Violent crime overall has been declining for several decades, nation-wide, but most measurably and obviously in the big cities. Big cities have higher rates of air pollution. Substances like Lead accumulate in the human body, and definitely affect mental behavior. "Another theory is that widespread exposure to lead pollution from automobile exhaust, which can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s" See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#History By inference then, might we hypothesize that since violent crime still persists at intolerable levels, if such consideration makes any sense, because of the additional thousands of synthetic chemicals which have been unleashed into our environment, are still there and still increasing? Stuff like pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides, artificial ingredients added to foods, etc. Frank
Probably 'adds' to it but I still believe the biggest influence is 'influence' No good role models, no decency shown via the media and of course - drugs
It's an interesting theory. I also suspect that the drop in crime has to do with the fact that people don't bother to report many crimes because law enforcement doesn't do anything about them other than recording them as a statistic in a database.
Frank - your post suggests that violent crime has 'decreased' - over here it has increased significantly Not just in the cities
The link I provided is a fairly long read but it does open up some pretty good dialog as to the decline including lead gas, abortion and higher employment ratings. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-caused-the-crime-decline/477408/