See How People Who Eat Pork Act? It's Not The Hip Hop ... It's The Chicken, Fries & Soda Pop

Dr. J. Robert Hatherill is a research scientist and faculty member of the Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Although most Americans believe that the steady diet of violence in the media is leading to a more violent world, in reality it may be a steady diet of heavy metals and pesticides that is sending teens over the edge.

Perhaps in addition to checking our children for guns and explosives we should be checking their blood for elevated levels of toxic chemicals. In particular we should check out those recent perpetrators of school violence (whether they be dead or alive) to find out if there was a biological link to their behavior.

Human behavior is so easily influenced by toxic chemicals that in the 1980s a new scientific discipline called behavioral toxicology came into existence.The use of pesticides has increased 33 fold since 1942. Recent studies show that trace levels of multiple pesticides cause increased aggression.

Trace pesticide mixtures have induced abnormal thyroid hormone levels, which are associated with irritability, aggression and multiple chemical sensitivity. Children are the most vulnerable to pollutants. Because they are growing rapidly and they are smaller, they absorb 40 to 50 percent more toxins than adults.

Babies fed infant formula rather than breast milk absorb more heavy metals such as manganese. And calcium deficiency in childhood also increases uptake of lead and manganese. An article in a February 1996 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, titled "Chemical Levels and Delinquent Behavior," outlines the association between heavy metals and chemicals in the body and behavior problems such as attention deficit disorder, aggression, and delinquency.