A Toxic Threat to Indonesia's Human Capital : Prevalence and Impact of Lead Paint in Indonesian Homes (English)

About 27,000 Indonesians died of lead poisoning in 2019. Where mandatory lead-free standards are absent, as is the case in Indonesia, lead paint is among the most common sources of poisoning. Tests for lead in interior paint conducted in a nationally representative sample of households in December 2023 found that at least 44.8 percent of Indonesians live in homes with lead paint, rising to at least 57.9 percent among those living in homes with any visible interior paint. Indonesian children are more often at risk than adults, with about 46 percent aged five or younger-about 10.2 million children-living in homes with lead paint. Deteriorating lead paint puts 14.1 percent of children aged five or younger at risk of more severe exposure, with the poorest 40 percent of Indonesians more than twice as likely to report deteriorating lead paint. Calibrating the Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic Model for Lead in Children model to these estimates suggests that lead paint exposure alone may push 21 percent of children aged five or younger over the 5 micrograms per deciliter blood lead threshold, equivalent to 55 percent of Indonesia's total estimated cases among children in the Global Burden of Disease database. New lead paint continues to accumulate in the environment: tests conducted on the most popular paint varieties on the market found that 77 percent contained unsafe levels of lead. The results show that poisoning risks from lead paint are high and widespread in Indonesia, and that lead contaminated paint supply chains remain dominant.