Lead Industry Influence in the 21st Century: An Old Playbook for a “Modern Metal”

Abstract

In recent years, lead poisoning has received increasing attention as lead production continues to grow and the industry shifts the most polluting processes (e.g., smelting ore and recycling batteries) to low- and middle-income countries.

The hazards associated with lead exposures have been well known for centuries while the industry actively promoted lead products. Less well known is how the industry continues to promote the “safe and responsible” use of lead and support research to question the underlying science and avoid regulation.

Here I explore the historical context for recent actions that the industry has taken to ensure its longevity. Lead industry associations continue to employ some of the same themes that have proven successful in the past. Efforts to forestall regulatory initiatives to reduce emissions and restrict lead applications continue. Large battery manufacturers and recyclers and their associations place blame on informal-sector recycling to draw focus away from their own emissions. They have sought the cooperation of hired scientific experts and have funded United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to deflect attention from their own contributions to global lead poisoning. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(S7):S723–S729. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306960)

The hazards of lead have been well known for centuries, but we continue to mine, refine, and use lead in growing quantities. The growth of this industry has continued unabated for decades despite product bans and increasingly restrictive regulations of airborne emissions and environmental contamination levels in high-income countries. Although the United States and other countries spend billions of dollars cleaning up lead-contaminated soil, abating lead paint from housing, and replacing lead pipes, many countries around the world have yet to regulate or ban these products. Even the United States, where lead paint use in residential applications has been restricted since 1978, still allows the use of lead paint on roadways, bridges, and commercial buildings and for other applications. Lead in aviation fuels continues to be sold in the United States decades after the ban on lead in gasoline.

The growth in lead production supplies several key applications. Overall lead usage in the United States increased by 16% from 2001 to 2016. Over those 15 years, however, the production of lead in ammunition grew by 81% and lead battery output by 29%. Globally, lead mine production grew by 56% over this period, and secondary lead produced from recycling grew by 102%.¹ Given the projected growth in transport, energy storage, and ammunition sales, there is little to suggest that global lead production will decline in coming decades.

Since the 1920s, the industry has formed trade associations that have remained active under various names and shifting headquarters. In 2002, the Lead Industries Association declared bankruptcy as a result of increasing litigation related to lead paint.² Before declaring bankruptcy, the organization stated on its Web site that “[c]urrent uses of lead pose no significant environment or health risks.”³ The association rebranded as the International Lead Association (ILA) and now bills itself as “the pathway to a low carbon future” and “committed to the highest environmental and safety standards.”⁴

Various marketing themes have underlined the promotion of the industry over time. Past and current messaging encouraging ongoing sales of lead products includes the following: (1) the use of lead is “modern” and “advanced”; (2) lead is “durable” and “clean”; (3) lead is “essential,” “green,” “sustainable,” “low carbon” and “responsible”; and (4) lead is safe because it is not banned and even is required under government specifications.

In addition, the industry is actively funding scientists and organizations that downplay the hazards of lead and publish favorable reports questioning consensus science or placing blame on nonindustrial sources of exposure. Individual companies and industry associations continue to question established scientific findings by reanalyzing the data from published studies with different methods to raise doubt and promote uncertainty regarding the findings. As in the past, blame is shifted away from larger industries that control the mining, production, and manufacture of lead chemicals and products to informal-sector actors and legacy applications (e.g., lead gasoline). An argument that has been repeatedly used is that because lead products are not universally banned, lead is a “then-lawful product for a then-lawful use.”⁵

The industry has also shifted to adopt new messages and promote lead usage, delay regulations, and even rebrand lead as “green.” The ILA, representing mining, battery manufacturing, and recycling companies, works to “promote and support the ‘safe and responsible’ use of lead,” which is “critical to achieving a sustainable and low carbon future.”⁶

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

As the industry has continued to expand in the 21st century, trade associations and individual companies persist in attempting to influence research and public policy. It is well documented that in the 20th century the lead industry actively engaged in funding universities to manipulate the research agenda and produce favorable outcomes. Some key examples from promotion of the use of lead in gasoline and in water pipes illustrate the industry’s methods.

