Murder in São Paulo is down by 2/3 as a result of...unleaded gasoline?

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[div style="float: left; padding-right: 12px;"]"By now, you've all read my story about the link between the decline of leaded gasoline and the decline of violent crime, right? Here's an update from an unexpected source: the state of São Paulo in Brazil.

Obviously the United States isn't the only place that got rid of leaded gasoline, which means the United States isn't the only place that should have seen declines in violent crime. But other countries made the switch at different times, which means their declines in violent crime should also have taken place at different times. Rick Nevin has done a lot of work on crime trends outside the U.S., so after my piece appeared, I asked him for his predictions for other parts of the world. Here was one of them: "Crime will also plummet over the next 10 to 20 years in Latin America, where leaded gasoline use and air lead levels fell sharply from around 1990 through the mid-1990s." (Crime rates generally start to decline about 20 years after unleaded gasoline is introduced.)

Well, guess what? A few days ago the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about killings by police in São Paulo state. As an aside, they printed the chart on the right, which shows São Paulo's homicide rate, and as you can see, it's declined considerably since 2000."

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/murder-sao-paulo-lead-ethanol

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1. Lead makes us crazy.