There just aren’t many people whose job it is to look for important, tractable and neglected causes. It’s striking how much of the recent upsurge in interest has been related to EA.
While there are some individual cases of very severe exposure, most of the burden is caused by relatively small risks of harm spread across entire populations, so victims aren’t identifiable.
A lot of global health funding is allocated by disease category. Lead exposure cuts across disease categories, so it just doesn’t naturally fit into a lot of funding mechanisms.
The elimination of leaded gasoline had a huge positive impact globally. The US, and a few other countries, also do regular testing and surveillance to identify other sources of exposure. But not many other countries do that. So I think there’s a story that with the decline in US blood lead levels, people assumed the problem was fixed by eliminating leaded gasoline when other countries, particularly LMICs, still have a lot of exposure from other sources.
I am very happy about the LEAF initiative!
Do you have any ideas for why funders didn’t pay attention to lead sooner?
Thanks Rafa! A few theories:
There just aren’t many people whose job it is to look for important, tractable and neglected causes. It’s striking how much of the recent upsurge in interest has been related to EA.
While there are some individual cases of very severe exposure, most of the burden is caused by relatively small risks of harm spread across entire populations, so victims aren’t identifiable.
A lot of global health funding is allocated by disease category. Lead exposure cuts across disease categories, so it just doesn’t naturally fit into a lot of funding mechanisms.
The elimination of leaded gasoline had a huge positive impact globally. The US, and a few other countries, also do regular testing and surveillance to identify other sources of exposure. But not many other countries do that. So I think there’s a story that with the decline in US blood lead levels, people assumed the problem was fixed by eliminating leaded gasoline when other countries, particularly LMICs, still have a lot of exposure from other sources.