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this is: Introducing LEEP: Lead Exposure Elimination Project, published by Jack, LuciaC on the effective altruism forum.
We are excited to announce the launch of Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP), a new EA organisation incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship. Our mission is to reduce lead poisoning, which causes significant disease burden worldwide. We aim to achieve this by advocating for lead paint regulation in countries with large and growing burdens of lead poisoning from paint.
In this post, we make the case for lead exposure reduction as a priority, and outline our plan to address this problem.
The Problem
Others in the effective altruism community have already identified that working on lead poisoning could be a high-impact opportunity (see here, here, and here). Through the Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness framework, we unpack the reasoning for prioritising lead exposure interventions, and for our approach of advocating for the introduction of lead paint laws.
Importance
Lead poisoning has substantial health and economic costs, and lead paint is a primary contributor [1]. In terms of individual impacts, lead exposure has a number of effects. Even a low level of lead exposure can lead to mental disability and IQ loss, as well as increased rates of mental illness and psychopathology and significantly reduced lifetime earnings capacity [2, 3, 4]. Lead also has effects on behaviour and criminal tendencies; in particular having a large impact on the prevalence of violent crime [5]. In adults, lifetime lead exposure is an important risk factor for renal disease and cardiovascular disease, including hypertension and coronary artery disease [6, 7]. Higher levels of exposure can affect all organ systems, and even result in respiratory difficulties, seizure, coma, and death [5].
Lead poisoning primarily affects children, and does so at a massive scale. UNICEF reports that 815 million children have blood lead levels above 5 µg/dL - a sufficient level for neurodevelopmental effects and reduced IQ [8]. The vast majority live in low and middle-income countries. Put another way, one in three children are currently affected by lead poisoning to some degree.
In addition to disability, it also causes 1 million deaths per year. In total, lead poisoning accounts for 22 million DALYs every year, which means that lead poisoning is responsible for approximately 1% of the global disease burden [9].
In terms of lost earnings, lead poisoning impacts the world economy to the level of approximately $1 trillion per year [4]. This amounts to a loss of 1.2% of world GDP. These losses are concentrated in low and middle-income countries, where they can amount to as much as 5-8% of GDP, suggesting that lead exposure can be a significant barrier to economic development and poverty reduction.
In short, the problem of lead poisoning is a significant one.
Neglectedness
At present, while all countries except for one have banned leaded petrol, 61% of countries have no lead paint regulations whatsoever [1]. In many of these primarily low and middle-income countries the burden of disease from lead poisoning is still significant. In high-income countries, this is a less severely neglected area, as most countries have introduced regulations banning leaded petrol and lead paint.
While there are some organisations working to address this issue in low and middle-income countries, including IPEN, ToxicsLink, and Pure Earth, many countries with significant lead burdens remain neglected by other actors. LEEP aims to fill this gap, and target these neglected countries.
Tractability
This is the most uncertain aspect of working on lead poisoning, given the uncertainty around the success of policy change interventions. However, there are several reasons in favour of the tractability of policy change to ban t...
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