The most direct focus of LEAF’s source-specific mitigation work is paint and spices, but that’s largely because of tractability: these are both products where there are only weak economic incentives to use lead, and where production is fairly consolidated. That makes them easier to regulate. For other sources (batteries, cookware, cosmetics etc.), we want to fund more exploratory work: piloting and testing regulatory interventions rather than scaling them.
I think figuring out what to do on informal ULAB recycling is really important. ~80% of global lead is used in lead acid batteries, and informal recycling is responsible for particularly severe cases of exposure for people living nearby.
A benefit of all the recent attention on lead exposure is I expect we’ll increasingly see requests for assistance from governments, so it would be very helpful to have “best practice” playbooks we could apply to ULAB regulation. To my knowledge, those don’t currently exist (though there are some resources here and here). Intuitively, I’m excited by market-based solutions like tax breaks or even subsidies for well-regulated formal sector battery recycling to make it cost-competitive with unsafe informal recycling. But that’s pretty weakly held. Pure Earth have been thinking about this a lot, as have the US EPA and others.
The most direct focus of LEAF’s source-specific mitigation work is paint and spices, but that’s largely because of tractability: these are both products where there are only weak economic incentives to use lead, and where production is fairly consolidated. That makes them easier to regulate. For other sources (batteries, cookware, cosmetics etc.), we want to fund more exploratory work: piloting and testing regulatory interventions rather than scaling them.
I think figuring out what to do on informal ULAB recycling is really important. ~80% of global lead is used in lead acid batteries, and informal recycling is responsible for particularly severe cases of exposure for people living nearby.
A benefit of all the recent attention on lead exposure is I expect we’ll increasingly see requests for assistance from governments, so it would be very helpful to have “best practice” playbooks we could apply to ULAB regulation. To my knowledge, those don’t currently exist (though there are some resources here and here). Intuitively, I’m excited by market-based solutions like tax breaks or even subsidies for well-regulated formal sector battery recycling to make it cost-competitive with unsafe informal recycling. But that’s pretty weakly held. Pure Earth have been thinking about this a lot, as have the US EPA and others.
That’s really helpful. Thank you!