Here's a direct link to the Full Report (PDF). Metallic cookware had one of their highest contamination rates (100% of what they tested in Nepal!) and they mention most of it was aluminum. This...
Here's a direct link to the Full Report (PDF). Metallic cookware had one of their highest contamination rates (100% of what they tested in Nepal!) and they mention most of it was aluminum. This isn't a huge surprise; lead is commonly alloyed with aluminum to make machining easier, and the materials used in cookware probably aren't regulated or enforced in the countries they surveyed. This and lead paint seem like two obvious places to start reducing exposure but as always I'm sure the main challenge is implementation.
Dylan Matthews The authors estimate that some 5.5 million people die prematurely due to lead exposure every year, and that the problem as a whole imposes a social cost of $6 trillion a year. That...
Dylan Matthews
The authors estimate that some 5.5 million people die prematurely due to lead exposure every year, and that the problem as a whole imposes a social cost of $6 trillion a year. That equals 6.9 percent of total world GDP
Massive numbers
These are massive numbers, and it’s worth putting them into context: 5.5 million deaths from lead in 2019 exceeds the number of people who died that year from car accidents (1.2 million), tuberculosis (1.18 million), HIV/AIDS (863,837), suicide (759,028), and malaria (643,381) combined. If accurate, the figure means that a little under one in 10 deaths globally can be traced to lead. Meanwhile, a social cost of 6.9 percent of global GDP exceeds a recent World Bank estimate of the social cost of air pollution, which added up to 6.1 percent of GDP.
Caveats
Indeed, “more research is needed” is a decent summary for the whole state of lead research. The Lancet Planetary Health study finding that lead kills 5.5 million people a year relied on lead poisoning estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study, which sometimes produces its numbers not based on surveys of actual people, but on other data (like the share of population in urban areas, and the year that leaded gasoline was phased out) that is in turn predictive of lead exposure.
High lead levels in children
A 2021 evidence review led by environmental scientist Bret Ericson reviewed blood lead surveys in 34 nations, which together account for over two-thirds of the world’s population. Overall, those studies estimated that 48.5 percent of children had high lead levels (defined as above 5 micrograms per deciliter, or µg/dL). Levels of exposure varied greatly, with surveys in a few countries (like Tanzania) not finding any children with blood lead levels above 5 µg/dL, and other countries (like Pakistan) showing huge majorities with levels that high. (Of course, it’s possible that limitations in these surveys underestimate lead exposure in some countries.)
Unclear sources contributing to these high levels
We can identify a number of possible sources of these high lead levels. Historically, the major driver was lead in gasoline, but in 2021 the last country on Earth still using lead for that purpose (Algeria) phased it out. Lead is widely used in car batteries, plane fuel, and the consumer goods that Pure Earth surveyed in its report, but which source is most important in contributing to poisoning in children is still unclear.
Spending
The only way to have a stronger sense of the scale of the problem is to invest more in understanding it. A 2021 report found that nonprofits spend, at most, $10 million a year addressing lead exposure in developing countries, with much of that money coming from governments. For comparison, global efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, which, if this new report is to be believed, kills about one-fifth as many people globally as lead does, got $8.2 billion in government funding in 2022 alone.
The point here is not that we’re spending too much on HIV/AIDS — we may still be spending too little there too. But we’re spending far too little on understanding and tackling lead exposure, when it could be a problem of similar or greater magnitude.
It’s among the most neglected problems in global health, and one where a substantial investment could go a long way.
Lead exposure is a worldwide health risk despite substantial declines in blood lead levels following the leaded gasoline phase-out. For the first time, to our knowledge, we aimed to estimate the global burden and cost of intelligence quotient (IQ) loss and cardiovascular disease mortality from lead exposure.
Here's a direct link to the Full Report (PDF). Metallic cookware had one of their highest contamination rates (100% of what they tested in Nepal!) and they mention most of it was aluminum. This isn't a huge surprise; lead is commonly alloyed with aluminum to make machining easier, and the materials used in cookware probably aren't regulated or enforced in the countries they surveyed. This and lead paint seem like two obvious places to start reducing exposure but as always I'm sure the main challenge is implementation.
Edit: link broke, here's an archive
Dylan Matthews
The authors estimate that some 5.5 million people die prematurely due to lead exposure every year, and that the problem as a whole imposes a social cost of $6 trillion a year. That equals 6.9 percent of total world GDP
Massive numbers
Caveats
High lead levels in children
Unclear sources contributing to these high levels
Spending
It’s among the most neglected problems in global health, and one where a substantial investment could go a long way.
Global health burden and cost of lead exposure in children and adults:a health impact and economic modelling analysis by Bjorn Larsen and Ernesto Sánchez-Triana
See also this discussion about adulteration of turmeric with a lead derived chemical to enhance color.
https://tildes.net/~food/1adi/traders_in_bangladesh_used_lead_chromate_to_enhance_turmerics_appearance_then_scientists_and