Lead, Deliquency and Criminal Offending

Abstract

The possibility that lowering of intelligence is correlated with criminal behavior has had a long and checkered history in the medical and social sciences, and lead poisoning has become part of the debate because it is known to impair mentation in children. Pooling of data and meta-analyses of results of a large number of epidemiological studies from different parts of the world, buttressed with extensive information from experimental animals, provide a strong evidence that lead exposure at low dose has a negative effect on the intelligence quotient and mental development of preschool and school-age children. A major accomplishment in environmental health sciences in recent years is the demonstration that some mental health disorders are pathophysiologically linked to low-level lead exposure in early childhood and this has fostered the neurotoxicity hypothesis to explain the relationship between childhood lead exposure, conduct disorders, and proclivity to violent behavior later in life. Much uncertainty still surrounds the etiological role of lead in offending behavior mainly due to the difficulty of ascertaining the dose–response relationships of chronic low-level exposure that characteristically results in vague and insidious symptoms. Nevertheless, there is understandable and growing concern that some young adults are being consigned to a life of criminal behavior for environmental injuries that occurred prenatally or while they were infants.