Pacific Views

Nature vs Nurture, Perhaps it is the Environment

Today Calpundit had a post up about that old perenial: nature vs nuture and what causes poor kids to have more troubles in school than their middle class or wealthier peers. Since the thrust of the story was that their home environment was much more influential for poor kids outcomes than for their peers where it seems the genes are much more predictive of future success, I pointed out that it was not just the family and neighborhood they live in that faces poor children. There have been a number of studies that show toxic chemicals (especially lead) significantly affect the outcome of children, and poor children are more likely to be exposed than others to these toxins.

Well, listening to tonight's Living on Earth was quite a coincidence because it turns out that this week's program was all about the Secret Life of Lead and the unfortunate consequences arising from exposure to lead.

Listening to the program I remembered where I had seen that very comprehensive report on lead poisoning and its effect on a child's brain. In 2000, the Nation carried an incredible report about how scientists were beginning to believe that lead poisoning not only affected the cognitive abilities of a child, but also seemed to have a high correlation to deliquency.

One thing that the Nation report said was that there was a potential correlation between the use of leaded gasoline and the criminal (crack) spree of the 80s. In the LOE program why there might be greater deliquency was again directly linked to the exposure to lead:

CURWOOD: This violence and crime that is so much a part of life in this neighborhood may well be connected to their childhood lead exposure, says Dr. Dietrich. Two years ago, he published a study about delinquency and reported that the teens in his group with the highest lead exposures were much more likely to engage in delinquent behavior than teens with the lowest exposures to lead as children. Dr. Dietrich says he doesn’t know exactly how lead exposure can lead to delinquent behavior, but he does know that lead seems to compromise the abilities to focus and control impulses, and that is an important clue.

DIETRICH: For example, we know that children who have attentional deficits, poor impulse control, deficits in an area we call executive functions, that is a lack of ability to plan ahead, to anticipate consequences. We know that children who have these behavior deficits are at higher risk for engaging in anti-social behavior, and, ultimately, behaviors we associate with a high risk of arrests and adjudication for delinquency.

One thing that this says to me is why poverty in India is less likely to be associated with criminal behavior. In the United States, there is a higher likehood that a poor child in an urban setting is exposed to lead than in India. (I'd say that pollution in China will exacerbate the problems they see in the next few decades and that this will also be a problem for many of the megacities that still use leaded gasoline like Mexico City.) In poor, yet non-toxic environments, poor children still struggle under the pressures of poverty, yet their ability to apply themselves to their schooling and to take advantage of the opportunities are much greater.

So what does this mean? Well, I believe that as a society, we have an obligation to make sure we understand what problems we can control that will affect a significant portion of our society. If we know that lead poisoning is a real problem (and right now we don't know any really safe levels for lead -- it is so toxic that even amounts that are invisible - just specks of dust - can poison children), then we need to find ways to clean it up so that our entire society does not have to pay in the millions of lives diminished because of their exposure to this poison and the increased level of crime caused by the poor impulse control of those poisoned.

Conservatives like to say that individuals are responsible for their behavior. Maybe so, but not if they are poisoned from a very early age and we didn't do everything in our power to prevent that significant penalty being imposed on them that makes it impossible for them to even get to the starting line with the rest of us.

Posted by Mary at September 3, 2003 01:09 AM | TrackBack