The trouble with trying to solve the country’s lead problem is that all the easy fixes have already been done. “Yes, if we could replace all of our 100-year-old water mains overnight, we’d gladly do it,” says Gary Burlingame of the Philadelphia water department. But such projects can carry a steep political and economic price tag. Here’s what it would cost to put a dent in the lead exposure of American kids:
$1 trillion
To make all U.S. pipe replacements deemed “urgent” by the American Society of Civil Engineers
$216 billion
To perform lead-paint abatement on the 24 million at-risk homes, at an average cost of $9,000 per home
$3 billion
To treat the estimated 535,000 children with injurious levels of lead in their blood
$18 million
To test the soil in the 13,500 playgrounds in the 100 largest U.S. cities
A version of this article appears in the March 1, 2016 issue of Fortune.
