TED Talks Daily - The deadly threat affecting millions — and how to prevent it | Drew McCartor

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Lead poisoning robs the world's kids of millions of IQ points a day and kills more people than wars, natural disasters and road accidents combined — yet we treat it as a problem we've already solved. Drew McCartor, who runs the nonprofit Pure Earth, has spent nearly two decades proving it doesn't have to be this way. He presents their three-step fix that's already working in places from Georgia to Ghana, and makes the case that we can finally beat a crisis hiding in plain sight. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. 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 McArthur, the head of Pure Earth, a 2025 TED Audacious Project grantee and nonprofit, working to prevent exposure to toxic pollutants like lead globally. 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 estrogen, 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. And stick around after the talk. We caught up with Haseba 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. 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, 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. And 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 2 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 nonprofit called Pure Earth, and we prevent lead poisoning. And 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 Saeim'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. 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? Meem. There are many others. Is Meem 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? The video ends with Saim, shaking his head. No. Syme doesn't know what grade he's in. I have a daughter, Syme'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, Syme'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. But 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? Almost all of these kids live in low-income and middle-income countries where the average child

has an exposure-level high-term. 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. Okay, that's all the bad news. Now, the good news, this thing is solvable. This is, yeah, this 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, but 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 source is very 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 same-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. And 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.

The government owns the agenda, and the next generation is well protected. But Georgia isn't alone. We've helped the Philippines conduct their first large survey. We've helped Ghana identify their exposure, 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. And 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. So, 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.

That was Drew McArthur 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 Haseba 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, you just heard. And before you go, I want to jump in share a bit more about Drew, his work and talk, and why we're so excited to have Fitt shared with you today. 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. Drew tells a story of a boy from Bangladesh, and that's where my family is from. And I've heard murmurs and whispers 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. 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 and 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. 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 truth'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. 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. personal interests, et cetera, 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. 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 Tobner, and Tonzica, Sungmar Nivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Bang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott.

Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.