Around one-in-three children globally suffer from lead poisoning

If anyone (like me) is looking for a map (which seems to be missing from the article), the per-country data is apparently on https://www.pollution.org.

What's the source of all the lead pollution in central Africa?

> These impacts are thought to be largely irreversible

I'm noticing this claim made a lot in various contexts these days, most notably relating to the pandemic (about both the virus and vaccines).

In those contexts as well as this one, I feel like it's used in a weaponised way to emphasise the seriousness of the harm caused, but by doing this there's some abandonment of those who have been harmed and consigns them to a future of having to carry on living with the harm, without being empowered or supported to heal and recover.

I have some experience with toxicities of lead and other metals, which I wrote about here several years ago. [1]

As this article suggests, diagnosis and treatment are not widely available in mainstream medicine, so in order to get help you find yourself in the world of fringe medicine, which of course is a minefield.

But there are absolutely treatments that work and that can enable many (most?) people to recover or improve a huge amount, as the linked article from that comment thread documents. [2]

This article is right that the problem is neglected by mainstream society, but not so right that harms are irreversible, and if we were more willing to believe in the potential for the human body to heal when given adequate treatment and support, far more people could be living much more full and empowered lives.

That's not to say more shouldn't be done to remove lead and other toxins from the environment; of course that should be done too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19573098

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/magazine/lead-poisoning-m...

The article is based on a UNICEF report [1], which from a cursory glance seems to suggest that while the problem is present to some degree everywhere, it's by far the most pronounced in East and South Asia (but caused health care costs in relation to GDP is worst in Africa)

"One of the most concerning sources of lead exposure is the unsound recycling of used lead-acid batteries (ULABs), most of which are found in cars, trucks and other vehicles. Recycling activities are often conducted in informal, unlicensed, and frequently illegal open-air operations close to homes and schools." In general page 2 goes into common sources, most of which shouldn't affect Western Europe but are apparently quite common in poorer countries.

1: https://www.unicef.org/media/109361/file/The%20toxic%20truth...

I remain shocked how we in the United States knowingly poisoned generations with leaded gasoline.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...

In searching for a substance that made gasoline less flammable (and hence stopped it from igniting outside of a cylinder, i.e. "knocking") we tried everything including adding melted butter! Lead along with a lot of other things worked well but we went with lead and poisoned generations of people.

Many blame it for the rise in violent crime from the 1960s to 1990s:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-c...

Nobody seems to care about any of this.