About 10 years ago, regulators first sounded the alarm that lead-laced paint was flooding the domestic market. Guidelines were drafted. Recommendations were filed away. And still, a decade on, the walls of homes and schools across the country continue to be coated in a toxin known to stunt the developing brain.
In 2017, the Zorig Foundation put that alarm to the test. Working alongside the International Pollutant Elimination Network, or IPEN, researchers purchased 56 cans of household paint from the “100 Ail” building materials center and sent them for laboratory analysis. The results were damning that 70 percent contained lead. Of the 25 brands examined, representing 22 manufacturers, the products with the highest concentrations traced back to China, a detail that carries weight given that roughly ninety percent of the country’s building materials and paints still arrive from across that border.
Moreover, 48 of the brands and types registered lead levels above 10,000 parts per million, a figure that dwarfs the ceilings set in most of the developed world. On the strength of these findings, the foundation urged the government to act without delay, such as to draft and pass regulations barring the import, sale and use of any paint exceeding 90 parts per million of lead, bringing domestic standards into line with international norms. Nearly a decade later, no such law exists on the books.
The human cost of that inertia is not theoretical. A 2014 study by the National Center for Public Health, still the most recent of its kind, tested blood-lead levels in children aged seven to 14 and found that 60 percent exceeded the safe threshold. Researchers also documented a link to weaker academic performance, a finding that should have set off alarm bells in classrooms and clinics alike. Instead, the health and education authorities have largely sat on their hands, leaving a known neurotoxin to quietly erode a generation’s potential.
Officials have not been entirely silent, only slow. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change recently convened an international meeting to revisit the legislative gaps first flagged by the 2017 study, an implicit admission that little has changed in the intervening years. At the gathering, officials floated the idea of drafting technical regulations governing paints and similar coatings, including a cap of 90 ppm on total lead content, along with a broader system of product testing, conformity assessment, labeling, and border and market surveillance.
Whether this latest round of talk translates into enforceable law remains an open question, and one the public has heard before. For years, officials have shrugged off calls for reform with the refrain that the country manufactures none of this paint itself, as though importing poison somehow absolves the state of the duty to keep it off shelves. That logic rings increasingly hollow against a decade of evidence, a generation of exposed children, and a regulatory vacuum that shows no sign of filling itself. Science has spoken plainly enough. What remains to be seen is whether decision-makers will finally match words with action, or continue treating a public health crisis as someone else’s problem to solve.
Debate starts once the damage is already irreversible
The danger of a fresh coat of paint, experts say, does not end once it dries. “Developed countries advise their citizens to move into new buildings only after three to six months,” said Dr. B.Ariunjargal, a lecturer at the Department of Urban Planning at the School of Construction and Architecture of the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. “That waiting period exists so that harmful chemicals absorbed by the body can clear before people settle in for good. The toxins linger long after they’ve stopped being visible, and in the meantime we suffer symptoms we rarely trace back to their source: allergies, headaches, insomnia.” In her assessment, the very notion of a “healthy” building has barely taken hold domestically, leaving research on the subject scarce and public awareness scarcer still. Few people think to ask what went into the walls around them, let alone which paint covered them.
That blind spot has recently collided with the school calendar. Educational institutions across the country are only now testing the paint on their walls, after a wave of late-season repairs left classrooms freshly covered before anyone thought to check what lay beneath. The scramble followed a sensational claim last spring from the Minister of Education, who announced that heavy metals had turned up in paint used in schools and kindergartens, an assertion the ministry itself later walked back by noting that testing had not actually run its course.
G.Naranbaatar, who heads the ministry’s Inspection Department, offered a clearer picture of where things now stand. “We are conducting volatile organic compound and heavy metal tests on educational buildings and facilities that were repaired and serviced before September first. Air quality tests are being conducted on painted classrooms and halls. Samples will be taken by August twenty-fifth, and results will be available by the middle of next month,” he said. The volatile organic compound analysis is being handled domestically, he added, while the heavy metal testing has been sent to laboratories in Australia, a telling admission of the gaps in local testing capacity. As a preliminary measure, some 120 educational institutions nationwide have already painted and repaired their classrooms and halls, tests or no tests.
Cost, once again, appears to be steering the decisions that matter most. Several institutions explained that they skipped water-based and oil-based paints precisely because those safer, more environmentally friendly options cost more. So there is little reason to celebrate come the first of September, when children return to classrooms that may still be filled with paint fumes. What would serve them better is timing: pushing repair and repainting work into the spring and summer as much as possible, so that children can study in healthy classrooms without any lingering odors.