Lead Gasoline

Once the lead industry diversified in the 1920s to provide additives for lead gasoline, it recognized the need to set the research agenda to counteract concerns raised by reports of workers poisoned during the production process. Government regulators and independent academics almost immediately highlighted the risks of manufacturing and using tetraethyl lead. As soon as tetraethyl lead production started and the compound was added to gasoline in 1923, the General Motors Chemical Company (later renamed the Ethyl Corporation) reached out to fund academics at Harvard and Columbia.⁷

In 1924, as newspapers reported deaths and severe poisoning among production workers in New Jersey, the company formed a partnership with Robert Kehoe, a professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine. Kehoe then was appointed chief medical consultant for the Ethyl Corporation and director of the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, which was industry funded.⁸ Thus began a close relationship between Kehoe and the industry that lasted for 50 years and helped them respond to critics, Congress, and regulators about the inherent hazards from lead exposure.

Yandell Henderson, a professor at Yale University, publicly warned about use of tetraethyl lead and noted the influence of the lead industry on government oversight and research. Henderson recognized the importance of independent scientific input on the safety of this new product, and he was quoted in the New York Times in 1925 as questioning the use of lead for this purpose and whether “commercial interests are to be allowed to subordinate every other consideration to that of profit.”⁹ In response to the negative publicity, the Ethyl Corporation launched a public relations effort and hired James Grady, a Columbia University journalist, to prepare favorable articles for newspapers.¹⁰

The companies involved argued that the use of tetraethyl lead furthered the progress of US industry. They also promoted the claim that use of this product was beneficial to the environment because it helped conserve gasoline.¹¹

Lead Pipes

The use of lead in water pipes dates back thousands of years, and the first reports of lead poisoning from this source in the medical literature date back to at least 1885 in the United Kingdom. That year the British Medical Journal published a lecture by Thomas Oliver citing cases of lead poisoning from this source. In 1890, the same journal reported in a 4-part series on more than 1000 cases of lead poisoning in Sheffield resulting in illnesses and deaths from the use of lead pipes.¹² Similar reports were published in the United States during this same period.¹³ As the number of reported poisoning cases grew, the industry continued to expand in the United States.

From its start in 1928 to the 1970s, the Lead Industries Association took an active role in promoting the use of lead for this purpose. In its publications, the organization advised governments and other bulk purchasers to use lead pipes, and it worked with plumbing associations and local boards to influence building codes. Later it was successful in bringing requirements for lead pipes into federal building specifications. The use of lead pipe was promoted as “sanitary” and “modern” and as favorable over iron for its durability.¹⁴

PROMOTING THE FUTURE OF LEAD

Even now, the industry employs similar arguments and claims while noting the use of lead in photovoltaic solar panels, space applications, and energy storage batteries. These uses have been promoted by the ILA as “critical to achieving a sustainable and low carbon future” and “integral to our modern lifestyle.” The association claims that, because of its many applications in batteries, chemicals, radiation shielding, and energy storage, “lead is a modern metal, supporting a modern world.”¹⁵

More than 90% of all lead production goes into making lead batteries, and a portion of the market is devoted to energy storage for solar and wind power.¹⁶ Solar panels often contain small quantities of lead in their silicon wafers and in solder, totaling about 12 grams of lead per typical panel.¹⁷ Even next-generation perovskite solar cells contain lead at approximately 1 gram per equivalent solar panel area.¹⁸ Lead is used in solder and other applications by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and European space agencies.¹⁹ However, these uses represent only a small portion of global lead consumption.

QUESTIONING SCIENCE

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been involved in setting guidelines for childhood lead poisoning prevention since the 1970s. Periodically the agency, with the support of an advisory committee made up of experts and other stakeholders, revises these guidelines and defines blood lead levels for children that would trigger a public health response. During this process in 2010–2011, the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention reviewed evidence from dozens of studies on the neurodevelopmental and behavioral effects of lead that had been published since the previous review in 2004. In addition, members of the committee conducted an extensive review of the literature on environmental aspects and exposure sources and held consultations with experts during multiple meetings where there were opportunities for public comment.

