posts: 47602

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    "id": "wp-47602",
    "slug": "reducing-lead-poisoning",
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                        "text": "Lead poisoning is estimated to account for about 1% of the global disease burden.{ref}The Institute for Health Metrics\u2019 ",
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                        "url": "http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool",
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                                "text": "Global Burden of Disease",
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                        "text": " study estimates that in 2019, lead exposure was responsible for just over 0.9% of global disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).{/ref}\u00a0",
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                        "text": "This is a large burden for a problem that gets very little attention. On an individual level, being exposed to lead in the environment can hinder a child\u2019s brain development: it can result in a reduction in IQ; cognitive function; and has been linked to higher levels of antisocial behavior.{ref}Attina, T. M., & Trasande, L. (2013). Economic costs of childhood lead exposure in low-and middle-income countries. ",
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                                "text": "Environmental health perspectives",
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                    {
                        "text": ", 121(9), 1097-1102.",
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                        "text": "Lanphear et al. (2005) Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children\u2019s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis. ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Environmental Health Perspectives",
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                        "text": ".",
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                        "text": "Ericson, B., Dowling, R., Dey, S., Caravanos, J., Mishra, N., Fisher, S., ... & Fuller, R. (2018). A meta-analysis of blood lead levels in India and the attributable burden of disease. ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Environment International",
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                        "text": ", 121, 461-470.{/ref} These impacts are thought to be largely irreversible.",
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                        "text": "It\u2019s not just damaging for individuals. It also comes at a large economic cost for society at large. Impacts on brain development, cognitive function, and productivity affect a country\u2019s output and earning potential. Researchers estimate that in some countries, the costs of lead exposure are equivalent to as much as 6% of GDP.{ref}Attina, T. M., & Trasande, L. (2013). Economic costs of childhood lead exposure in low-and middle-income countries. ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Environmental health perspectives",
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                        "text": ", 121(9), 1097-1102.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "The cost of the problem is large because the numbers affected are too: figures compiled by UNICEF, Pure Earth, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and the World Health Organization estimates that lead poisoning affects around ",
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                        "url": "https://www.unicef.org/media/109361/file/The%20toxic%20truth.pdf",
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                                "text": "every third child",
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                        "text": " in the world.",
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                        "text": "Yet we spend so little on it. Just $7 million of philanthropic spending per year.{ref}GiveWell (2021). ",
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                        "url": "https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/Pure-Earth-lead-exposure-July-2021",
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                                "text": "Pure Earth \u2014 Support for Reducing Lead Exposure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries",
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                        "text": ".{/ref}",
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                        "text": "For this reason, ",
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                                "text": "GiveWell",
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                        "text": " \u2013 the charity evaluator that tries to identify where donor money could make the most difference \u2013 made its first large grant ",
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                        "url": "https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/Pure-Earth-lead-exposure-July-2021",
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                                "text": "to a lead charity",
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                        "text": " in 2021. In its assessment it notes that \u201c",
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                                "text": "Lead exposure appears to receive little philanthropic attention relative to the burden it imposes and may be a tractable problem to make progress on",
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                        "text": "\u201d and that \u201c",
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                                "text": "reducing lead exposure is one of the promising areas we identified as part of GiveWell's work investigating giving opportunities to assist governments in low- and middle-income countries in the design and implementation of effective public health regulations.",
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                        "text": "\u201d",
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                        "text": "If we compare the amount of funding that lead pollution receives compared to other health problems, we see that it gets very little. GiveWell\u2019s ",
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                        "url": "https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/Pure-Earth-lead-exposure-July-2021",
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                                "text": "evaluation concluded",
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                        "text": " that tobacco receives ten times the amount of philanthropic funding that lead does. But smoking contributes just three times more harm.",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "We have already made a lot of progress against lead poisoning",
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                                "text": "We know that it is possible to tackle lead poisoning because we\u2019ve already made a lot of progress against it.",
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                                "text": "The largest source of lead throughout most of the 20th century was leaded gasoline which was widely used across the world. As a result, lead became widespread across the world\u2019s cities, polluting the air and contaminating soils. People were exposed to high concentrations. We know this from measurements of the concentrations of lead in their blood.",
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                                "text": "From the 1970s, countries began to phase out the use of leaded gasoline. This developed into an incredibly successful global health campaign: by 2021 every country in the world had banned it. We look at the ",
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                                        "text": "phase-out of leaded gasoline",
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                                "text": " in more detail in our related article.",
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                                "text": "Many countries have taken further steps to reduce exposure to lead. Most high-income countries have either banned, or ",
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                                "url": "http://ourworldindata.org/lead-paint",
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                                        "text": "strongly regulated",
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                                "text": " the use of lead in paints. They have also often banned the use of lead pipes and where old lead pipes remained in place they add anti-corrosives to the water supply to prevent lead from contaminating it.{ref}The failure of this policy in Flint, Michigan in 2014 brought this old problem of lead pollution back into the limelight. Thousands of households were exposed to high levels of lead after the city changed its water source. It failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to it, meaning lead from the city\u2019s pipes leaked into the water supply, exposing thousands of young children to lead poisoning.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "As a result, many countries have seen a large decline in levels of lead poisoning. Between 1978 and 2016, the median level of lead in the blood of children in the US ",
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                                        "text": "fell by 95%",
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                                "text": ". We see this in the chart.\u00a0Many other countries have achieved similarly large reductions.{ref}We see this in data in Germany, for example. Hagner, C. (1999). Historical review of European gasoline lead content regulations and their impact on German industrial markets.",
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                                "text": "And in Swedish children: Sch\u00fctz, A., Attewell, R., & Skerfving, S. (1989). Decreasing blood lead in Swedish children, 1978\u20131988. Archives of Environmental Health: An International Journal, 44(6), 391-394.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "How we continue to make progress: acting on what we know",
