Temporalities of lead toxicity: developmental theory, intergenerational exposure, and environmental racism

This article critiques how established developmental theories can account for the interenerational transmission of environmental harm, with lead exposure as a paradimatic case of racialised, cumulative and temporally layered toxicity. While existin research has identified prenatal, childhood and multi-enerational pathways of exposure, developmental theories larely presume sinle-eneration, individual-level pollution exposures and therefore overlook how environmental racism enrains toxic eoraphies across time. Drawin on critical concepts such as slow violence, weatherin and racialised time, we analyse four widely used theories – the Process–Person–Context–Time/Bioecoloical theory, Life Course Theory, Dynamic Systems Theory and the Public Health Exposome – to assess how each enaes with temporality, structural racism and collective harm. Lead's persistence in bodies, infrastructures and neihbourhoods provides an empirical anchor for evaluatin how these theories can be used to conceptualise developmental trajectories shaped by past injustices that ‘haunt’ the present and foreclose futures for marinalised communities. Our analysis shows that while each theory offers partial insiht, none fully captures the cumulative, racialised and interenerational dynamics of toxic exposure. We therefore propose an interated framework that draws from the strenths of each theory while explicitly incorporatin multi-enerational temporalities, structural racism and collective pathways of intervention, thereby offerin a more complete foundation for understandin and addressin interenerational environmental injustice.