China takes a ton of US recycling. They often melt down metals, e-waste and solder and it's difficult to separated out lead and unleaded source material. A lot of it just gets put together and used in bulk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/business/worldbusiness/10...
The fact that lead paint is totally banned (here in the US) instead of just banned in paint marketed for use on/in inhabitable structures and allowed with warning labels required is asinine. There's tons of chemicals out there that will screw up kids and adults if they eat them and we don't ban them. We just let the civil court system assign appropriate judgements to anyone dumb enough to use them on things that will come in close enough contact with people to be harmful.
Edit: The stereotypical effect of lead exposure is that it makes people stupid. I hope you people appreciate the irony in the fact that we can't have a serious discussion about the pros and cons of lead paint.
When you make your living doing a thing it's far more lucrative to do things right than to do them wrong. There's a bunch of incentives business owners who provide services operate within and they generally align to doing things the right way.
Really? You're posting on a thread about Amazon doing a wrong thing, which they've been doing for the greater part of a decade at this point. Maybe Amazon the company will be punished for this, but the people who made these decisions have probably already made millions and can just move on to another company with no repercussions. The idea that it's somehow more lucrative to do the right thing is ridiculous.
If this were true, no professional would ever do something wrong, cut corners, etc. Which would be nice. It's a nice picture of how things should work. But they don't.
Nobody is going to be "exposed" to a highway overpass or the hull of a ship or some chemical storage tank outside a factory enough for it to measurably affect anyone. Why can't we paint it in lead if that lasts longer for a given price point? There's all sorts of things that are out there in the world that are not interacted with enough to affect anyone in any measurable way (obviously assuming the people who work with the lead paint when wet follow proper procedures).
As long as "approved for tanks" lead paint is in the supply chain, who exactly keeps the use only to tanks. There are sufficiently durable alternatives that the lowest cost is to outright ban lead paint instead of setting up an enforcement framework to chase lead paint abuse while also paying added costs for after effects of easier cheating.
the workers who build and tear it down. maintenance workers. the chips and bits the wear off and get into the environment. and for a ships hull? the bits that get into the ocean and then sea life.
Sure you could argue that its small and harmless, but is it? can you prove it?
And, all that aside, there is an increased cost of all the precautions that need to now be taken when working with it offsetting the cost savings, as well as its now hazardous waste when torn down.
Or not knowing they're buying a cheap chinese version.
I have a new rescue cat and I was going to buy some cat toys but after half an hour on Amazon I felt increasingly unsure that any of the products were safe for my cat to sink her teeth into, so I guess all the toys she's getting will be coming from the local pet megastore, the only pet shop left on this side of town.
Corruption, greed and negligence seems to be everywhere.
The problem is that it cannot be contaminated so it either needs to be separated or it does become trash.