> I'm actually wondering why: no leaded paints in EU?

The dangers of lead paint have been known for over 100 years. France banned it in 1909. The League of Nations adopted a treaty on it in 1922. The US declined to join the treaty due to industry lobbying and didn't get around to banning it until 1978.

By declining to ban it the US cost itself $Ts when accounting for the developmental delays, lost IQ points, health problems, increased crime, lost productivity, remediation, etc. All so that one tiny corner of the chemical industry could have a little more profit.

You have a source because your statement seems quite wrong.

Google tells me lead paint wasn’t banned in the UK until the 1990’s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_Unit...

France was 1948, but lots of lead poisoned children anyways since the paint is still on buildings people live in.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918871-200-lead-pai...

"To protect the health of painters, France had passed in 1909 a law banning the use of paints containing lead for the painting of the interior and exterior of all buildings."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint

"The League of Nations banned white-lead interior paint in 1922 (you know an environmental regulation is old if it was issued by the League of Nations), but the U.S. declined to implement the ban."

https://environmentlawhistory.blogspot.com/2016/01/lead-regu...

I made no claims about the UK.

But the UK was in the league of nations...

Looking a little more into France's question:

I found this article:

"White lead pigment in paint had been recognized as toxic and restricted since 1915; it had been banned from professional use since 1926 and from craft work since 1948."[0]

Wikipedia's citation[1] does appear to be a delcaration from 1909 stating: "ART. 2. - A l'expiration de la cinquième année qui suivra la promulgation de la présente loi, l'emploi de la céruse, de l'huile de lin plombifère et de tout produit spécialisé renfermant de la céruse, sera interdit dans tous les travaux de peinture de quelque nature qu'ils soient, exécutés par les ouvriers peintres, tant à l'extérieur qu'à l'intérieur des bâtiments_"

Translated using https://www.deepl.com/translator : "ART. 2 - At the end of the fifth year following the promulgation of the present law, the use of ceruse, leaded linseed oil and any specialized product containing ceruse, will be prohibited in all painting work of any nature whatsoever, carried out by painters, both outside and inside buildings." ("ceruse" is white lead.)

This supports the 1915 (the fifth year following 1909) in the first article.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448552/

[1] https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/fichiers/numerisations3/bu... (p202 of the PDF, p172 by the original document page numbers)

Speaking of dangerous paints used many years ago: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/shadows-from-the-walls...

The article is based on a UNICEF report [1], which from a cursory glance seems to suggest that while the problem is present to some degree everywhere, it's by far the most pronounced in East and South Asia (but caused health care costs in relation to GDP is worst in Africa)

"One of the most concerning sources of lead exposure is the unsound recycling of used lead-acid batteries (ULABs), most of which are found in cars, trucks and other vehicles. Recycling activities are often conducted in informal, unlicensed, and frequently illegal open-air operations close to homes and schools." In general page 2 goes into common sources, most of which shouldn't affect Western Europe but are apparently quite common in poorer countries.

1: https://www.unicef.org/media/109361/file/The%20toxic%20truth...

Youtube has many extremly scary videos showing battery recycling operations, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvPjOKkPyE

Working directly with batteries and lead dust with no protection equipment, with nothing. That's terrifying but at the same time I've become so used to seeing employees do this sort of thing in my own country despite my repeated warnings that I've become numb to it.

Yeah, this is truly horrifying. Impressive and horrifying.

Take a look at some of the videos from the ship breaking yards in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. People working with no protective equipment at all, often barefoot, using torches to cut up ships full of lead paint, heavy metals, and asbestos.

Possibly the best youtube comment ever made:

"I only buy organic locally hand-made batteries."

Leaded fuel is still in use in aviation. Not gonna lie, it sits poorly with me that a hobby for rich people can rain toxic chemicals on people below with little to no restrictions.

Jet fuel doesn't have lead in it. Avgas is 'low lead', and there's at one unleaded prop plane fuel available.

