Lead exposure carries a similar health burden as HIV/AIDS and malaria, but receives less than 0.1% as much funding. Pure Earth is active in various countries to fight exposure to this toxic metal, which has been shown to damage both mental and physical health.
We recommend Pure Earth as a Promising Charity based on our evaluation of their programme in Ghana. We have asked their team a few questions to explain how that work happens on the ground.
Their answers reflect practitioner experience rather than formal research findings. These do not necessarily represent HLI’s views.
In your own words, what does Pure Earth's programme in Ghana do?
“We’re trying to stop children from being poisoned by everyday products in their homes. A blood lead level survey we ran with UNICEF, the Ghana Health Service, and Ghana EPA, covering over 3,227 children tested across three regions, found that Northern Ghana had the highest prevalence of lead poisoning. The sources aren’t industrial. They’re a traditional eyeliner applied to infants, and cooking pots families buy from local markets.
Data from the Ghana Health Service showed that 53.5% of children tested across three ecological zones had blood lead levels exceeding safe limits. That’s not a marginal finding. More than half the children were tested. Because children’s brains and bodies develop rapidly in early childhood, younger children can absorb up to five times the amount of lead that adults do, and there is no known safe level of exposure.
So, the programme works on two tracks simultaneously: reducing the supply of contaminated products through regulation and enforcement, and reducing demand through community education. Neither one alone is sufficient.”
Chilo has been used on children for generations in Ghana. How does Pure Earth approach the work of changing behaviour around something that has been done for so long? What role do culture and tradition play?
“The tradition itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that the product has changed. Among the most contaminated cosmetics sampled in Ghana were eyeliner products imported from South Asia. What mothers are applying today is not what their grandmothers used. The ingredient composition has shifted, and with it the risk.
That distinction matters enormously for how we talk to communities. We’re not asking people to abandon a cultural practice. We’re telling them that the product they’re buying in the market is not what it used to be, and that there are safer alternatives. That’s a very different conversation.
93% of the Chilo samples that were tested exceeded the Ghana Standards Authority threshold for lead in cosmetics, and some were composed entirely of lead. When you can show a mother that figure, when you can explain that the eyeliner she’s applying to her infant’s eyes is essentially pure lead, the response is not defensiveness. It’s shocking. Parents everywhere want to protect their children. The work is giving them the information to do it.
We also don’t walk into communities as outsiders. Our Africa Regional Program Director, Esmond Quansah, and the Ghana team are embedded in these communities. That trust doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s what makes the education work.”
Your work depends heavily on getting governments to act. What does that process actually look like in Ghana? Who do you need to convince, and what arguments tend to land?
“We work in collaboration with the Ghana Standards Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drugs Authority, and the Ghana Health Service. Each agency has a different mandate and a different pressure point, so the pitch isn’t the same across all of them.
With health agencies, the argument that lands is the developmental cost to children. A study by the Center for Global Development suggests that more than 20% of the learning gap between rich and poor countries can be attributed to elevated blood lead levels. That’s not an environmental argument, it’s an education and economic argument, and it gets attention.
With standards and regulatory bodies, you lead with the data. 93% of Chilo samples exceeded the Ghana Standards Authority’s own threshold. The standard exists. Enforcement is the gap. Our role is to make that gap visible and then help close it by training officials to test products themselves.
The August 2023 National Action Against Lead Poisoning declaration was the product of years of relationship-building and evidence-gathering. The approach requires coordination across ministries, including health, environment, and education, with sector-specific responses integrated into a budgeted national action plan. Getting that signed is one thing. The current three-year research project running through 2027 is about making sure the commitments translate into enforcement that actually holds.”
Your programme targets the supply chain too. Where does the lead actually come from, and how do you go about cutting it off at the source? What pushback do you get?
“Two sources dominate. Lead-contaminated eyeliner imported from South Asia, and locally fabricated aluminium cookware, known as Dadesen. They’re different supply chain problems with different solutions.
For chilo, the contamination is at the point of manufacture, overseas. The programme assesses supply chains and safe product alternatives, supports the adoption and advancement of appropriate standards, works with industry actors by providing data and facilitating technical solutions, and trains officials to conduct lead level assessments to enable monitoring and enforcement. That means working with importers, traders, and border enforcement. It’s slow, and the margin incentives run the wrong way. Cheaper product often means higher lead content.
For cookware, 77% of cooking pots assessed were found to contain lead levels high enough to indicate the potential for dangerous leaching into food. These are locally made, affordable pots that families depend on. You can’t simply ban them without a viable alternative, and the artisans who make them need technical support to change their processes, not just a regulation telling them to stop.
The pushback we get is mostly economic. Traders don’t want products pulled from shelves. Manufacturers worry about costs. Those concerns are legitimate and dismissing them doesn’t work. What does work is demonstrating that the market exists for safer products and that the regulatory direction of travel is clear. Ghana has the standards in place. We’re building the enforcement capacity to make them real.”
Are there strategies to fight lead poisoning that are applicable anywhere in the world, or do you find it more effective to approach the problem in a contextually tailored manner?
“Both.
Pure Earth’s five-phase approach, developed from conducting over 50 projects in a range of low and middle-income countries, covers baseline blood lead level testing, source analysis, intervention design, dissemination of findings to governments and funders, and integration into Ministry operations. That sequence applies everywhere. You can’t intervene effectively before you know your sources, and you can’t sustain change without government ownership.
But the sources themselves are almost always local. In Georgia, 41% of children had elevated blood lead levels, and within two years, investigators identified lead-contaminated spices as the source and helped stop the flow of contaminated spices into Georgian markets almost completely. In Bangladesh, the same spice problem had a different mechanism and required a different solution. In Ghana, it’s cosmetics and cookware. You cannot import the Georgian playbook and expect it to work here.
Beyond well-known sources like paint, significant lead contamination exists in everyday items like cookware, spices, and cosmetics, and simple solutions such as modified glazes, adjustments to industrial processes, or targeted policy changes could prevent significant harm. The simplicity of some of these solutions is actually the case for optimism. But finding which solution fits which context requires being on the ground, building the relationships, and generating local data that governments trust enough to act on. That’s the work.”
We thank Pure Earth for their time and their thoughtful answers. To learn more about their work, you can read our evaluation. You can donate to Pure Earth here.
This blog post is part of a series of interviews with our recommended charities. You can read the other conversations with Taimaka and Friendship Bench to better understand their work.