Low-level lead poisoning may be one cause of juvenile crime. A study of 194 young offenders tried in a Pennsylvania court found that the concentrations of lead in their bones was much higher than in non-delinquent teenagers. Researchers don’t know if the lead was the cause of the crimes, or if it’s just a symptom of the poor living conditions that led the person to become an offender.
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Heavy metals from industrial pollution and sewage sludge may poison the food we eat. Scientists used to think that living organisms, such as snails and worms, could only ingest heavy metals and other pollutants in the soil if they were dissolved in water, but now they know this isn’t true, meaning they could affect us too. Much of the heavy metal pollution on the West Coast comes from mercury emissions from coal burning in China that end up in rainfall over California.
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Conservation and environmental groups think there will be an unprecedented assault on environmental laws in the congress, now that they have a Republican majority. Greg Wetstone, of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), says, “In the absence of any clear, aggressive Congressional oversight we will see a more vigorous, escalated attack that includes new efforts to promote more air pollution, more water pollution, more clear cutting in the forests and more drilling, mining and logging on public lands. These actions are broadly out of step with the overwhelming consensus of the American public, and it is quite evident that this administration is fully aware of that.”
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Air pollution can cause genetic damage that is passed on by fathers to their children. Tests on mice show that those who breathed air near a smoke-belching steel mill had fewer babies and the ones they did have had more genetic mutations than normal. Almost all the extra mouse mutations were inherited from the fathers, suggesting that steel workers, who are mostly male, put their children at extra risk. “Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need to investigate the genetic consequences associated with exposure to chemical pollution through the inhalation of urban and industrial air,” say researchers Christopher Somers and James Quinn.
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