The deadly threat affecting millions — and how to prevent it | Drew McCartor

0:03TED: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Sometimes a major problem comes along that we actually have the ability to solve because we've done it before, just not everywhere. Lead poisoning is one of those problems. In 2023, the last year that we have estimates, lead took more lives than all active wars, all natural disasters, all road accidents, and HIV, and malaria combined. That's Drew McCarter, the head of Pure Earth, a 2025 TED Audacious Project grantee and nonprofit, working to prevent exposure to toxic pollutants like lead globally.

0:50TED: As he shares in his talk, barely anyone in the U.S. talks about lead as a problem. And that, it turns out, is part of the problem. He reminds us that every day, lead poisoning accounts for an estimated 2 million IQ points permanently lost in children. One of the most overlooked catastrophes of our time. Now I suspect that we agree if you rob one child of their potential, that's a tragedy. But to do it to a billion kids, that changes the trajectory of humanity. Okay, that's all the bad news. Now the good news, this thing is solvable. Drew breaks down Pure Earth's proven three-step model to measure, identify, and remove lead, and how because of this, they're scaling across more than 20 countries to protect half a billion children.

1:45TED: And stick around after the talk, we caught up with Hasiba Huck of Ted's Audacious Project, who shares why this hit closer to home than she expected and why Drew's work gives her hope at a moment when so many other problems feel impossible to solve. That's all coming up right after a short break.

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4:33TED: And now, our TED Talk of the day. All right, I'm here to deliver good news about lead poisoning. But first, a little bit of bad news. And that is that this issue that we treat as a problem of the past is just taking an almost unimaginable toll on humanity today. In fact, what you're looking at behind me are IQ points that lead is robbing from the youngest kids on Earth permanently and in real time. Hey, y 'all. Elise here. What Drew's referring to right now is a tracker on the screen behind him. The screen is black with large white numbers starting below 100 and rapidly counting up. Underneath, it says real-time IQ loss.

5:20And by the end of the day today, that number is estimated to exceed 2 million IQ points lost on the day. And then tomorrow, it'll be another two million. And then again and again every day until we solve it. And lead isn't just causing brain damage. It kills a shocking number of people through cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and stroke. In fact, in 2023, the last year that we have estimates, lead took more lives than all active wars, all natural disasters, all road accidents, and HIV, and malaria, combined. Just from lead. I run a non-profit called Pure Earth, and we prevent lead poisoning.

6:15And a couple years ago, we were cleaning up lead pollution in a village in Bangladesh that resulted when some men leased a plot of land to recycle the lead out of old car batteries. And they would take these lead plates out of the battery and melt them down in an open fire, spreading toxic dust across the community. And that is where we met Saim. Now, you cannot spot a lead-poisoned child. But Saim's mom knew. And she told us that before the men arrived, Saim was doing well in school and he could remember things. And then gradually, he began forgetting everything. I want to show you what Saim told us.

7:01TED: Drew is about to play a video of a young boy named Saim sitting outside by a tree speaking with his teacher who is behind the camera. They are speaking in Bengali and I will translate for you here. The teacher asks, what grade are you in? Saim responds, grade two. Grade two? Which school? Rajabari. Who are your friends at school? Mim. There are many others. Is Mim your classmate? Yes, she is in my grade. Which grade? Grade three. Mim is in grade three? Yes, we are both in grade three. You are also in grade three? Yes. Didn't you just say that you were in grade two? I can't remember. You can't remember?

7:46TED: The video ends with Saim shaking his head, no. Saim doesn't know what grade he's in. I have a daughter Saim's age, and if you have kids, you know how important their grade level is to their identity. You don't get to call your third grader a second grader without catching a little feedback about that. So what can lead be doing in the brains of kids to allow a child to forget what grade they're in? Well, Saim's brain, like all kids' brains, is like a new city under construction. And calcium actually plays a role like a city planner, directing crews to build synaptic roads and bridges that allow for things like learning and memory and impulse control, all these tools we need.

8:36But when lead is in the body, it masquerades as calcium, and the brain will use the lead instead. But lead is a terrible city planner, and it directs those crews to build dead-end streets and bridges to nowhere. And once lead's chaotic network is built, the damage is permanent. And Saim isn't alone. Around the world, more than one billion kids and teenagers have a concentration of lead in their blood that exceeds the World Health Organization's threshold for intervening in a child's life. A billion. That's one in three. Now imagine you're looking at your kids, and you have to choose which one.

9:29Almost all of these kids live in low-income and middle-income countries where the average child has an exposure level high enough that they will lose an estimated four to five IQ points due to lead. And that is enough to shift the entire intelligence curve downward such that we cut in half the number of kids who have an IQ above 130. These are gifted kids. And we increase by half the number of kids who have an IQ below 70 who face intellectual disability. Now, I suspect that we agree, if you rob one child of their potential, that's a tragedy. But to do it to a billion kids, that changes the trajectory of humanity.

10:26Okay, that's all the bad news. Now, the good news, this thing is solvable. This is, yeah.

10:39This is not one of those global problems that we're going to struggle to make progress on because the politics aren't aligned, or it's too expensive, or we need some magical new technology. This one is solvable today with the tools that we already have. And I know that because for 25 years, Pure Earth has been testing prevention strategies, and we've learned that when governments take three core steps, lead levels can drop dramatically. So here's the model. First, run a nationally representative survey of kids' exposure levels. That usually means testing the blood of a couple thousand kids to establish a baseline to understand how many kids and where they are.

