Lead Children: new Netflix series reminds us that lead poisoning is still a global health problem

The new Netflix series Lead Children has put a spotlight on the issue of lead poisoning in 1970s Poland. The series follows a young doctor who discovers that children living near a smelting plant have been poisoned with lead.

According to the latest Global Burden of Disease study, exposure to lead remains one of the leading environmental risk factors for early death and poor health globally. Unicef estimates that one in three children worldwide have an elevated blood lead level, highlighting this modern global health failure.

Historically, lead has been used in paint, gasoline, water supply pipes and industry. This has contaminated air, water, soil, dust and foods, which is why lead is a persistent and toxic environmental problem.

While the global elimination of lead from gasoline has been hugely successful in reducing lead in air, leading to a fall in population-wide blood lead concentrations in many countries, decline is not eradication.

We still live with the consequences from leaded paint being widely used until the 1960s on domestic and workplace skirting boards, bannisters, windowsills, doorframes and radiators. Lead is also still found in uPVC and leaded windows, roof flashings, glazed kitchenware, as well as some traditional medicines and cosmetics.

This may explain why ingestion, rather than inhalation from leaded gasoline, is now the dominant source of lead exposure in high-income countries.

Health effects of lead

Lead is a cumulative toxin so there is no safe blood lead concentration. Children under the age of six are particularly vulnerable to its effects. Even low-level exposure impacts neurodevelopment – resulting in lower IQ, reduced attention span, antisocial behaviour, ADHD and hearing loss.

Lead exposure at all ages can cause cardiovascular disease, kidney impairment, infertility, increased risk of spontaneous abortion, preterm birth, depression and panic disorder. It causes permanent structural brain changes in adults (particularly males) who were exposed to lead during childhood. These include a loss of brain volume in areas responsible for executive function, behavioural regulation and fine motor control.

It’s estimated that the global cost of childhood lead exposure may be around US$3.4 trillion (£2.5 trillion) per year. These losses are estimated by accounting for the lower lifetime earnings and lower economic productivity that children exposed to lead experience due to reduced intelligence and lower educational attainment. Since it doesn’t include healthcare costs, it may even be an underestimate.

Preventing harm

Unlike several other counties (such as France, Germany and the USA) there is currently no large-scale childhood blood lead monitoring programme in the UK. This is significant, as estimates from 2020 suggest that 180,000 to 280,000 children in the UK have elevated blood lead concentrations.

In 2014 the UK established the Lead Exposure in Children Surveillance System (LEICSS) so that NHS laboratories could notify the UK Health Security Agency of children with raised blood lead concentrations, but testing is only initiated if there’s a high clinical suspicion of lead poisoning. Since low and moderate blood concentrations tend not to produce symptoms, many UK children with elevated blood lead levels are likely to go undetected. Indeed in 2024, only 247 cases were reported to LEICSS.

There are also shortcomings with current techniques used to detect lead exposure in the UK. At the moment, blood taken directly from a vein (a venous sample) remains the gold standard for determining exposure to lead.

This technique requires a nurse or other healthcare professional to collect the sample, which makes it hard to test lots of people. It also means that families must take time out of their day and travel to a clinic to be tested.
Alternative testing methods using urine, hair and saliva have been used, but are typically subject to large biological variations and less accurate than venous blood samples.

This is why my colleagues and I launched the ECLIPS study in November 2025. This is the UK’s first citizen-led childhood lead exposure study, which is being conducted in Leeds, northern England.

We chose Leeds because not only is it a typical post-industrial city, it has had the highest reporting rates of lead poisoning to LEICSS for the past ten consecutive years. It’s also the only part of the country with a targeted alert system designed to support healthcare professionals in identifying lead poisoning in children: when a healthcare worker requests a test for iron deficiency, the electronic system includes a prompt suggesting the staff member also have the sample tested for lead levels.

Our study uses finger-prick blood sampling kits that are mailed to families in Leeds. Participants are asked to collect a few drops of blood from their child’s finger onto a sampling device, which is then mailed to a central laboratory for analysis. This overcomes the main limitations of current sampling techniques. Participants are also provided with advice on ways to reduce lead exposure at home.

The results of this study are currently ongoing, but we believe it could be an opportunity to develop a large-scale programme for testing childhood blood lead in the UK. It would also pave the way to wider testing nationally and internationally.

This latest Netflix series highlights the human cost of lead contamination. It also drives home the importance of taking action early to protect children from the damaging, often lifelong, health effects of lead. Early detection can change lives and save billions in lost opportunity costs.

Jane Entwistle receives funding for ECLIPS from the Medical Research Council (MR/Z505717/1).