Health care. Gov is being improved. She spoke during a visit at a Health Clinic in austin, texas. Two republican lawmakers are threatening her with a possible subpoena over the cost associated with building the site. And 57. 1 magnitude earthquake hit just off of japans east coast several hours ago. The quake triggered selfsmall tsunamis but no damage. America tonight is next, and you can get your latest news on aljazeera. Com. On america tonight, heavy hits and the Lasting Impact of gridiron clashes. Why theres growing concern about concussions. This is is his brain. These very dark areas of discoloration in his brain a 21yearold should havent this from playing a game. And now led exposure could be linked to criminal problems later in life. And sharks, tailing these great powers of the deep, Technology Gives us a new view of their world. Good evening and thanks for being with us, im joie chen. It is a friday evening in october and on ball fields all across the country athletes will face off in football challenges. The latest great to throw a flag down on the game is brett favre, he raised alarm thursday when he sold a radio host that after 20 years in the game and an uncounted number of hits, his lapses of memory have him worried. I think after 20 years, god only knows the toll. This was a little shocking to me, but i couldnt remember my daughter playing soccer. I want to live a long time. I want to live healthy as close to normal life as i can. No pep talk. No practice. No game Time Strategy can prepare an athlete for the unexpected head injuries of competitive contact sport. Recently on america tonight aired an excerpt of the documentary head games. Officials at the university of pennsylvania say a Football Player from Lehigh County was found dead in his offcam pass apartment. He graduated from parkland high school. There was nothing leading up to his suicide [ technical difficulties ] he played defense, and he was an aggressive player and voted captain of our team, and owen was the person on our team that everyone looked up to, and it hit everyone in our Community Hard and still does today. When i hear about these things, my job is to find a way to get their brain. So i told him quite extensively on the phone, i said you are not going to find anything. He never had any documented concussion. Thats fine. I said i hope we dont find anything. This is owen thomass brain and this is a part of the frontal lobe. There are these very dark areas of discoloration in his brain. And when you look at these spots fl is just tremendous ringing around those areas of nerve cells containing this protein. This is very dramatic disease, and what we know from other brains is that if he has lived longer, the disease gradually would have spread out into the neighboring cortex. Once the fire is started it goes on its own. When the results came through, i cant state was a relief, but it was like, oh, my gosh. There is the reason right there. The fact that they found it in the frontal lobe of his brain that controls impulse control, i think it was a very significant factor. I dont think that we know whether the changes that were in his brain, which were quite they were definitely abnormal, no question. But whether they explained the ultimate behavior that happened. The owen thomas finding was not significant as it related to the cause of death. He could have died in a car accident and the significance of the fining would have been exactly the same. Okay . It was important to to recognize holy cow, cte can actually begin before somebody reaches the National Football league. Thomas jones is a retired running back who played for five teams in 12 nfl seasons and has decided to donate his brain upon his death to the sports legacy institute. He joins us now. Can you tell us first what kinds of impact you have today. Do you have any sort of longterm effects you are experiencing now . You know, since i retired two years ago, you know, i have noticed little things, you know, i may forget the topic of a conversation as opposed to forgetting the next thing i was going to say. I may forget, you know, what i was looking for i mean i think you know, i do the typical things that people do as far as forgetting, the only difference is that people who didnt play football or who werent involved in a sport where there is a lot of head trauma, concussions isnt an option for them to forget, where with me and other athletes like me it isnt an option. I know you have worked on and produced a document think, the nhl a gift or curse, specifically about the impact of concussions, and i wonder why you want to put so much time and effort into developing this story. What concerns you . I played for 12 years in the nhl, but younger brother played for seven years in the nhl. Obviously with the recent deaths of some bigname players, unfortunately theres there have been a lot of other players as young as 12 years old that have committed suicide that have been linked to cte but they are not mentioned that much because they dont have big names. But the biggername players bring a lot more attention to this problem. I am 35 years old. I had a lot of concussions. My brother did as well, and i would hate to see my brother become one of those, you know, junior sails or dave duwardsons. So i think its my obligation and other players like me to help with the research and help these younger kids know what they are getting into before they play this game. On that subject lets talk about brett favre the comments he made has brought new attention as well to the question of concussions in the nhl. Yeah, any time a player like brett favre who is arguably the best quarterback to ever play the game is having complications from concussions it is going to bring attention. The majority of people with these concussions they are playing these sports, and, you know, we forget just like everyone else does, but the fact that we play his sports and the trauma to our brains, and with the recent research and deaths of these players brings a lot more attention. I