Compared to ignoring global warming - ignoring lead exposure is a minor negligence.
And yes, I'm aware that said commodity production produces wealth which also improves well-being. But there's a contradiction there in our economic model that is not serving us well.
EDIT: I should add to my point above that what's common with both these is one overarching world altering product that has completely transformed the world: the automobile.
Ribbons of tarmac lace the earth (it wouldn't surprise me if this is a long term environmental problem, too), even in some of the most remote sections of the planet.
Cities are built around them, privileging automobile use above a bunch of other aspects of quality of life.
Road transport is 75ish% of global CO2 emissions.
And, yeah, leaded fuel poisoned our bodies, minds, and the environment for decades.
The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine"
On anything but the shortest timeline things like like wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the societal level.
If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't smaller than the benefits of the progress then the progress wouldn't happen because more people would be worse off and things would grind to a halt because the gains would be more than offset.
It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank check to peddle your preferred ideology (government intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other team.
Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple dozen poisoned watersheds.
With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries and fewer poisoned watersheds.
Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful to pretend that the economic activity in both of those situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't work this way progress would grind to a halt because the increased material wealth of having the batteries would be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned watersheds create, to run with the existing example.