You'll never guess the culprit in a global lead poisoning mystery
toggle caption Jenna Forsyth
"It's the crime of the century," says Bruce Lanphear .
He's not talking about a murder spree, a kidnapping or a bank heist.
Lanphear – an environmental epidemiologist at Simon Fraser University – is referring to the fact that an estimated 800 million children around the world are poisoned by lead – lead in their family's pots and pan, lead in their food, lead in the air. That's just about half of all children in low- and middle-income countries, according to UNICEF and the nonprofit Pure Earth.
For decades, very little has been done about this. But this is the story of how two women – a New York City detective and a California student – followed the data and helped crack a puzzling case that spanned the globe in the ongoing "crime" of lead poisoning.
toggle caption Timothy Archibald; Courtesy of Paromita Hore
Meet New York's lead lead detective
Next to a row of courthouses in downtown Manhattan, there's an imposing gray building. On the 6th floor is an office that houses about 50 detectives. They work for New York City's health department. They tackle thousands of cases a year involving kids exposed to toxic elements. And many of those cases are children who have too much lead in their blood.
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