Nicholas Kristof on Lead Exposure
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof covers the harms of lead exposure with an emphasis on how it affects cognitive development. He also references new efforts to reduce exposure globally; most of the funding for these efforts comes from LEAF.
Excerpts:
“Lead is a neurotoxin, and the dangers aren’t new. Benjamin Franklin warned in 1786 about the perils of drinking rainwater that had trickled off a lead roof.
“But in a disgraceful chapter in American business history, companies found that lead additives made for pretty paint colors and smooth engine performance, so in their greed they resisted regulation.
““Lead helps to guard your health,” one paint company declared.”
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“Less than $15 million a year has gone to lead poisoning in poor countries, a pittance in global terms. The new Biden initiative cobbles together about $150 million, much of it from philanthropy, and perhaps more important it marks an effort to take lead poisoning far more seriously.
““I don’t think that I have seen an issue in my career where we can do as much good with as few resources for as many people,” Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told me.”