then raise other considerations_ your
arguments might be taken as in good faith.

As it is, I find it hard to extend that courtesy.

You might want to consider this in future. As the points you raise have
merits, but not in the context and tone in which your make them.

~~~
qaq
You are right but having stats background it get's tiresome looking at how
people are abusing the craft. There is obviously little harm from a "study"
like this, but this sad state of things affects much more critical areas like
medical field. You see so much of misuse and misapplication makes you angry
after a while.

~~~
Hondor
You're assuming your points were valid. Since you didn't really argue them,
they might not be. In that case, you aren't justified in getting angry at this
article any more than you are in getting angry at every paper using stats ever
published. Perhaps this is one of the rare good ones.

~~~
qaq
I stated 2 things (not very elaborately): 1) There are too many factors that
affect crime rates that are not accounted for by this study.

2) Correlation does not prove causation

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5ilv3r
The author used the wrong chart and had to correct it?? Get this trash off the
front page.

~~~
lostlogin
Did you notice this or just read the authors correction and notification of
their mistake? How do you handle your errors? Or do you not make any?