11:23but mostly this motivates governments with their own data, because the news is usually bad. Second, we've got to find out where the lead's coming from. In the West, we talk a lot about old paint and pipes, and those are issues in other countries, but the exposure sources vary wildly from place to place and can include things like food and spices, traditional cosmetics and medicines, things like ceramic glazes, cheap aluminum cookware, and industrial pollution like Saim faced. But the point is, we need to identify the priority ones. And then thirdly, and most importantly, we have to regulate and remove lead from our economy and our environment.

12:05And this looks like tightening standards, improving enforcement capacities and cleaning up old contaminated sites. So that's the model. I don't want to pretend like it's easy. It's not easy, but it's also not rocket science. and it works. In 2018, the country of Georgia conducted a national survey with UNICEF and found that 41 % of Georgian kids exceeded that WHO threshold. The government brought Pure Earth over and together we identified contaminated spices as the major driver. People were putting lead-based pigments in the spices to make them those bright oranges and reds. The government tightened their regulations, improved their enforcement capacity, and today, lead levels in the hardest-hit regions of Georgia are down by 75 percent.

12:59The government owns the agenda, and the next generation is well-protected.

13:09But Georgia isn't alone. We've helped the Philippines conduct their first large survey. We've helped Ghana identify their exposure sources. We've helped Mexico reduce the use of lead-based glazes, and there are dozens of other examples of countries and organizations making progress. Now, we cannot give back to Saim what lead stole from him. But there are millions of young brains under construction right now. and we have to get to them before lead does. And that's the plan. With support from the Audacious Project donor community, we are rolling out the model that I just described in over 20 countries that are home to 500 million lead-poisoned kids.

14:03And I'm confident that over the next eight years, this program will improve the intellectual capacity, health and longevity of not just that half a billion kids, but every generation coming up behind them.

14:25So, you now know more about lead poisoning than almost anyone on Earth. And that fact remains our central challenge. So tell people. Tell them how big it is. and tell them that we can solve it. Thank you.

14:53TED: That was Drew McCarter at TED 2026. This ambitious idea is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change. Learn more at audaciousproject.org. And now, here's Audacious Project's Hasiba Huck, who shares the question she can't stop thinking about after working with Drew. What else in the world could we be solving if we just took the same approach? Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to Drew's talk. I'm Hasiba, and I work at the Audacious Project at TED, and Drew is one of our Audacious grantees. I feel really lucky that I got to work with Drew on his talk that you just heard.

15:31TED: And before you go, I want to jump in and share a bit more about Drew, his work and talk, and why we're so excited to have Fit shared with you today. The Drew's talk is really interesting right now because he's talking about a problem that feels really dated in the U.S. and North America, but is actually huge in other parts of the world. I honestly, like most people, thought lead was an old problem. And living in a New York City apartment, you're kind of used to the idea of old lead paint. What I didn't realize was that so much of the lead in other parts of the world is in cosmetics and spices and daily things that people use.

16:10TED: Drew tells a story of a boy from Bangladesh, and that's where my family is from. And I've heard murmurs and whisperings of this from family members about spices and things being contaminated and them being worried about buying certain things. So being able to see the other side and know that there's somebody who's doing work in this space and reminding us that other people's experiences are different just meant a lot to me. And I think why it's so critical for right now is that we're in a moment where relying on economies and countries in the global south will become more and more important. And so I think just thinking about a future where we're not so concentrated in the U.S.

16:53TED: or in the global north, but really thinking about who our future leaders are from the global south and from other countries, I think is really crucial. And Drew's kind of the perfect person for this. He's worked at Pure Earth for the last 20 years. And if I'm remembering correctly, he started as an intern and has moved his way up to become the leader of the organization. And I think it speaks a lot to his ability in understanding the issue and also his ability to be a leader and to really move through this space. I think every time I've worked with Drew, he's been really cognizant about reminding us and reminding me that Pure Earth and he are not the only people working in the lead space.

17:35TED: It's a collective effort across so many organizations. And I think it just speaks to the fact that he really believes this idea is important and also can't be done alone. Now that Drew's talk is out in the world and people know that lead is a big problem, I think what's cool is that he's got funding and energy behind him to be able to fix this problem. It's inspiring to know that you can get governments on board for a collective issue and a values-based issue. And Drew and his team are proving that there is possibility in fixing things, especially at a time when it feels like every problem is insurmountable.

18:15TED: He really helps us try to remember that so many of the things that we deal with today get caught in the red tape of bureaucracy and politics and personal interests, etc. And this is one of those issues that actually isn't plagued by that because people see the value in preserving a child's health. So it just makes me wonder what else in the world we could be solving if we took that lens.

18:45TED: If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

19:30TED: This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Every day, millions of people read the news, but are they reading the same story? Take a recent headline making waves across the media. Depending on where you got your information, you may have seen wildly different takes on the same event. That's where Ground News comes in. It's an app and website that pulls together coverage from hundreds of outlets across the political spectrum, all in one place. On any given story, you can compare how different sources frame it, check each outlet's political bias and factuality rating, and even see who owns them.

20:03TED: That kind of transparency is exactly what critical thinking demands. The Nobel Peace Center called it an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview. Right now, TED listeners get 40 % off the Vantage subscription. Unlimited access, no limits. Go to groundnews.com slash talks. That's groundnews.com slash talks. Use our link so they know we sent you. groundnews.com slash talks.

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