Author Jason Pargin says there’s a dirty secret about how gasoline used to make people crazy. He’s not far off from the truth.
Jason Pargin is a New York Times best-selling author best known for his work as executive director of the comedy website Cracked. In his new life, he posts for more than half a million followers on Facebook.
In a Facebook video posted on Aug. 30, Pargin discusses the well-known lead-crime hypothesis. "The freakiest thing that sounds like a weird conspiracy theory but actually is real is right here," Pargin says to start the video. "Because if you walked down the street and saw someone holding up a handmade sign saying, ‘They are putting chemicals in the atmosphere that makes people do evil things. They are literally driving us crazy.’ You would absolutely write that person off as a crackpot."
Except this isn’t just a random conspiracy theory.
"But it happened," he says. "Everyone agrees that it happened. In fact, I bet there’s at least one person watching this right now that doesn’t understand why at gas stations the pumps say unleaded. Why would they have lead in them in the first place? The reason is wild and terrifying."
A Brief History of Lead in Gasoline
Pargin explains that lead used to be included in many consumer products before we understood the dangers of exposure.
"We used to put lead in everything," he says. "It’s incredibly useful. In fact, when automobiles started becoming popular in the 1920s, they started putting lead in the gasoline. The reasons for that are technical; it helped with engine wear. The problem is that lead is toxic, but it is toxic in very subtle ways. It usually takes a lot of exposure over a long time to see the effects. And a lot of the effects are neurological."
Then Pargin shows viewers a chart from a Mother Jones article on the subject. The graph shows the correlation between gasoline lead and violent crime over time.
"And so as there were more and more cars on the road, putting more lead into the atmosphere, everybody started getting exposed to lead," he says. "Keep in mind, if it’s in the atmosphere, that means it gets onto the crops and into the soil. And lead exposure, especially in children, causes problems with things like impulse control. You get increased aggression; you get lower IQ scores."
Pargin continues, "The blue line is lead in the atmosphere. The brown line is the violent crime rate. And you can see the point where governments finally started to ban lead. That’s why it says unleaded on gas pumps. Of course, experts differ on this, but the thing they differ on is how much of an effect lead had. The falling crime rate came alongside lots of other changes, including falling poverty rates, better mental health treatments, differences in policing practices, and just the fact that the population got older. Violent crime is far more common among the young."
Why This Lead-Violent Crime Theory Irritates Pargin
The lead-violent crime hypothesis is an example of why Pargin says he is so frustrated by the current information landscape in the world. "I say this every time," he says. "The reason I get so angry at the fake conspiracy theories is that the real world provides us with so many actual scandals that can actually be documented, that actually tell us so much about how something like this can be allowed to happen and what it took to stop it. Let’s put it this way; there was quite a gap between us realizing that lead was toxic and us actually getting it out of the environment."
In the comments section, viewers shared their own frustrations and curiosities. "My dude… What chemical is doing that right now? Like 20 years from now are they gonna be like, ‘You used ‘X’ product…? Ahhhh," wrote one viewer.
"So Jason skipped over a big interesting coincidence: The inventor of tetra-ethyl lead that was used in gasoline also invented CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and was involved in the Manhattan Project," wrote a second person.
"I thought I remembered that," replied another. "I believe they didn’t know CFCs would cause the problems they did, but we all knew lead was bad news, even then."
The Facts About Lead-Violent Crime Hypothesis
The 2013 Mother Jones article that Pargin borrows his chart from is titled, "America’s Real Criminal Element Is Lead." The article discusses several different theories that try to explain the rise or fall of crime rates, and examines the relationship between the end of lead use in gasoline and the decline in crime in the decades since.
Although Pargin is correct that scientists diverge on the causal link, there is real research that suggests that lead exposure seriously impacts the brain, and those impacts can cause hyperactive or even violent behavior. Pargin is also correct that the lead that once filled our gas tanks is now languishing elsewhere in the environment—including in the soil in which we grow our food.
Motor1 contacted Pargin via email for comment. We’ll update this if he responds.
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