Lead Poisoning Isn’t a Mystery. It’s a Policy Failure

There are few public health issues in the United States where the science is so settled, the solutions so clear and the stakes so high, yet the outcome remains so unresolved. Childhood lead poisoning is one of them. Often described as a “solved problem,” lead exposure has, in reality, never been fully resolved. It has rather been pushed out of sight, relegated to communities with the least political power and treated as an acceptable background risk of aging infrastructure.

The data tell a story of both progress and failure.