From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine , an interview by host Steve Curwood with Caroline Fraser, the author of “ Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers .”

From Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer to Charles Manson and the Zodiac Killer, serial killers are a distinctly American phenomenon. We have more in our history than the next 10 closest countries combined. And many of these serial killers were active in the 1970s in the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle-born author Caroline Fraser offers one possible explanation in her new book, “ Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers .” She theorizes that the neurotoxin lead is key to this story. And she links dangerously high lead exposure from smelters and gaso

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