dont think the average fan understand they dont think about the after effects. Right. Were you ever were you ever in a situation where you took yourself out where you knew that your head had the pain and you needed to go . I have had several times where i have been hit a concussion i dont think a lot of people understand what a concussion is. It is kind of like an out of body experience. And depending on how bad a concussion is, whether you are unconscious or whether you feel like you took a hit and you kind of feel like you are watching yourself play. I have had games where i have played and i wouldnt remember what i did until i watched the game film the next day. I had one game when i was in new york and played for the jet i played the Jacksonville Jaguars in new york, and, you know, i scored a touchdown and didnt even remember. [ technical difficulties ] donate your brain when you are gone. What do you think they will find . Im not sure. Definitely i have had a lot of concussions, and through my documentary and the research i have done with Boston University i have found out a lot more information about concussions and how the brain works than i knew before. So with the concussions that i have had, i dont think it will be too too good, but, you know, for me to be able to donate my brain and other players that have donated their brains to the sports legacy institute, i think they are doing a really good job to try to further the research. Thank you so much thomas jones. Appreciate you for being with us. Thank you. The university of michigan reports 90 of the former nfl players who died and donated their brain had cte. Im rob reynolds in richmond, california with a report of the continuing problem of led poisoning among children in americas cities. How old are you . Nine. How old were you when you first started working out here . Seven. Fault lines how children are hired by Us Agriculture to help put food on americas tables. In any other industry kids need to be 16 years old to be able to work. You dont see any of that in agriculture. They dont ask, is she 12 . They just want their job done. How many of you get up before 5 oclock in the morning . Antonio mora brings you smart conversation that challenges the status quo with unexpected opinions and a fresh outlook. Including yours. What do you think . Consider this. Unconventional wisdom. For years we have heard reports about the risk of led poisoningest speshltly for children. Theres a growing body of Research Indicates that led can chip away at that development. There is also increasing evidence that led toxicity can be tied to high crime. We get our report from rob reynolds in richmond, california. Reporter it only took a few minutes for tamaras son to be poisoned by led. But the brain damage caused will haunt him for his entire life. We used an open flame torch to burn the lead paint off of the exterior of our home. My kids were instantly poisoned. Reporter he was just 7monthold at the time. He is highly intelligence but has severe learning disabilities, cannot read or attend school. There is a lot of violent behavior. Reporter doctors have known for years that shred a severe neu neuro toxin in young children. Even the lowest level of led may have an impact. There is no question it has an effect on the developing brain in mostly what they call the prefrontal area where you have judgment. Reporter his parents worry about his future. Reporter for avi we wonder is he going to be okay on his own . I dont know i hope he will be, but i dont know for sure. You look at the criminality link with led exposure and you definitely wonder about what is going to happen. Reporter the criminality link is an emerging and controversial body of work, indicating that children exposed to led as preschoolers are at greater risk of criminal behavior later in life. Led was banned in the late 1970s, but research rick nebin has found a strong historic link between led levels and crime. What i found was that it showed up with a remarkably good fit, with a time lag of 23 years that the rise and fall of led exposure in the United States seemed to track the later rise and fall of the Violent Crime rate with a 23year time line. Once babys whos brains were damaged by led reached their early 20s, some of them became violent criminals. He has since duplicated his results in studies in other countries. He believes no other factor correlate so well with crime as does led exposure. In richmond, california, workers for a government led Abatement Program are hard at work stripping the old ledcontaminated paint off a house. There are an estimated 80 million houses in the u. S. Containing led paint. This kind of abatement work has to be carried out very, very carefully. Richmond is a low income, high crime city with lots of hold housing stock. While the link between led and criminality is controversial and disputed by some criminalists, this woman says she sees the connection on the street every day. Richmond has some of the highest incidence of violence and juvenile delinquency and poverty. Its really hard to imagine that there isnt a connection between early exposure to led hazards and this degraded intellect, degraded life, degraded humanity. Reporter today this toxic threat is not only concentrated in inner cities. Pediatricians are seeing more cases in middle and upper income families. Much of the older housing is really in fairly affluent areas now. Most of those had been painted back in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and when you renovate those homes you expose a lot of the led underneath. Reporter thats what exactly what happened to avi reubin his mother believes. Its so sad for me to know this happened to my baby, but what is even more upsetting to me is that was eight years ago. This is still happening all the time to families all over the place. Reporter a silent danger robbing children of their futures. Note to our viewers as we begin a week of indepth reporting about a criminal threat on college campuses, rape. Shockingly the perpetrators are most often other students. We have got to campuses across the country, and what we have found is nothing short of stunning. Sex crimes on campus are far more common than you might think. Theres nights when we go out and we wake up and were with a girl, and we dont remember anything from the night before, and ask ourselves, woe, did i have sex with her or not . My freshman year i was at a party and getting very, very drunk, and two men from my team started paying more attention to me. When you give somebody a drink, and then bring another drink over, and then say lets go upstairs. I ended up walking back to his place with him. And once we were there, he raped me. It was almost like it wasnt happening to my body. And at 1. 