Lead Exposure and Collective Violence: Evidence from Unsafe Battery Recycling in Africa

Does lead exposure make places more violent? Lead impairs impulse control, and a large literature links it to individual crime in high-income countries. We ask whether it also raises collective violence where exposure is concentrated around industrial sites. We compare places within 5km of unsafe battery recycling sites in Kenya, Ghana and Senegal with places near other contaminated industrial sites, before and after recycling intensified in 2007. The annual probability of a riot near battery sites rises by 19 percentage points more than near the other sites, from a base of 16 percent. Organised armed violence barely moves, so net of organised violence the effect is 13 percentage points. Peaceful protest rises almost as much as riots, and only 0.1 percent of riots concern pollution. The pattern fits impaired impulse control rather than anger at the sites, and suggests that cleaning up these sites could reduce conflict as well as improve health.