Lead shows up in more places than most people realize, from the paint on older walls to the water flowing through kitchen taps, the soil in urban gardens, and even certain spices in your pantry. Unlike many environmental hazards, lead doesn’t break down over time. It persists in homes, products, and landscapes for decades, which is why exposures today often trace back to industrial choices made generations ago.
Paint in Older Homes
Lead-based paint is the single largest source of lead exposure in the United States. About 34.6 million homes, nearly 30% of all housing units, still contain it. More than 93% of those homes were built before 1978, the year the federal government banned lead paint for residential use, and the highest concentrations appear in homes built before 1940.
Intact lead paint on a wall isn’t necessarily dangerous. The risk rises when it deteriorates: chalking, peeling, flaking, or getting scraped during renovations. Those processes create fine dust and tiny chips that settle on floors, windowsills, and toys. Young children are especially vulnerable because they put their hands and objects in their mouths constantly. CDC data shows that living in older housing, having a household income at or below the poverty level, and being non-Hispanic Black are all independent risk factors for elevated blood lead levels in children.
Drinking Water and Plumbing
An estimated 4 million lead service lines still connect homes to water mains across the country. These are the pipes running underground between the municipal water system and your house. Even if your service line is copper or plastic, lead can enter your water through brass or bronze faucets and fixtures, or through lead solder used to join copper pipes in homes built before 1986.
Lead doesn’t come from the water treatment plant itself. It dissolves into water as it sits in contact with these pipes and fittings, especially when the water is acidic or sits stagnant for hours. Running the tap for 30 seconds to two minutes before drinking, particularly first thing in the morning, flushes out the water that’s been sitting in contact with plumbing overnight. Using cold water for cooking and drinking also helps, since hot water dissolves more lead from pipes.
Urban Soil
Decades of leaded gasoline use, industrial emissions, and exterior lead paint have left a legacy of contaminated soil in cities. In one study of urban growing spaces in Atlanta, 75% of all soil samples exceeded a conservative low-risk threshold for lead, and 19% exceeded the EPA’s residential screening level. By contrast, rural background sites consistently fell below even the stricter threshold.
Near former industrial sites, the numbers get much worse. Soil near metal refining slag deposits in that same study measured an average of 1,383 parts per million, roughly nine times higher than other urban samples. This matters for anyone gardening in city soil. Lead doesn’t wash away or decompose. It stays in the top layer of earth where children play and where root vegetables grow. If you’re gardening in an urban area, especially near older buildings or former industrial zones, testing your soil before growing food is a practical first step. Raised beds filled with clean soil are a common workaround.
Food, Spices, and Candy
Certain imported spices are a well-documented but underrecognized source of lead. Turmeric is a particular concern. In parts of India and Bangladesh, traders add lead chromate, a vibrant yellow pigment, to raw turmeric to make it look brighter and hide signs of pest damage. Because turmeric is a key ingredient in curry powder, contamination can spread to blended spice products too. In one case, a Florida-based company recalled five brands of curry powder totaling 337,000 pounds because of lead contamination.
Imported candies, particularly those from Mexico that contain chili or tamarind, have also been flagged by the FDA. The lead can come from the ingredients themselves, from the manufacturing process, or even from the wrappers. The FDA sets a maximum allowable lead level of 0.1 parts per million in candy. Other recalled food products have included dried blueberries and dried plums.
Ceramics and Dishware
Lead-glazed pottery can leach lead directly into food and drinks, especially acidic ones like tomato sauce, coffee, citrus juice, or vinegar. When ceramic pieces are fired at the correct temperature for the correct duration, lead fuses into the glaze and stays put. But improperly fired pottery lets lead migrate into whatever the dish holds.
Even potters who have switched to lead-free glazes sometimes use old kilns that retain lead residue from previous firings, unintentionally contaminating new pieces. The FDA advises extra caution with ceramics that are handmade with a crude or irregular appearance, antique, damaged or excessively worn, purchased from flea markets or street vendors, or decorated in bright orange, red, or yellow (lead is often used with these pigments to boost their intensity). Using these items for decoration rather than food service eliminates the risk.
Traditional Cosmetics and Remedies
Traditional eye cosmetics known by various names, including kohl, kajal, surma, tiro, tozali, and kwalli, frequently contain extremely high levels of lead. In some kohl products, lead (usually as lead sulfide) accounts for more than half the total weight. One tiro product linked to lead poisoning in an infant was found to be 82.6% lead. These cosmetics are applied around the eyes, and in some traditions, kohl powder is also painted onto a newborn’s umbilical stump. The FDA warns against using any of these products on children or adults.
Certain traditional herbal medicines and supplements, particularly some Ayurvedic preparations imported from South Asia, have also been found to contain significant amounts of lead. Because these products are not always subject to the same testing as conventional medicines, contamination can go undetected until someone develops symptoms.
Consumer Products and Toys
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 sharply lowered the allowable lead content in children’s products, but items manufactured before that law may contain more. Recent recalls have covered a wide range of products: children’s clothing, stainless steel bottles and sippy cups, desks, toys, and jewelry. Skin creams have also been recalled for lead contamination.
Vintage or secondhand items deserve extra scrutiny. Older painted toys, costume jewelry, and imported goods are more likely to contain lead than products manufactured under current U.S. standards. If you’re buying used items for children, particularly anything painted or metallic that a child might mouth, checking recall databases is worth the effort.
Aviation Fuel
Small piston-engine aircraft, the kind that carry 2 to 10 passengers, still burn leaded aviation gasoline (avgas). In 2023, the EPA formally determined that lead emissions from these aircraft cause or contribute to air pollution that endangers public health. Aircraft running on leaded fuel are now the dominant source of lead emissions into U.S. air.
Communities near general aviation airports bear the brunt. Children living near Reid-Hillview Airport in California, for example, were found to have measurable lead in their blood linked to flight path emissions. The FAA has approved an unleaded alternative fuel (G100UL) and aims to achieve a lead-free aviation system by 2030, but the unleaded option is not yet commercially available at most airports.
Hobbies and Recreation
Several common recreational activities involve direct contact with lead. Indoor shooting ranges generate airborne lead particles every time a bullet fires, and shooters can inhale lead dust or carry it home on their hands and clothing. Fishing tackle, including sinkers and jigs, is traditionally made from lead. Hunters using lead ammunition leave fragments in game meat and spent shot in the environment. Stained glass work, soldering, and some automotive hobbies also involve handling lead-containing materials.
The environmental toll is significant as well. Lead sinker ingestion accounts for 10 to 50% of recorded adult loon deaths in areas where fishing and loon populations overlap. Lead shot ingestion poisons waterfowl, raptors, shorebirds, and scavengers that feed in areas where hunting or clay target shooting occurs.
How Lead Exposure Is Measured
The CDC uses a blood lead reference value of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter to identify children with higher-than-typical exposure. This threshold, updated in 2021, represents the level that only 2.5% of U.S. children aged 1 to 5 exceed. It’s not a safety cutoff. No level of lead in the blood has been identified as safe for children. The reference value simply flags kids who are more exposed than the vast majority of their peers and who would benefit from intervention to find and remove the source.
Because lead accumulates in the body over time and even low levels can affect brain development, learning, and behavior in children, reducing exposure from all of these everyday sources matters more than eliminating any single one.