Matthew Yglesias: Biden's greatest legacy may not be felt for decades

Like most presidents, Joe Biden is using the final few months of his tenure to brag about his accomplishments. In fairness, he has stuff to be proud of, in both policy and politics, but it’s entirely possible that one of his administration’s most important legacies will be a little-noticed program it announced last week: a worldwide initiative to reduce lead poisoning.

For many Americans, the issue conjures memories of the disaster that occurred in Flint, Michigan, a decade ago, when the city’s water supply was found to be badly contaminated with lead. At the peak of the crisis, about 5% of Flint’s kids were suffering from lead poisoning — defined as more than five micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. And even this is a somewhat arbitrary threshold, since as far as scientists can ascertain, there is no truly safe level of lead.

According to UNICEF and the advocacy organization Pure Earth, one-third of all children in the world have blood lead levels over that threshold. In other words, lead poisoning worldwide is almost seven times more prevalent than it was in Flint.

This has almost nothing to do with municipal water supplies or the U.S. — 90% of the cases are in poor and middle-income countries. So the Biden administration’s initiative, called the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future, is creating a $150 million fund to combat lead poisoning in the developing world. The problem is so pervasive and so toxic that it causes somewhere between 1.6 million and 5.5 million deaths each year — a toll worse than HIV, malaria, the ongoing civil war in Sudan or any number of better-known tragedies.

Lead also harms people it doesn’t kill. Researchers estimate that 765 million IQ points have been collectively lost to lead poisoning.

This hurts those who are afflicted, of course. But it also affects society; many scholars believe the phaseout of leaded gasoline helped contribute to the long-term decline of crime rates in the U.S., because people whose brain development is affected by childhood lead exposure have worse impulse control. So while lead is currently harming mostly kids in poor countries, the future damage of all that lead is more widespread.

The lead itself comes from a surprising diversity of sources. The biggest in the U.S. is old paint. Lead paint was banned back in the late 1970s, but that didn’t make it disappear from old houses, and flecks of aging paint are a significant problem in some areas. Many countries around the world banned lead paint later than the U.S. did, and so have more serious problems. And there are also many countries that still allow lead paint.

There are almost as many ways to use lead as countries that still use it. In some countries, lead is added to turmeric to make the color more brilliant. A kind of eye makeup used in many countries is often made with lead. Henna is sometimes enhanced with lead. There’s a particular kind of aluminum cookware widely used in Afghanistan that contaminates food with lead.

What’s striking about these examples is not only that they are health hazards, but they are trivial economically. Nobody needs unusually bright turmeric, and lead-free versions of cookware and cosmetics are completely feasible. A tougher problem is lead poisoning associated with unsafe methods of battery recycling, which is integral to many people’s livelihoods.

The point is, there is an astounding amount of lead being used for essentially no good reason — and at enormous cost to the world’s children.

What’s shocking, given the scale of the problem, is that the fund — including money from the U.S. government and significant philanthropic commitments — is so meager. Organizers are seeking more funds, and hopefully more governments and philanthropists (and ideally the U.S. Congress) will respond.

Given the modest amount of money involved, it’s hard to say that global lead eradication has been a major priority of the Biden administration. But Jill Biden, along with USAID Administrator Samantha Power and UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, is promoting the partnership. And the administration has been interested in the topic from day one — starting with the money it sent to Flint and other cities to replace lead pipes in 2021 as part of Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (one of the things he’s justified in bragging about). The mere fact that lead is so deadly means even small investments can save large numbers of lives.

Biden’s work to eliminate lead poisoning may well turn out to be the equivalent of George W. Bush’s work to respond to HIV/AIDS — that is, something that was not an especially big deal in the politics of the time, but has a legacy in terms of saving lives that far outlasts most of the other issues people argued about during his presidency.

Lead is so deadly, and the majority of its uses around the world so unnecessary, that Biden’s decision to commit a little money and attention to the problem stands an excellent chance of paying a huge dividend.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

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