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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
By Shankar Vedantam
The Washington Post [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Sunday 08 July 2007[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Data may undermine Giuliani's claims.[/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Rudy Giuliani never misses an opportunity to remind people about his track record in fighting crime as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. [/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "I began with the city that was the crime capital of America," Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox's Chris Wallace. "When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent." [/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning. [/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives. [/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries. [/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/071007HA.shtml
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