The new Netflix series Lead Children has put a spotlight on the issue of lead poisoning in 1970s Poland. The series follows a young doctor who discovers that children living near a smelting plant have been poisoned with lead.

According to the latest Global Burden of Disease study, exposure to lead remains one of the leading environmental risk factors for early death and poor health globally. Unicef estimates that one in three children worldwide have an elevated blood lead level, highlighting this modern global health failure.

Historically, lead has been used in paint, gasoline, water supply pipes and industry. This has contaminated air, water, soil, dust and foods, which is why lead is a persistent and toxic environmental problem.

While the global elimination of lead from gasoline has been hugely successful in reducing lead in air, leading to a fall in population-wide blood lead concentrations in many countries, decline is not eradication.

We still live with the consequences from leaded paint being widely used until the 1960s on domestic and workplace skirting boards, bannisters, windowsills, doorframes and radiators. Lead is also still found in uPVC and leaded windows, roof flashings, glazed kitchenware, as well as some traditional medicines and cosmetics.

This may explain why ingestion, rather than inhalation from leaded gasoline, is now the dominant source of lead exposure in........

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