Battery recycling remains one of the main sources of lead exposure in Bangladesh

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There may be no black smoke rising from a furnace, no warning sign beside a road, and no visible mark on the toy a child carries home. In some parts of Bangladesh, however, the soil beneath homes and farmland may carry the residue of years of lead exposure. Near abandoned lead-acid battery recycling sites, lead can remain in the environment long after the furnaces have gone quiet, finding its way into dust, soil, food, and eventually the human body.

A 2026 study published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health looked at communities living near two abandoned battery recycling facilities in the town of Mirzapur following a soil remediation intervention. Residents reported improvements in crops, livestock, and children's well-being after the contaminated soil was removed. But the study also found continuing concerns over how contaminated soil was handled and whether pollution could return.

This is what makes the lead problem so difficult to confront. The contamination can be invisible, while the activities responsible for it are woven into everyday economic life.

Batteries keep rickshaws and other three-wheelers moving and provide backup power. Paint covers walls. Spices sit in kitchens. Toys are handled by children. The risk is not always confined to a factory or a recycling yard.

The Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2025, conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics with support from UNICEF, tested blood lead levels among children aged 12 to 59 months and pregnant women. It found elevated blood lead levels in 38.34 percent of young children and 7.54 percent of pregnant women, using 5 micro-grams per deciliter as the threshold.

According to Priscilla Wobil, health specialist at UNICEF Bangladesh, the findings should be understood not merely as a statistic but as evidence of concentrated exposure in particular environments.

According to Wobil, Dhaka's density and concentration of industrial and commercial activity provide several possible pathways for exposure. Children may come in contact with industrial waste and emissions, informal battery recycling, contaminated dust and soil, food and consumer products, and possibly contaminated water.

Early monitoring

Yet there is an important qualification. "The survey does not tell us exactly where the lead is coming from," Wobil said. "The next step is to better identify the main sources and exposure pathways so that we can take targeted action to reduce and, where possible, eliminate children's exposure to lead."

Wobil believes the answer must therefore extend beyond treating individual cases. "The priority is to identify and remove the source of lead exposure and prevent further absorption," she said, adding that good nutrition and early monitoring of children's development can also help reduce risk and identify problems early.

Informal lead-acid battery recycling remains one of the major sources of exposure in the country.

The scale of the battery economy partly explains why electric three-wheelers account for roughly 60 to 65 percent of local lead-acid battery demand. Furthermore, the World Bank estimated that there were more than 1,100 informal used lead-acid battery recycling sites in Bangladesh as of 2022.

When used batteries are manually broken, washed, or smelted in informal facilities, lead dust can spread through the surrounding environment. In the Mirzapur research, researchers describe informal recycling as an important pathway for widespread soil contamination, particularly where recycling facilities operate close to homes and agricultural land.

But concentrating only on batteries risks making the story too simple. Wobil herself points out that everyday products can be difficult for families to identify as sources of contamination.

"Everyday products such as contaminated spices, cosmetics, or cookware can be particularly difficult to detect because they may look completely safe," she said.

Mahbubur Rahman, project coordinator and associate scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, has described a wider exposure landscape that includes lead-related industries, paint, contaminated food, cookware, toys, cosmetics, and traditional products.

He said exposure can spread through air, soil, food, agriculture, and livestock around polluted sites. In some industrial areas, elevated lead levels have been detected among people living even 1.5 to 2 kilometers from a source. In one investigation, 96 of 367 product samples screened positive for lead.

A particularly troubling example has been the adulteration of turmeric with lead. Research has also found that lead chromate, used to intensify the color of turmeric, was an important source of exposure in affected communities. The findings illustrated how contamination can enter households through products that appear entirely ordinary.

UNICEF is now supporting the government in a nationwide environmental follow-up assessment to investigate possible sources, including paint, soil, and dust in children's play areas, as well as spices and other consumer products across households, markets, and farms.

The other weakness is less visible but just as fundamental. Researchers have conducted national blood lead testing, yet routine access to blood lead testing remains limited.

No testing lab

"The challenge in Bangladesh is that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare currently does not have a national reference laboratory for blood lead testing," Wobil said. This limits the country's ability to reliably identify suspected cases among children and pregnant women and to monitor lead exposure through a national environmental health surveillance system.

In other words, discovering that a child has an elevated blood lead level is only the beginning. A functioning response should help identify where the exposure occurred, investigate the surrounding environment and prevent the children from being exposed again.

Rahman similarly points out that while equipment exists in research institutions, it is not yet broadly available as part of a routine public diagnostic service. He said building a national laboratory and point-of-care testing capacity would require investment, equipment and trained personnel.

But both the health and environmental evidence suggest that testing alone cannot be at the center of the response, as prevention has to come first.

The consequences of lead poisoning appear across health, education, the environment, industry and household consumption. Its sources can include a recycling yard, a manufacturing process, a product sold in the market or contaminated soil.

Wobil's priority for the government is therefore not a single campaign or an isolated intervention. "No single intervention can address poisoning comprehensively, because children are exposed through multiple sources and the response requires action across several sectors," she said.

Her immediate priority is stronger regulation and policies directed toward the highest-risk sources, using the environmental assessment to determine where action should be concentrated.

Ultimately, she argues, the responsibility cannot rest mainly with families. "The most effective way to protect children from lead poisoning is to prevent exposure at its source. Rather than relying mainly on families to avoid lead, we need policies that make the products and environments around children safer."