It wasn't Rudy after all

It was the "Pica Balloon".

Young children are most at risk from lead poisoning. Some children have
a condition known as pica. They have an abnormal desire to eat
materials like dirt, paper, and chalk. Children with pica sometimes eat
paint chips off walls. At one time, many interior house paints were
made with lead compounds. Thus, crawling babies or children with pica
ran the risk of eating large amounts of lead and being poisoned.

Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity - washingtonpost.com

"I began with the city that was the crime capital of America," Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox's Chris Wallace. "When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent."

Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

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