It's 'low lead' compared to the previous 100 octane avgas it replaced, not in some absolute or objective sense. It contains more lead than automotive gasoline back when autogas still contained lead.

While it's nice there's finally some progress made in unleaded high octane avgas (G100UL), from a public health perspective it's not a huge issue compared to many other sources of lead in the environment.

Santa Clara tried to ban leaded av gas and the rich pilots complained and got the FAA to step in

A bunch of land owners/developers and some subset of the government in Santa Clara wanted to kick out the airport so the land could be developed and to make the surrounding land more valuable. Killing all the GA traffic based out of there would do the trick. Banning the fuel would kick out GA. Don't pretend that it was some altruistic pursuit. They only went after the lead because it has a ton of existing ideological baggage they thought they could capitalize on. The FAA looked at the big picture and laughed at them.

> Not gonna lie,

Do you normally?

> a hobby for rich peopl

Most flying is neither a hobby nor done by rich people.

Most flying is done in airliners (at least in passenger-miles), whose engines don't benefit from any lead.

On the other hand, smaller, piston-engine aircrafts are overwhelmingly a hobby for relatively wealthy people, where leaded avgas is commonplace.

This is just anecdotal, but in the aerodrome near where I live, I'd be surprised if less than 90% of the flights are leisure flights.

This is just not true. The vast majority of hours flown (and fuel burned) are for commercial purposes. These are real money-making enterprises, not some rich persons play thing.

I think you've misread me.

Avgas utilizing planes are not simply rich people's play thing. The vast majority of hours flown in these planes are for commercial, money making purposes. They are operated by real businesses that earn profits and should be able to afford the transition to non leaded gas.

> Public safety agencies, however, which account for one-quarter of piston-engine planes registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, are “likely to consume more than half of all the avgas used by the fleet,” according to the January National Academy of Sciences report. These agencies often include law enforcement and firefighting aircraft that need to reliably stay aloft through rapid changes in temperature, pressure and altitude. Personal and recreational flyers make up the remaining three-quarters of planes and consume the other half of leaded gas.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...

So roughly 50% of the leaded fuel is used in personal/leisure flights in the US. I wouldn't consider the other 50% anywhere close to "the vast majority", and from the source, and it's largely safety and rescue.

Moreover, demand is expexted to grow precisely because of leisure and high net-worth personal use[0].

Now, unless you include business trips of rich people as "money making business", there are very few commercial fights otherwise, serving mostly remote, low demand areas.

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aviation-gasoline-avgas-marke...

> It's almost a non-topic in Europe since leaded gasoline was banned (I'm actually wondering why: no leaded paints in EU?)

Leaded paints were certainly widely used as rustproofing primer on steel constructions, as a bedding compound, and as anti-fouling paint on boats. The traditional formula is a mixture of lead oxide and linseed oil, giving it a characteristic red color.

Most of these uses are AFAIU nowadays banned, and replacements are available for practically(?) all lead paint usecases. I think it's still possible to buy it for some special usecases, though (like buildings/boats built/maintained with "traditional" methods).

That’s still much less serious than lead paint being used for the interiors of houses and apartments, which it was in the US until the 1970s. Was it in Europe?

Yes, absolutely less dangerous than lead used in house paints.

I don't actually know about the situation in Europe in general, but e.g. Sweden prohibited lead paint for indoor use already in 1860, and France in prohibited lead-based indoor and outdoor house paints in 1909. Based on some quick googling it seems several European countries prohibited lead-based house paints (including outdoor paints) in the 1920'ies.

It is VERY expensive problem to fix. Cleaning environment, replacing old pipes... Other issues like smoking can be milked on taxes.

EU went quite far, even banning lead from solder.

One cost-effective program is to ban the sale of lead paint in those countries without regulation (over half of countries globally). This article looks into this and other solutions: https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/global-lead-expos.... Disclaimer: I co-direct a nonprofit that advocates for lead paint regulation (LEEP: https://leadelimination.org/).

