Lead Abatement

Campus Progress put on an event yesterday where they screened Season 4, Episode 3 of The Wire and then had a Q&A with David Simon and Ed Burns. Since it was a political crowd, the questions were all about "the issues" and it confirmed my sense that the creators of this extraordinarily subtle show have a rather crude take on what it all means. Nothing they said about politics really bothered me, however, except for what Burns said when somebody mentioned that one problem inner-city kids face is that many of them start life off hobbled by lead poisoning.

Burns was completely dismissive of this notion, holding that the real toxins out there are you, me, capitalism, and America's indifferent consumer culture. Kids who grow up in the ghetto and become violent criminals are just engaged in a rational response to the environment they've been plopped into. Lead is just an excuse to avoid coping with the real issues. Well, it'd be a shame to use the existence of lead poisoning as an excuse to avoid coping with other, deeper problems. On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge lead poisoning is a very real problem. What's more, it's a problem with a clear-cut solution. We know how to implement lead-abatement procedures and, in fact, lots of them have been carried out. It just costs money, so poor people suffer. But it doesn't cost an especially large amount of money -- funds could be appropriated, the problem ameliorated, and America would be a better place for it. In a sense, nothing would be thereby "solved" but conditions would improve.

Comments

Amelioration is good. More happiness is good. Finding an issue that lots of people can agree on is good.

But I understand the show's creator's thinking. What's better than to do what's best? Unfortunately, that kind of thing, like all manner of reductionism, gets crippling fast. Sort of like lead poisoning. There's a horrifying "saint" who spent his whole, brief life doing what's best. Aloysius Gonzaga, I think. (Or it could be another one.) Ferocious praying. Eye-squinting avoidance of impure thoughts. A real pain in the bazoo. His superiors -- he was in some kind of religious order -- counseled him and disciplined him to no avail. Thank heavens he was taken young to his otherworldly reward. After he was dead there wasn't anything left but sainthood.

Me, I'm an ameliorist.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 21, 2006 10:21 AM

Let's see now....when challenged about lead poisoning, the producers offer several other plausible factors that need to be considered. And this, to Matt, is "a rather crude take on what it all means".

Well, Matt, I'd say you are a very tough audience to play to.

Posted by serial catowner | September 21, 2006 10:22 AM

from the wire to lead-poisoning...

But, you're right-on here. A colleague of mine did the cost-benefit analysis for undertaking publicly-funded lead abatement programs, and, the net benefit is shockingly high.

joshb

Posted by joshb | September 21, 2006 10:22 AM

Matt, you've criticized some of David Simon and Ed Burns' political views before, perhaps as too simplistic. As an enormous fan of the show (on a side note, has anybody who has seen at least one full season NOT liked the show? I've personally added at least 50 people in my social circle to the viewership through my own proseltyzing, all of whom agree that it's the greatest show on TV), I'm curious to see a blog post on where exactly their views are astray. I have a high regard for your thoughts, but not quite as high as my reverence for The Wire.

"The Wire doesn't deserve an Emmy. It deserves a Nobel Prize."

Posted by gautsid | September 21, 2006 11:21 AM

I'm inclined to think highlighting lead poisoning as a topic for special comment with respect to inner-city dysfunction is a bit like pointing out that a cancer patient also has athlete's foot. It may well be true, but it's not going to be anywhere near the decisive factor in determining his fate.

Still, given that all of these crumbling East Coast shitholes like Newark and Baltimore have unbroken, multi-generational liberal Democratic political establishments, maybe someone can explain to me just why lead poisoning is still a problem two generations after it was identified as a significant inner city health risk. Surely the party of "compassion" and "the people" can't be short-changing the noble poor? Can it possibly be that the calcified, congenitally corrupt political machines in these charming places are so busy pursuing their negative-sum games of personal aggrandizement that they can't spare a few bucks to buy our cancer patient a tube of freakin' Tinactin?

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 21, 2006 11:59 AM

Hi Dick

I live in the "crumbling East Coast shithole" called Baltimore, and I'm good friends with the man who heads ths city's lead abatement program and I can assure you that the corrupt democrats running my fair city are investing a fair number of resources in helping lead compromised kids. Johns Hopkins Hospital has an entire section of their children's center devoted to lead poisoning.

The main problem among others is that the low-income rental market in Baltimore is saturated with houses that were built in the late 19th century and are covered in lead paint. Since these houses are not well-maintained at all the lead dust is a constant problem. And it's the inhaled lead dust that's the source of the problem, not children licking walls.

We do have laws on the books in Baltimore, forcing landlords to abate their rental properties, but enforcing those laws is expensive. If you're a mom with a couple of kids and your only housing option is Baltimore's low-income housing market, you haven't got a lot of money left over at the end of the month to hire a lswyer.

Dick, come on down to Charm City. I'd like to see you light a fire under the asses of the real estate lobby in MD and get them to sanction their members who don't abate their properties. Or you could have a big, steaming mug of STFU!

Ciao!

