A staggering one in three children worldwide suffer from lead poisoning, causing lifelong damage to their health and brain development. It’s these harms that led the EU to ban toxic lead chromate pigments in 2019—but loopholes in trade rules mean that European exports continue to put children around the world at risk.
Lead poisoning is a key risk factor for heart disease, which makes it responsible for more deaths annually than HIV and malaria. Lead’s impact on children’s cognition can account for a fifth of the gap in learning levels between rich countries and poor countries, ultimately leading to billions of dollars in productivity losses.
Exposure to lead comes from a range of sources including car battery recycling, informally produced cookware, and legacy contamination from leaded petrol. But a key source is lead paint, and specifically the pigment lead chromate. In several countries such as the United States, it is only used for specialized purposes such as road marking. But in many low and middle-income countries, weak regulation and lax enforcement mean that lead chromate can end up in highly hazardous applications, such as domestic paints or even as a food adulterant.
Our research shows that at least 242 tons of the toxic pigment lead chromate are exported each year via Spain to Latin American countries. We found this by reviewing hundreds of detailed individual shipment records, but the true number is likely even higher. Other research has identified exports from Germany and Italy to countries around the world including Bangladesh and India, where lead poisoning is highly prevalent. We only know about these German & Italian exports because reporting is mandated, but there is no requirement to report how much is exported.
These loopholes undermine the EU’s credibility as a leader in global health and the environment. Lead chromate is banned in the EU due to its highly toxic nature—particularly to children—and the ready availability of affordable alternatives.
Exports are already banned for other toxic chemicals known as “Persistent Organic Pollutants,” so there is no reason why the EU could not ban exports of lead chromate as well. Doing so would have negligible economic impact for the EU—the value of these shipments are small, with Spanish exports in our data only worth around €1 million per year—but the quantities are sufficient to cause significant damage to health in importing countries. European companies simply should not be profiting from a trade which puts children at such risk of harm.
A second-best alternative to an outright ban on exports would be tightening up the existing “Prior Informed Consent” rules. Currently, firms who do export lead chromate from the EU are required to inform the government of the receiving country. But this regulation excludes “transit” shipments, such as those from India that travel via Spain to Mexico, where there is no legally binding limit on lead in paint. Whilst transit goods are normally subject only to basic security checks, EU regulation on waste shipments does explicitly apply to transit goods (regulation 1013/2006), so again there is precedent here. The EU is ahead of the curve by including lead chromate in its prior informed consent rules. Not all countries do this. But the transit loophole is causing real harm. And whilst the international Rotterdam convention that governs trade for all countries is finally due to consider adding lead chromate to its list, this process will take time.
Here is a simple shift in regulation that could make a meaningful impact on global public health, at essentially no cost to the EU. By acting, the EU can demonstrate leadership, protect children abroad, and align its export practices with the values it applies at home.