Is indoor lead paint is still being sold anywhere in the world? Not banned doesn’t necessarily mean it is actively used.

Since ever few years someone finds new childrens toys being manufactured with lead paint, it seems it's still being used once in a while at least.

https://uspirg.org/news/usp/recall-toys-still-found-lead-pai...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2016/04/26/the-ot...

https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poiso...

Considering China keeps shipping toys to the US with high lead levels, I wouldn't be surprised if they make lead paint for domestic use. I have no interest in looking up how, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was easy to find the recipe for lead paint and make it in your garage. I have read enough about making homemade finish to think anyone who gets the recipe - including passed down over generations by people living in mud huts - can make it.

true! But yes, it is. This map shows a summary of tests of paints on the market: https://ipen.org/projects/eliminating-lead-paint/lead-levels... (These are studies of oil-based paints, rather than water-based paints which don't usually contain lead, but in LEEP's experience from Malawi and Liberia lots of homes are painted with oil-based paints, inside and out)

I suspect that even though you can get leaded paint in those places few are actually using it for residential stuff. Lead offered cheap durability for paints in fairly demanding applications. Stuff like a business sign that needs to look crisp after many years in the weather and UV or machinery that's constantly getting scratches up by whatever that machinery works with are the use cases where lead is still somewhat missed because the equivalent performing unleaded coatings are fairly expensive. Since those are poor countries it stands to reason that most of their residential oil paint use would be cheap unleaded stuff and their leaded paint use would be confined to applications that demand better paint than the low end unleaded oil based stuff but where they can't afford high-performing unleaded stuff.

We've done surveys and tested household use paints in five LMICs (https://leadelimination.org/projects/)(https://leadeliminati.... 1) lead paints are often cheaper than unleaded paints (in LMICs) because lead paints tend to be locally manufactured and unleaded paints often imported. Also, lead pigments are often cheaper than lead-free pigments. 2) Yes, lead is good at making durable oil-based paints - in some countries with sub-tropical climates durable oil-based paint is popular on the inside and outside of homes, presumably for this reason. It's also easy to clean 3) Water-based paints are much less likely to contain lead and these are also used in homes in LMICs

High Lead Levels Found in Majority of Malaysian Paint Brands - https://ipen.org/news/high-lead-levels-found-majority-malays...

For those interested in the EU regulation on this, a couple of starting points are:

REACH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Auth...

RoHS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

IMHO REACH didn't go far enough, it should be up to the maker of a chemical to prove that it's safe before it's sold and used.

How exactly would someone prove something is safe? Especially on something that could have multi-decade cycle times?

it's only expensive to fix if you don't account for the cost of not fixing it. fixing this more than pays for itself in terms of reduced healthcare and prison costs

There are plenty of properties in the UK still fed by lead water pipes. It's not something people talk about often, but it can be a problem and should be part of a good property survey.

Our Victorian property still has a (shared) lead supply pipe. I've been repeatedly told it's not an issue due to (presumed) calcification on the inside of the pipe. All the interior pipework is copper.

Our water was tested years ago by the waterboard and came back way below the legal limit.

Yet still... I'm suspicious. Can anyone point me at resources to help prove it's unsafe?

Look at what happened in flint Michigan. Lead pipes were calcified, but then the water bureau stopped adding an agent to reduce the natural ph of the river water. This caused the calcification to get stripped and for lead to start leaching into the water.

All it takes is a change in ph of your water supply to put you at risk.

Similar fiasco when EPA did a showcase project converting DC water supply away from chlorine treatment. Hugely embarrassing and expensive "fix" for a non-problem, that created a much worse problem.

(ETA: It also caused lead to be released- non-lead pipes had actually leached lead from the water over many years, acting as a filter. The lead was chemically bound to both lead and non-lead pipes. Changing the chemistry caused the process to reverse and dump all that lead back into the water at much higher concentrations than would occur just using a 100% lead pipe system.)

