[throwaway0a5e]

I suspect that even though you can get leaded paint in those places few are actually using it for residential stuff. Lead offered cheap durability for paints in fairly demanding applications. Stuff like a business sign that needs to look crisp after many years in the weather and UV or machinery that's constantly getting scratches up by whatever that machinery works with are the use cases where lead is still somewhat missed because the equivalent performing unleaded coatings are fairly expensive. Since those are poor countries it stands to reason that most of their residential oil paint use would be cheap unleaded stuff and their leaded paint use would be confined to applications that demand better paint than the low end unleaded oil based stuff but where they can't afford high-performing unleaded stuff.

[C_Don7]

We've done surveys and tested household use paints in five LMICs (https://leadelimination.org/projects/)(https://leadeliminati.... 1) lead paints are often cheaper than unleaded paints (in LMICs) because lead paints tend to be locally manufactured and unleaded paints often imported. Also, lead pigments are often cheaper than lead-free pigments. 2) Yes, lead is good at making durable oil-based paints - in some countries with sub-tropical climates durable oil-based paint is popular on the inside and outside of homes, presumably for this reason. It's also easy to clean 3) Water-based paints are much less likely to contain lead and these are also used in homes in LMICs