However, just weeks before a final meeting was to be held to vote on the committee’s recommendations and report, the CDC received a letter from the Jones Day law firm questioning one of the cited published studies and requesting that the agency delay taking any action.²⁰ The letter indicated that the pooled analysis published by Lanphear et al.²¹ “may not be a reliable basis for addressing the question of effects on children’s IQ below lead levels of 10 µg/dl” and listed 6 issues that were of “concern” in that study. The letter also indicated that the Lanphear et al. analysis was not a “sound basis for public policy or significant changes in lead guidance.” In addition, the letter stated that Helena Kraemer from Stanford University had conducted a preliminary analysis of Lanphear et al.’s data and determined that “conclusions in the Pooled Analysis regarding low level lead effects on IQ as analyzed are unfounded.”

Subsequently, a lawyer with Jones Day attended the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention meeting in January 2012, at which the committee voted to forward its report and recommendations to the CDC for adoption. During the public comments session, the lawyer pointed to the work performed by Kraemer for the law firm, called on the committee to postpone the vote, and suggested that the committee’s findings “could impact CDC’s decisions to concur or deny recommendations.”²²

Neither the letter nor the attorney from Jones Day disclosed the name of the client that was paying the law firm to review the data from the Lanphear et al. study and to raise these concerns with the CDC committee. However, Kraemer later indicated that Jones Day’s client was the Sherwin-Williams paint company, and at that time the law firm was defending the company in ongoing litigation in California to recover abatement costs from past uses of lead paint.²³ Kraemer did not analyze the data in the Lanphear et al. publication and never published any related study.

Despite attempts at disrupting the advisory committee’s work, a report with recommendations to adopt a blood lead reference value for children of 5 micrograms per deciliter was issued to the CDC. In 2012, in response, the CDC adopted this strategy to prioritize the top 2.5% of children in the United States in terms of highest blood lead levels. In October 2021, the CDC further lowered the blood lead reference value to 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, reflecting the lowering of blood lead levels and enabling a response to further reduce lead exposures.²⁴

In 2013, a study reanalyzing Lanphear et al.’s data funded by the International Lead Zinc Research Organization was published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology.²⁵ That study, conducted by Crump et al., confirmed the main conclusions and indicated that the Lanphear et al. findings were consistent with at least 6 other studies reported after the Lanphear et al. article was published in 2005.

However, attempts at raising doubts regarding Lanphear et al.’s findings did not end there. The ILA later funded Ramboll US Consulting, the successor to Environ, to again reanalyze the Lanphear et al. data set.²⁶ The lead author in that effort was one of the same authors from the Crump et al. study. Although the study again confirmed the estimates of childhood IQ deficits, it also raised the prospect of additional confounding that may have influenced these estimates.

These industry-funded exercises had little impact as additional research on low-level exposures continued to build. Their purpose was not to generate new data or gain a better understanding of the effects of lead but to raise doubts about the significance of low-level lead exposures.

FORESTALLING REGULATION

Because many countries have no specific regulations for lead battery manufacturing or recycling and no provisions for lead emissions in air or water, there is a need to impose new restrictions and enhance enforcement capacity to reduce exposures and environmental contamination. In the case of occupational exposure standards, regulations (where they exist) are almost all based on the 1970s-era understanding of the effects of lead exposures. In the United States and most European Union countries, regulations for airborne exposure levels and biological monitoring levels in blood are not health protective.²⁷ In fact, the lead industry associations in the European Union and the United States have endorsed on a voluntary basis significantly lower blood lead level limits than these national standards.²⁸

The industry has taken a vocal stand against efforts to restrict lead uses under the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. The largest manufacturer of lead pigments spent more than 1 million euros to reverse the listing of lead chromate under the EU regulation and was successful in 2016 in gaining substantial exemptions through this process.²⁹ However, the European Court of Justice later ruled that allowing the ongoing use of lead chromate compounds in paints and plastics was unjustified because safer alternatives are available.³⁰ The industry also opposed efforts by Sweden to list lead as a substance of very high concern under the REACH and to place restrictions on the use of lead and lead compounds in consumer products, arguing that lead is vital to economic and social well-being.³¹

An often-employed strategy to deflect proposed regulation is to argue that additional measures are unnecessary. In response to an EU proposal to regulate lead battery manufacturing and recycling plant emissions, the European association Eurobat argued in 2022 that batteries are “critical to the fight to decarbonize our economy” and claimed that the proposal is not needed because “industrial processes commonly used in the production and recycling of batteries are already included” under other EU regulations.³² In fact, the ambient air standard for lead in the European Union is more than 3 times the regulatory level in the United States.³³

