http://goo.gl/KqcXUY
new research shows that American cities with lead water pipes had higher murder rates in the first half of the 20th century.
James J. Feigenbaum of Harvard and Christopher Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, report that on average, “cities that used lead water pipes hadhomicide rates that were twenty-four percent higher than cities that did not.”
The paper, which will be published in the journal Explorations in Economic History, builds on a growing body of research linking lead exposure to various criminal behaviors, amounting to a plausible explanation for rising and falling crime rates in the United States over the past several decades. Most of that research to date has focused on lead exposure from air pollution caused by leaded gasoline, not water.