Robbie Barbero, a senior fellow at Renaissance Philanthropy, has spent years on the science of childhood lead exposure: what it does to the developing brain, how it shows up decades later in school failure, lost earnings and violent crime, and why roughly half a million American children still have elevated lead levels today. If we took lead out of paint and petrol, why is it still here? Where is it coming from now? And if the fix is as simple as testing every child, why aren't we doing it? Barbero makes the case that the real bottleneck is a market failure in diagnostics, and that philanthropy can pay to fix it. He calls eliminating elevated lead levels in American children not a moonshot but a slam dunk. This is a conversation about a solvable problem. Field Notes is an Indio Media Production for Arnold Ventures © 2026 Arnold Ventures. All rights reserved.

How lead exposure in children can be fixed, with Robbie Barbero

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Robbie Barbero, a senior fellow at Renaissance Philanthropy, has spent years on the science of childhood lead exposure: what it does to the developing brain, how it shows up decades later in school failure, lost earnings and violent crime, and why roughly half a million American children still have elevated lead levels today.  If we took lead out of paint and petrol, why is it still here? Where is it coming from now? And if the fix is as simple as testing every child, why aren't we doing it?  Barbero makes the case that the real bottleneck is a market failure in diagnostics, and that philanthropy can pay to fix it. He calls eliminating elevated lead levels in American children not a moonshot but a slam dunk. This is a conversation about a solvable problem.  Field Notes is an Indio Media Production for Arnold Ventures © 2026 Arnold Ventures. All rights reserved.

Field Notes is the podcast that dives into the details behind some of the most interesting ideas to improve public safety.  In this series, hosts Jennifer Doleac, Julie James, and Kevin Ring are talking to the researchers, practitioners and innovators from all sides who are actually making America safer,  and wrestling with some of the hardest problems our society. 

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