1 of them got on top of me and started pressing himself into me. Months before he raped me, he had already been sanctioned by the college for sexual assault. He wasnt suspended or expelled. The vast majority of sexual assaults in fact over 90 are by repeat offenders. I know im not going to rape a girl but one of my bigger fears is waking up in the morning and not remembering [ censor bleep ]. Has any university had its federal funds withdrawn . Never. It has been open season on the female students. When you have 18 and 19 year old men and women who are holding the government accountable for rape . Like its just bogles my mind. Honestly everybody wakes up once in a while and like god, i should havent done that. I had too much fun to say that night never should have happened to me. A maybe thats just us, and maybe we have just been lucky. Next week on this program well keep a strong focus on sexual assaults at colleges and universities. America tonight looks at sex crimes on campus, 9 00 pm eastern. Next friday a special 90minute program sex crimes on campus. An america tonight townhall. 9 00 pm eastern here on al jazeera america. Ahead in our final segment, swimming with the sharks. Were in the deep blue sea tracking predators movements with a cool new tool. How old are you . Nine. How old were you when you first started working out here . Seven. Fault lines how children are hired by Us Agriculture to help put food on americas tables. In any other industry kids need to be 16 years old to be able to work. You dont see any of that in agriculture. They dont ask, is she 12 . They just want their job done. How many of you get up before 5 oclock in the morning . So who doesnt love a good animal story . Something about a heroic dog or a bunch of adorable pandas, but nothing quite matches a visceral response to a story about sharks. They are elusive and mister too toous, and it is quite difficult to track these great creatures without leaving a trace. This is going to change how we study habits in the ocean. Reporter getting to know chris lowe means getting your feet wet. On obviously here a day at the office requires different attire. It takes only a moment to understand his passion for the ocean and the sharks he studies. I lived on an island and all there was to do was get in the water. And i saw caught a shark, and there was just something about it that didnt match all of the other fish i caught. They are a wild species, most of them, are at the top of the food chain, and i think at those as our canary, they tell us how healthy our oceans are. The challenges are really hard to study, usually you jump in the water and you want the sharks to come to you, and sometimes they do, but most of the times they dont. So that has been the tricky part how do we study them where we dont have to be right there, potentially influencing their behavior. Reporter the answer he believes is this. So this might look like a torpedo but this is the robot we have been talking about. This project we want to collect data about sharks, and once it dives down it uses a couple of other sen source, a compass. What are the sensors and what are they doing . We attach the sensor that listen for a tag we attach to the shark. We put it in the water, it will listen for the sounds, and what we have here are dummy plugs, and these will attach to hydro phones which is like a microphone but goes underwater. They are listening for acoustic tags. And they are about this big, and every two seconds they are just ping, ping. What is the end game here . How do you see this Technology Changing the way you do marine science and the way we understand the ocean. I envision a way when these will enable us to do things that we have never been able to do before. Measure aspects of behavior that we have never been able to measure before. And build a database of the ocean that has never been created. So i think this is going to change dramatically. Because sharks are at the top of the Marine Food Chain they are often called the canaries in the oceans coal mine. Well learn more about them on techknow on sunday. Next week on this program, we are going to keep a very special look on sexual assaults in american colleges and universities. Beginning on monday and all through the week, well look at sex crimes on campus, 9 00 eastern each night. And next friday a special 90minute program from us, sex crimes on campus, an america tonight townhall 9 00 pm eastern here on al jazeera america. And thats it for us for this week on america tonight. Remember if you would like to comment on anything you have seen here tonight or any other night, log on to our website, aljazeera. Com america tonight. You can meet our team, and tell us what you would like to see. And you can always join the conversation with us on twitter or at our facebook page, and we will have more of america tonight tomorrow. Children once sacrificed their childhoods, even their lives, working in american mills, mines and factories. The us rooted out child labor practices 75 years ago. But today, Us Agriculture remains a stronghold for child labor. I know most kids come out here to help their parents out, get the money to pay the bills. Its just another day on the fields of america. Hi, can you tell me your name . Gabriella. Workers like gabriella are not uncommon