Study: One-third of children worldwide are threatened by lead

Lead contamination has long been recognized as a health hazard, particularly for the young. But a new study asserts that the extent of the problem is far bigger than previously thought, with 1 in 3 children worldwide — about 800 million in all — threatened by unacceptably high lead levels in their blood.

The ubiquity of lead — in dust and fumes from smelters and fires, vehicle batteries, old peeling paint, old water pipes, electronics junkyards, and even cosmetics and lead-infused spices — represents an enormous and understated risk to the mental and physical development of a generation of children, according to the study, released late Wednesday.

The danger is particularly acute in poor and middle-income countries where industrial pollution safeguards are poorly enforced or nonexistent.

“The unequivocal conclusion of this research is that children around the world are being poisoned by lead on a massive and previously unrecognized scale,” said the study, a collaboration of UNICEF and Pure Earth, a nonprofit that seeks to help poor countries threatened by toxic pollutants.

The study also said that nearly 1 million adults a year die prematurely because of lead exposure.

Their primary conclusion was that one-third of the world’s children, up to the age of 19, have blood lead levels at or exceeding 5 micrograms per deciliter, a threshold that both the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have determined is a cause for action.