Perhaps the most brazen attempt to fight regulation affecting lead battery manufacturing and recycling came in 2006, after the US District Court ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review and update the ambient air standard for lead under the Clean Air Act. At the time, the EPA was developing the first revision of this standard since its origins in the 1970s. Even before the revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard regulation was completed, Battery Council International petitioned the agency to delete lead from the list of 6 criteria pollutants covered under the act.³⁴ The request was rejected by the EPA, and the revision in the standard resulted in a 90% reduction in the ambient air standard for lead.

PROMOTING INDUSTRY BENCHMARKING

In 2002 BHP Billiton, the world’s largest lead mining company, in cooperation with the Lead Development Association, the International Lead Zinc Study Group, the United Nations Environment Program, and the World Wildlife Fund, launched the “Green Lead” initiative in response to looming “significant constriction of its future markets” and “legislation banning various lead products in different countries.”³⁵ The companies and industry association partners set out to develop their own voluntary certification scheme for lead mines, smelters, manufacturers, and recyclers. The industry promoted this effort as follows: “The benefits of Green Lead certification are: a high likelihood that regulators will accept a credible standard at best practice, as an alternative to ‘command and control’ regulation.”³⁶

Although Green Lead did publish guidance documents and conducted several site audits, the effort eventually was shut down within a few years. However, the ILA as the successor and close affiliate of the International Lead Management Center continues to promote a “benchmark assessment tool” in the form of a questionnaire that originated under the Green Lead banner. In recent years, this concept has been promoted by Swedfund (Sweden’s Development Finance Institution) and UNEP.³⁷ UNEP and the ILA jointly published a manual on this tool and offered workshops to promote the concept to governments.³⁸ These benchmark assessments of lead battery recycling plants are intended to be qualitative and not quantitative as regulatory limits often are.

The ILA–UNEP benchmarking assessment tool had many shortcomings, including the following:

• • describing emissions from lead battery recycling as “nonpolluting or toxic,”

• • promoting the use of N95 dust masks for workers in the industry even though they provide significantly less protection than the respirators required in similar facilities in the United States and other jurisdictions,

• • characterizing regulatory inspections as “reactive” instead of recognizing the positive aspects of regulatory enforcement, and

• • describing hazardous waste slag from recycling as being “rendered inert” and promoting the use of such material in construction, where it can cause exposures to workers and contaminate the environment.

After a group of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) pointed out these and other concerns to UNEP, the document was removed from the UNEP Web site.

Ironically, in 2012 when the US Government Services Administration set out to develop consensus certification standards for lead battery recycling through the American Society for Testing and Materials (now ASTM International), the industry opposed this effort.³⁹ The Government Services Administration was interested in ensuring that lead batteries from the government’s 633 000 motor vehicles would be recycled at plants meeting minimum health and environmental standards even if they were located outside the United States. At the initial meeting in Washington, DC, convened to launch the process, Johnson Controls (now Clarios) flew in 49 employees from its offices in Wisconsin to join with the company’s industry association representatives in voting to shut down the standard development process.⁴⁰

It appears that the intent of promoting industry benchmarking is a strategy to stave off regulation. Unlike environmental auditing that is routinely conducted to measure a facility’s compliance with regulatory standards, this approach is an attempt to avoid government oversight.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Since the introduction of lead in gasoline, the lead industry has funded research and other efforts that align with its goals. As the industry has closed facilities in the United States and shifted production to low- and middle-income countries, it has continued to influence the research and policy agenda to deflect attention away from its operations and toward the informal sector. In 2020, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the NGO Pure Earth (also known as the Blacksmith Institute) published a report (The Toxic Truth) on health effects and sources of lead exposure. Immediately after the publication of the report, a press release announced a new partnership with funding from Clarios, the world’s largest lead battery manufacturing and recycling company.⁴¹ The company’s foundation provided a grant of approximately $8 million to UNICEF and Pure Earth with the goal of protecting children from lead exposure.⁴²

