From the article:
Silverman said that, like tobacco control, reducing lead contamination needs to happen at least in part through government regulation—and that they have the same potentially “enormous” public health benefits.
She pointed to one paper suggesting that the benefits of a global phase-out of leaded petrol may equal about $2.5 trillion every year, and other research that names it as the cause of 900,000 deaths annually, and about $1.2 trillion.
Silverman cautioned that the findings are from big, modeled studies with “heroic” assumptions, that should rightfully be “taken with a grain of salt.” Still, Silverman said, “If you believe these numbers are within an order of magnitude of being correct, that means that lead poisoning is one of the largest preventable sources of death, disease and productivity loss in the world, that phasing out leaded petrol was one of the most cost-effective health and regulatory interventions of all time, and that addressing current sources of poisoning could be extraordinarily cost-effective, depending on the costs of effective intervention and mitigation.”
