alt Hacker NewsDon't get on such a high horse about US regulatory effectiveness.
This is recently (2010) in California even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination
Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.
The "advantage" is that in contrast to heavy metals like lead lithium is a lot less toxic as far as we know. Not 0, but not in the same league.