Lead paint had been used since the days of the Roman Empire and the ancient Greeks owing to the good quality of white, yellow, and red pigments. France, Belgium, and Austria banned white-lead interior paint as early as 1909. but the world wide movement of prohibiting lead paint only gained momentum in 1978 when the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use of lead paint in housing. The consumption of lead in lead paints in the United States has consequently dropped from a peak value of more than 150 thousand tons per year to