Caroline Fraser

I don't know that it's associated with aggression, but it's one of these things that was forming the exposure to particulate pollution, which is now associated with all kinds of health problems, you know, heart problems.

I mean, lead is a toxin.

It's a poison.

And so you put it in the body and it becomes, you know, it's very...

Easy for that to reach your brain.

And what happens is that, you know, especially if you're exposed to a lot of this stuff, you can be sick in all kinds of ways.

You can get heart problems.

It's now been associated with various forms of dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes.

ALS.

So there's a lot of things that lead can cause, but they have shown statistically that the increase in lead in the population in the air in the mid-70s really may have contributed to a rise in violent crime.

Well, they invented the stuff in the 1920s.

But, you know, just thinking back to those early decades, not that many people had cars.

You know, and there was a big depression, of course, in the 1930s.

So there's not a lot of driving happening in terms of what we see now.

I mean, yeah, it just wasn't as big of a deal.

It was, you know, rare to have one car available.

Much less, you know, two or three.

And then during the war, you had, I mean, the war, World War II is really interesting to look at in terms of lead because I have a sort of little chapter about this because

During World War II, gasoline, of course, was rationed.

You know, they needed all of it for the war effort.