Lead pollution has long been recognized as a health hazard, particularly for young people. But a new study says the scope of the problem is much larger than previously thought, with one in three children worldwide, about 800 million in total, threatened by unacceptably high levels of lead in the blood.
The ubiquity of lead, dust and fumes from foundries and fires, vehicle batteries, old paint, old water pipes, electronic product depots, and even leaded cosmetics and spices, represents a huge and underestimated risk to mental and physical development A generation of children, according to the study, unveiled Wednesday night.
The danger is particularly acute in poor and middle-income countries where safeguards from industrial pollution are poorly applied or do not exist.
“The unequivocal conclusion of this research is that children around the world are being lead poisoned on a massive and previously unrecognized scale,” said the study, a collaboration with UNICEF and Pure Earth, a nonprofit organization seeking help poor countries threatened by toxic substances. pollutants
The study also said that nearly a million adults a year die prematurely from lead exposure.
The authors said they based their analysis and statistical conclusions on research compiled by United Nations agencies, including the World Health Organization, as well as by numerous universities and non-profit groups. The authors also used modeling techniques from the Institute for Health Measurement and Assessment, an independent health research center that is part of the University of Washington.
Their main conclusion was that a third of the world’s children, up to the age of 19, have blood lead levels of 5 micrograms per deciliter or more, a threshold that both the WHO Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and those in the US have determined it is a reason for action.
Most children in the United States and many other developed countries have lead levels well below this threshold, according to the study, although in some areas they are “dangerously high.” The vast majority of affected children, he said, “live in poor countries where they are exposed to lead through multiple routes.”
Nicholas Rees, a UNICEF climate and environment policy specialist and one of the study’s co-authors, said the consequences are dire.
“When you talk about a third of the world’s children, you are talking about a possible loss of learning opportunities, an impact on future wages, you are talking about a tremendous burden on society,” he said.
A major contributor to lead poisoning is an increase in the recycling of lead in car batteries to meet the growing growth in the number of cars and trucks, particularly in the developing world, according to the study. While lead recycling for batteries is highly regulated in the United States, it is often done incidentally in poor and middle-income countries.
A global industry group of lead battery manufacturers and recyclers said they did not question the conclusions of the study on battery recycling, which accounts for the vast majority of lead use.
“We want to see an end to all informal and unregulated recycling as documented by Pure Earth and UNICEF,” the group said in a statement.
At the same time, the group said, “We cannot do this alone.” He emphasized his own efforts to help member companies ensure that “improperly recycled lead does not enter our supply chain.” The group also said it provides advice to countries to improve recycling standards.
“For many people in low- and middle-income countries, informal and unregulated recycling is a subsistence problem, and the materials they handle have high economic value,” he said. “Governments and regulators in these countries must incentivize high-performance regulated waste pickers and crack down on the informal sector and its practices.”
Perry Gottesfeld, a lead poisoning prevention expert who is executive director of Occupational Knowledge International, a nonprofit organization seeking to reduce industrial pollutants, said that, if anything, the new study may have underestimated the number of adults. who die from exposure to lead poisoning. . Gottesfeld also said the study did not hold lead recycling companies responsible for the contamination problem.
While the industry is “much more regulated in the United States than anywhere else,” he said, it would be misleading to describe lead recycling as safe, even if done correctly.
Lead has been known as a potent neurotoxin for hundreds of years, Benjamin Franklin wrote of its damage in 1786, but the most insidious effects have become clearer only in recent decades.
Children’s exposure to lead is related to reductions in IQ scores, shorter attention spans, and potentially violent and criminal behavior. Fetuses and children under the age of 5 are at the highest risk for life-long harm.
Richard Fuller, president of Pure Earth and co-author of the study, said he believed it was not just a coincidence that violence and instability in many parts of the developing world are found in regions where lead contamination is relatively high.
“I think getting rid of lead will reduce violence,” he said. “I wonder if this could be one of the most important things.”
But he also recognized the lack of a substitute for lead-acid batteries. “Honestly, I would love it if we didn’t have these things in the world,” said Fuller.