The potential conflicts of interest in accepting this funding were not disclosed in The Toxic Truth or in a closely related publication in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.⁴³ UNICEF had indicated that it did not have a policy for disclosing potential conflicts of interest or institutional funding sources in its publications.⁴⁴

In the case of the Lancet Planetary Health publication, the lead author (who was formerly employed by Pure Earth) and the other authors (who were current staff members) failed to disclose the organization’s funding from the Clarios Foundation. On the same day that the Clarios funding was announced, Pure Earth awarded Ana Margarita Garza, Clarios’s director of legal, environmental, and corporate affairs in Mexico, its 2020 “Impact Award.”⁴⁵

Pure Earth also has a close working relationship with the ILA (and the former International Lead Management Center) that dates back many years. Brian Wilson of the ILA, a member of Pure Earth’s advisory board, authored a report on the Doe Run smelter in La Oroya, Peru, that was published by Blacksmith in May 2008.⁴⁶ Wilson has also served as a “Blacksmith expert” according to information on the Pure Earth Web site. After the author informed the editor of Lancet Planetary Health of this omission, a revised conflict of interest disclosure statement was published listing this funding source and other support from the ILA.

CONCLUSION

Industry influence has slowed regulation, fought off third-party consensus standards, and defended against lead product bans. The industry has consistently argued that lead usage is essential, modern, and even environmentally preferable.

Our first response should be to recognize the continuing influence of the lead industry and call for greater transparency. We may not be able to stop industry manipulation, but we should insist that it is fully disclosed. NGOs, UN agencies, and governments must adopt comprehensive disclosure requirements and ensure that public health recommendations and policies are based on independent evidence free from industry financial or other influence. Academic journals must adopt stronger penalties for noncompliance with conflict-of-interest disclosures.

The lead industry has long maintained that the largest sources of lead emissions are the many informal-sector lead battery recycling operators. Although it is true that collecting used batteries and melting them down to sell for scrap is an extremely hazardous and polluting enterprise, the relative scale of emissions from these operations compared against the larger volume going into formal-sector recycling plants with inadequate pollution controls is impossible to quantify. Although some small operators melt down lead batteries, many more informal-sector actors are primarily involved in collecting and repairing lead batteries that are later purchased by formal-sector recyclers. Because the informal sector has no voice, it becomes a convenient scapegoat for industrial companies and their associations.

The lead battery industry has significant control over the diversion of used batteries to the informal sector. Given the value of lead in a vehicle battery, manufacturers can put in place purchase discount programs (as required by law in many countries) to recover a much greater share of the used batteries that go to the informal operators. If the established price for taking back a used battery at the retail level is sufficient, informal operators will cease to melt used batteries and instead operate only as collectors of the diminishing numbers that are discarded.

In recent years, the industry has been successful at partnering with NGOs, UN agencies, and industrial partners to issue reports focusing on emissions from informal sector recycling. These efforts downplay the need to regulate or upgrade pollution controls at existing smelters or lead battery manufacturing and recycling plants and rarely mention the need for mandatory take back schemes to collect used batteries.

However, we know from the US experience that battery take back laws; restrictions on lead in gasoline, paint, and other products; and emission controls can significantly reduce lead exposures. Efforts to extend these efforts to adopt comprehensive regulations restricting lead emissions and purchase discount schemes for used batteries in low- and middle-income countries are crucial to protect public health as the industry continues to expand in areas with the weakest standards.

The harms from lead exposures have been well documented for hundreds of years, and over time our understanding of the mechanisms and health effects has increased. However, despite the overwhelming evidence of the effects of low-level lead exposures, global production continues to expand to meet the growing demand for lead batteries, pigments, ammunition, and other applications. For more than 100 years, lead-using companies and their industry associations have promoted lead’s ongoing use with consumer-oriented messages aimed at maintaining market share. In addition, they have invested in efforts to question scientific consensus around the harms of low-level exposures and to influence NGOs and UN organizations.

The techniques employed to promote the industry have been effective in defending and growing key applications. Billions of dollars are being spent to replace lead pipes and abate soil contamination and lead paint to protect health and the environment. At the same time, the lead industry is continuing to operate antiquated plants with weak or nonexistent environmental standards and occupational exposure regulations. While we address the legacy of lead pollution, we must recognize the ongoing role of industry influence that maintains market share and keeps regulation at bay.