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Comment by throw8932894 | Hacker News Reader

It is VERY expensive problem to fix. Cleaning environment, replacing old pipes... Other issues like smoking can be milked on taxes.

EU went quite far, even banning lead from solder.

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One cost-effective program is to ban the sale of lead paint in those countries without regulation (over half of countries globally). This article looks into this and other solutions: https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/global-lead-expos.... Disclaimer: I co-direct a nonprofit that advocates for lead paint regulation (LEEP: https://leadelimination.org/).

Is indoor lead paint is still being sold anywhere in the world? Not banned doesn’t necessarily mean it is actively used.

Since ever few years someone finds new childrens toys being manufactured with lead paint, it seems it's still being used once in a while at least.

https://uspirg.org/news/usp/recall-toys-still-found-lead-pai...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2016/04/26/the-ot...

https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poiso...

Considering China keeps shipping toys to the US with high lead levels, I wouldn't be surprised if they make lead paint for domestic use. I have no interest in looking up how, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was easy to find the recipe for lead paint and make it in your garage. I have read enough about making homemade finish to think anyone who gets the recipe - including passed down over generations by people living in mud huts - can make it.

true! But yes, it is. This map shows a summary of tests of paints on the market: https://ipen.org/projects/eliminating-lead-paint/lead-levels... (These are studies of oil-based paints, rather than water-based paints which don't usually contain lead, but in LEEP's experience from Malawi and Liberia lots of homes are painted with oil-based paints, inside and out)

I suspect that even though you can get leaded paint in those places few are actually using it for residential stuff. Lead offered cheap durability for paints in fairly demanding applications. Stuff like a business sign that needs to look crisp after many years in the weather and UV or machinery that's constantly getting scratches up by whatever that machinery works with are the use cases where lead is still somewhat missed because the equivalent performing unleaded coatings are fairly expensive. Since those are poor countries it stands to reason that most of their residential oil paint use would be cheap unleaded stuff and their leaded paint use would be confined to applications that demand better paint than the low end unleaded oil based stuff but where they can't afford high-performing unleaded stuff.

We've done surveys and tested household use paints in five LMICs (https://leadelimination.org/projects/)(https://leadeliminati.... 1) lead paints are often cheaper than unleaded paints (in LMICs) because lead paints tend to be locally manufactured and unleaded paints often imported. Also, lead pigments are often cheaper than lead-free pigments. 2) Yes, lead is good at making durable oil-based paints - in some countries with sub-tropical climates durable oil-based paint is popular on the inside and outside of homes, presumably for this reason. It's also easy to clean 3) Water-based paints are much less likely to contain lead and these are also used in homes in LMICs

High Lead Levels Found in Majority of Malaysian Paint Brands - https://ipen.org/news/high-lead-levels-found-majority-malays...

For those interested in the EU regulation on this, a couple of starting points are:

REACH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Auth...

RoHS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

IMHO REACH didn't go far enough, it should be up to the maker of a chemical to prove that it's safe before it's sold and used.

How exactly would someone prove something is safe? Especially on something that could have multi-decade cycle times?

it's only expensive to fix if you don't account for the cost of not fixing it. fixing this more than pays for itself in terms of reduced healthcare and prison costs

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