What is it worth to reduce lead exposure? Benefit-cost evidence for Disease Control Priorities

Event details

Abstract

Around one billion children globally have elevated blood lead (above 5 µg/dL). Lead is estimated to cause 3.5 million deaths a year, mostly from cardiovascular disease, in addition to significant harms to children’s IQ and educational attainment. Yet it has been largely forgotten since the world banned leaded petrol. In this talk I will present a working draft of a new chapter on lead exposure for the Disease Control Priorities (DCP4) project. In it, we synthesise evidence on harms of lead, exposure pathways, intervention effectiveness, and benefit-cost ratios for different policies. Enforcing regulations of centralised supply chains for adulterated consumer products (such as paint and spices) gives extremely high benefit-cost ratios. But large questions remain about what share of the burden comes from different exposure pathways, and how to cost-effectively intervene, particularly in more challenging industrial applications. Unsafe car battery recycling is one important example, where the solution cannot be a simple ban, but the economics of safe recycling are unfavourable.

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