Posted by Sharon | September 21, 2006 12:18 PM

Matt,

I would say that the complexity of the writing they do on The Wire speaks for itself and the fact that Simon and Burns aren't able to articulate the politics beyond simplistic liberalisms when they talk specifically about it simply highlights why they are creative artists and not political scientists. Put simply their skill set is telling stories. A Bill Clinton, John Edwards and so on who can do a great job of playing policy wonk would probably be a pretty lousy screen-writer.

Posted by Eric | September 21, 2006 2:30 PM

I suppose if you believe lead poisioning is a symptom of the disease of poverty, then cleaning up lead based paint isn't a real solution.
But I personally poverty is bad primarily because of the symptoms, like the fact that the only apartments that some people can afford contain toxins that cause brain damage to children.
This is also one case where allievating a symptom can also allieviate the disease, because a brain damaged child obviously is going to have less future earning potential than a healthy child. Communities with higher incidence of brain damage are then going to be more poor.
This by itself doesn't solve the problem of poverty in inner cities, but I think it is a big marginal improvement with low marginal cost.
This also seems like a place where a non-profit group could do more good than the goverment. Donations could go to cleaning up apartment buildings where the owners weren't willing or able to pay the costs themselves.

Posted by Travis | September 21, 2006 2:36 PM

I was at the event and what I heard was that Simon responded by acknowledging that lead paint poisoning is a serious problem that should be addressed. But he disagreed with the questioners premise that the behavior problems, violence and learning disorders endemic among the poor were directly attributable to lead paint poisoning as a primary cause. Simon said he was concerned that by blaming environmental toxins for anti-social behavior, it is easier for society to ignore all the other profound influences on these children that would -- even absent any lead-paint issues whatsoever -- result in alienation, violence and an unwillingness to participate in a dysfunctional and disconnected educational process. In short, he argued that be declaring the victims to be sick from lead paint, we mitigate against the fact that they are in fact subject to a loss of meaningful work and purpose, poorly educated by a society that has given up on them, and exposed to violence on a daily basis that is rooted in economic desperation and the gangsterism of a rampant drug economy.
He was not dismissing the health concern of lead paint poisoning, but arguing against the questioner's premise that it was the root cause of the violence. The world in which these kids were consigned -- which is more profoundly screwed up than its lead content -- is the reason for the violence. That seemed to be the crux of the dispute.

Posted by anonymous | September 21, 2006 3:34 PM

It's always ironic how the NYT denounces the entire concept of IQ as a racist fantasy, _except_ when the topic is lead's deleterious effect on IQ, which is simple scientific fact.

Anyway, the hypocrisy of the great and the good on this question doesn't mean, however, that lead abatement in the inner city wouldn't be a good idea.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 21, 2006 4:39 PM

The lead poisoning hysteria is mostly based on junk science.

Let's move on to the next crisis.

Posted by KDeRosa | September 21, 2006 4:43 PM

To follow-up on Steve Sailer's comment.

Lead poinioning does have a deleterious effect on IQ at high levels; however, lead exposure at those sufficiently high levels are exceedingly rare even in the inner cities.

Posted by kderosa | September 21, 2006 4:48 PM

anonymous at 3:34PM hits it pretty much on the head. The liberal commentariat is constantly looking for plausible reasons, other than the liberal-backed explosion of welfare statism that began in the 60's, to explain the rapid and parallel degeneration of urban inner cities that took wing starting then and whose effects are still manifest. Lead paint poisoning is just one more in a long string of failed alibis for the hash liberal adiminstrations have made of American cities where they've been in charge for extended periods.

As the oh-so-touchy Sharon helpfully points out, the low-income housing stock of her beloved native shithole dates from the late 19th Century. Most interior, and virtally all exterior paint was oil-based and lead-loaded until well after WW2. Such paint begins to flake within a decade of being applied. In poor areas, fresh coats are less frequent than elsewhere so the flaking between reapplicaions is predictably worse. By my calculation, this means Baltimore has been marinating in lead-rich paint flakes and dust for the entire 20th century. That being the case, the explanation for why B'more, and many of its other urban contemporaries in the Northeast, has been such a horrorshow only in recent decades must be looked for elsewhere than in paint cans.

By all means, get the lead out. Just don't expect improvements to the quality of inner-city social life as a result - you won't get any.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 21, 2006 7:16 PM

Until the early 80's, lead levels of above 10 ug/dL were present in 88% of all children under 6. By 2002, the figure was 1.6%. The reason? The phase-out of leaded gasoline in the 1970's and 1980's. Children used to breathe the stuff in every time they set foot on a sidewalk. If lead were so harmful, you'd expect everyone over thirty to be a retard. oh, wait...

Sorry about that. Seriously, anyone who claims that very low lead levels are a significant public health problem really does have to explain why almost everyone born before 1980 or so isn't retarded or otherwise neurologically impaired.

Posted by JR | September 21, 2006 8:55 PM

The biggest lead poisoning problem in the inner city poor neighborhoods is caused by chunks of lead leaving muzzles of guns at a high velocity.

Posted by JD | September 21, 2006 10:09 PM