Aggressiveness and Delinquency In Boys Is Linked to Lead in Bones

CRIMINALS may indeed be made, not born, and one of the ingredients could be childhood exposure to lead, according to the findings of a four-year study of young boys that is being published today.

The study, conducted among more than 800 boys attending public schools in Pittsburgh, showed that those with relatively high levels of lead in their bones were more likely to engage in aggressive acts and delinquent behavior than boys with less lead in their bones. Although none of the children in the study were suffering from lead poisoning, a direct relationship was found between the amount of lead in their leg bones and reports by parents, teachers and the children themselves of aggressive and delinquent behaviors.

The study, directed by Dr. Herbert L. Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who has done other research on the effects of lead, found that even after taking into account other predictors of delinquency, such as socioeconomic status, those with higher lead levels were more likely to engage in antisocial acts.

Such acts in childhood have been shown to be strong predictors of criminal behavior later in life...

In an interview, Dr. Needleman emphasized: "I'm not saying that lead exposure is the cause of delinquency. It is a cause and one with the biggest handle to prevention." He explained: "Lead is a brain poison that interferes with the ability to restrain impulses. It's a life experience which gets into biology and increases a child's risk for doing bad things."

Dr. Bellinger said the Pittsburgh study "breaks new ground, opening the possibility that some of the violence in our society could be the result of preventable environmental pollution" by lead...

In another study of 987 African-American boys and girls followed from birth to the age of 22, Deborah Denno, then a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that having had lead poisoning was "the strongest predictor of disciplinary problems in junior high school boys and the third strongest predictor of both juvenile and adult offenses."..

Dr. Needleman explained that the peak age for lead accumulation in bones was from 13 to 30 months, when toddlers are walking about and repeatedly putting their hands in their mouths. Often, those hands are contaminated with dust that contains lead.