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                                "text": "The phase-out of leaded gasoline had a positive impact across the world. But many countries are yet to tackle the other sources of lead pollution.",
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                                "text": "There are two possibilities to continue making progress.",
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                                        "text": "First",
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                                "text": ", countries can replicate public health measures that we know can make a difference. The ",
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                                        "url": "https://owid.cloud/lead-paint",
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                                                "text": "elimination of leaded paint",
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                                "text": " is one such measure. Unfortunately, most low-to-middle income countries do not have any controls on the levels of lead used in paints, as the map shows. As a result, the majority of paints sold in these countries have extremely ",
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                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/lead-paint#some-countries-still-have-very-high-concentrations-of-lead-in-paint",
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                                        "text": "high levels of lead",
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                                "text": " \u2013 well above the regulatory limits that are set in higher-income countries.",
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                                "text": "Lead is used in paints as a pigment to add color, to prevent corrosion and to help it dry more quickly. But there are non-toxic alternatives that work just as well. Why are these alternatives not used? There may be some initial up-front cost for paint manufacturers to change their formula. This is why government regulations are important: paint manufacturers would not have to fear that they\u2019d lose out to cheaper competitors. But there is also evidence that alternatives do not ",
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                                "text": " to be costly. Some manufacturers in these countries ",
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                                        "text": "already",
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                                "text": " use lead-free paint, and it\u2019s not more expensive than other paints on the market.{ref}World Health Organization (2020). ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240005143",
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                                        "text": "Global elimination of lead paint: why and how countries should take action",
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                                "text": ". Technical brief. Geneva.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "Measures may not have been adopted simply due to a lack of awareness. In a country with many health challenges, it\u2019s easy to see why lead poisoning \u2013 which is a hidden problem that has an effect often only years later \u2013 could be easily missed.",
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                                "text": "One project that is trying to raise awareness of this challenge with policymakers and paint formulators is the ",
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                                "url": "https://leadelimination.org/",
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                                        "text": "Lead Exposure Elimination Project",
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                                "text": " (LEEP). In its first year it ",
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                                "url": "https://leadelimination.org/projects/",
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                                        "text": "has driven policy change",
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                                "text": " in Malawi; and made progress with several others.",
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                        "text": "How we continue to make progress: understanding more about what we don\u2019t know",
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                                "text": "Second",
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                        "text": ", to make progress in the future we need to identify what we ",
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                                "text": "don\u2019t",
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                        "text": " know about lead pollution. There are many potential sources of lead exposure that we don\u2019t understand well.",
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                        "text": "People can be exposed to lead through lead piping, batteries, and electronic waste.{ref}Ericson, B., Hu, H., Nash, E., Ferraro, G., Sinitsky, J., & Taylor, M. P. (2021). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                    {
                        "url": "https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30278-3/fulltext",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Blood lead levels in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review",
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                        "text": ". ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "The Lancet Planetary Health",
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                        "text": ", 5(3), e145-e153.{/ref} In some countries studies have even found very high levels of lead in cooking spices.{ref}Gleason, K., Shine, J. P., Shobnam, N., Rokoff, L. B., Suchanda, H. S., Ibne Hasan, M. O. S., ... & Mazumdar, M. (2014). ",
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                    {
                        "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25214856/",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Contaminated turmeric is a potential source of lead exposure for children in rural Bangladesh",
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                    {
                        "text": ". ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Journal of Environmental and Public Health",
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                        "text": ", 2014.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "The problem is that we don\u2019t know the contribution of each of these sources. It will probably vary from location to location. Without good data on this, it could be easy for us to miss an important source of pollution.",
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                        "text": "We need better data on all of the potential sources of lead so we make sure that we don\u2019t leave any unaddressed.",
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                        "text": "In its ",
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                        "url": "https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/Pure-Earth-lead-exposure-July-2021",
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                                "text": "assessment profile",
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                        "text": ", ",
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                                "text": "Givewell",
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                        "text": " acknowledges that this evidence-gathering is an important focus of its funding. But that is also a risk of its effectiveness:",
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                                "text": "\u201cA substantial proportion of this funding will be allocated to gathering evidence on likely sources of lead exposure in particular locations. But we are unsure whether the identified sources of lead exposure will be able to be addressed cost-effectively.\u201d",
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                        "text": "Being honest about what is known and what is still uncertain is important if we\u2019re to make progress against this problem, and weigh up its costs and benefits relative to other important causes.",
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                        "text": "Keep reading at ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Our World in Data",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/lead-pollution",
                "type": "prominent-link",
                "title": "",
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Acknowledgements",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
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            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "I would like to thank Lucia Coulter and Clare Donaldson, at the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, for insights and support of this project. Thanks also to Max Roser for feedback and suggestions on drafts of this text.",
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                    }
                ],
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            }
        ],
        "type": "article",
        "title": "Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning. What can we do to reduce this?",
        "authors": [
            "Hannah Ritchie"
        ],
        "excerpt": "Estimates suggest that around every third child in the world suffers from lead poisoning. What can we do to reduce this?",
        "dateline": "January 25, 2022",
        "subtitle": "Estimates suggest that around every third child in the world suffers from lead poisoning. What can we do to reduce this?",
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        "featured-image": "lead-pollution-thumbnail.png"
    },
    "createdAt": "2022-01-12T10:04:12.000Z",
    "published": false,
    "updatedAt": "2022-02-18T11:02:30.000Z",
    "revisionId": null,
    "publishedAt": "2022-01-25T11:00:00.000Z",
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}