Could Epidemiological Techniques Be Used To Show a Relationship Between Lead Exposure and Crime?

America's Real Criminal Element:  Lead by Kevin Drum.  Mother Jones.  January/February  2013.

Kevin Drum uses a method to categorizing epidemics employed by a professor of economic and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to provide a possible framework for understanding crime trends from the 60's to the 90's.  The framework is basically this as presented in the article:  If the epidemic spreads along communications lines the cause is information;  If it spreads along transportation lines, the cause is microbial;  If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect;  If the epidemic occurs everywhere, the cause is a molecule.  Drum then goes on to build a case that the molecule linked to crime outbreak is lead.  Of course, a major concern of such an effort would be to insure that correlation is not confused with causality.  The significance of this article is that it is a case study of an application of traditional epidemiological techniques to a broader class of problems.