Human-centered building is needed
Construction worldwide is edging toward what industry bodies now call “human-centered” or “healthy building” design. The US-based World Green Building Council has spelled out the medical and scientific criteria behind that shift, criteria now recognized internationally for homes, offices, schools, kindergartens and hospitals alike. Mental comfort, sound, natural light, drinking water, warmth, indoor climate, walkability and access to fresh air and nutrients form the pillars of what the council defines as a healthy building. Chief among these is indoor air quality: substances released from building materials, combined with shifts in temperature and humidity, create conditions in which bacteria thrive, making it essential to keep that air clean from the outset. Ample natural light matters just as much, since it has been shown to sharply cut rates of respiratory illness and curb the growth of mold and other bacteria. The council’s research points the other way too. People living in dim, sunlight-starved spaces report higher rates of headaches, insomnia and deep psychological distress.
For a capital expanding as rapidly as Ulaanbaatar, healthy buildings are no longer a luxury but something closer to a basic necessity, on par with clean water and breathable air. Residents have every right to press for, demand and oversee housing that supports a genuinely healthy life, rather than settling for four walls and a roof. However, oversight itself has grown thin on the ground. Since the General Department of Professional Supervision was disbanded, inspection and enforcement across the construction sector have weakened considerably, leaving an industry that now operates with something close to free rein. Responsibility for monitoring building material quality now falls to the Ulaanbaatar Department of Supervision and Inspection, but its acting head, B.Az, has acknowledged that the department has no laboratory capable of testing whether lead levels in paint exceed the standard, a gap that leaves the very quality control it is charged with enforcing effectively unenforceable.
The stakes of that gap become clearer when set against the council’s own findings. People draw 50 percent of the air they breathe over a lifetime from inside their own homes, while 92 percent of what they breathe outdoors falls short of being fully safe. Infants and young children bear the greatest exposure, given how much time they spend close to the floor and how sensitive their developing systems are to airborne chemicals. One study cited by the council found that a child in a poorly ventilated home, simply by lying on the floor or carpet, can take in pollutants equivalent to smoking three cigarettes a day, a sobering reminder that the danger is not always what settles on the walls, but what rises quietly from beneath a child’s own feet.
On top of that, health professionals increasingly suspect a link between heavy metal exposure and autism spectrum disorders in children, a connection that has reshaped how some parents think about the spaces their families inhabit. Ts.Batselenge, who has spent more than two decades working in the construction industry, began overhauling her family’s diet and living environment the moment she learned her son was on the spectrum.
“Even though people in Europe exercise daily and eat well, why haven’t cancer rates and deaths from it gone down?” she asked. “International research points to the buildings we live in as part of the answer. Even structures that are centuries old, and plenty of new ones too, carry substances that are harmful to the human body.” Drinking water, she noted, is one area where the country fares reasonably well, with little rust or sediment contamination, meaning filtration is largely unnecessary. Building materials are another story entirely. “We are not a manufacturing nation, so ninety percent of what goes into our buildings comes from neighboring countries. Traders gravitate toward whatever is cheapest, and the cheaper it is, the more likely it is to harm us,” she added.
Her advice starts with the basics, particularly, paying closer attention to the everyday goods that enter a household. Since iron does not break down inside the body, she avoids cutting meat and vegetables on iron surfaces altogether, and sources meat, produce and dairy from farmers and herders she trusts, alongside cookware free of cadmium and lead. “I use organic, vegan-certified detergents, and I’m careful about choosing clothing, medicine and vitamins low in synthetic ingredients. As a result, my son has never needed antibiotics,” she shared.
Beyond the kitchen, she recommends choosing an apartment with strong air circulation, windows unobstructed by neighboring buildings, and furniture built from untreated wood. Even attractive, high-quality wallpaper falls short of healthy, she warned, if the adhesive behind it is not. None of this, she stressed, amounts to indulgence. It is simply a way of shielding the body’s cells and tissue from damage that accumulates slowly, often invisibly. She chose her own home, specifically for its large windows, weighing sunlight and airflow as seriously as square footage. Units facing north and west, in her view, rank among the least desirable, since morning light, prized for its benefits to human health, favors homes with east- and south-facing windows instead. The World Green Building Council echoes that logic, urging planners to limit the share of north-facing units in residential design and to build fewer structures lit from only one side.
Where exactly the danger threshold sits remains a matter of ongoing revision. The World Health Organization has set five micrograms per deciliter as the reference point for lead in the human body, a figure it is careful to describe not as a safe level but as a threshold: a marker past which poisoning takes hold. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved that bar even lower in 2021, down to 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. By either measure, the evidence suggests that lead exposure among the population continues to run well past what current science considers tolerable.