And lead paint is similar. In-situ it's pretty harmless. It's the removal that's dangerous and is more likely to poison.

This is why people arguing for "do-something!" actions using "What harm could it do?" reasoning should always be fought until safety is confirmed experimentally the field.

"What harm could it do?" should always be a red flag for "don't know what you don't know" ignorance, and responded to as if it's a real, non-rhetorical question.

> And lead paint is similar. In-situ it's pretty harmless. It's the removal that's dangerous and is more likely to poison.

This is not completely true. I remember some studies looking at lead accumulation in dust. It's not just macroscopic paint chips on the outside of houses that children ingest, it's dust in the house as well.

Good point. Perhaps one cheap way GP could monitor it themselves might be to just monitor pH and do a lead test if that changes.

Just replacing the pipes seems like the optimal solution, but half-measures are better than nothing.

Beat me to it. Always replace your lead pipes.

> Our Victorian property still has a (shared) lead supply pipe. I've been repeatedly told it's not an issue due to (presumed) calcification on the inside of the pipe

In London or the general area? The water is lousy with calcium, hard AF, so that's a good bet.

The notorious lead in the water issue in Flint, Michigan was not just "pipes made from lead" but also that they carelessly switched water supply to a new one that over time, corroded the deposits off the inside of the pipes so that the lead could leach out.

Once that had happened, "the damage already done to Flint’s water supply infrastructure by more than 18 months of exposure to corrosive water. Even after the water supply was reconnected to the (original water supply), officials advised against drinking Flint water."

https://www.britannica.com/event/Flint-water-crisis

As to what to do with your pipes - you can find water testing kits on the big online retailer for under £30

No, but Thames Water will replace the external lead pipe for free if you get your internal lead pipe replaced (as in, up to the demarcation point, which is probably the external stop valve). (More complicated if it's shared, of course). Other areas might be similar.

Look up Flint, Michigan. The layer on the inside of the pipe is great until something happens to the chemical composition of the water without planning for the effects. The city changed its water supply and all of a sudden everybody got poisoned.

> Our water was tested years ago by the waterboard and came back way below the legal limit.

Where was the water tested? I've heard that here in France, water is often tested before going into the pipes, and not after flowing for the faucet. If that's the case for you too, I'd encourage you to test the water going out of the faucet, since this is the water you actually drink. In France we can do that at labs that take care of stuff like blood samples. A naive search gave me this website https://watersafetestkits.co.uk/which-water-test-kit/ that sells water test kits, for example.

I have seen books from the 1920s that recommended chemicals you could add to your water to prevent the water from eroding the lead. Water is a great solvent for almost anything, and so if you are not careful water will pick up whatever is in the pipes.

I'm not going to look up those chemicals - I doubt that they would pass modern safety standards. If you maintain a water supply that has lead anywhere you should figure out what modern chemicals to use to prevent lead (or whatever your pipes are made of) from being eroded. I hope the people who maintain water supplies already know about this though.

This is an issue in the northeast USA too. The city of Boston for example provides subsidies for buildings to replace their lead supply pipes.

Well, the Drinking Water Inspectorate talks about it all the time and carry out a pretty comprehensive survey programme to make sure that orthophospate is being added in areas likely to have remaining lead pipes. Lead service pipes are getting pretty rare now (but yes, should check on a survey and not included as standard) but there are still quite a few older buildings with interior lead pipes.

> It's almost a non-topic in Europe since leaded gasoline was banned

While this is true, it arguably should be discussed more. The lead hasn't all just gone away.

e.g.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224474/lead-from-leaded-petr...

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2021/06/lead-persis...

I did a lot of metal detecting in Central Europe and amount of lead found on farmlands was shocking. Some places I could gather over a kilo from a single are. Not sure how much this kind of debris contributes to lead poisoning but I don't think it's easily cleanable.

What form did you find it in? Are we talking chunks of metal?