I think it is an interesting subject to address, particularly if you can keep an objective view point. "Lead is toxic, so we need to eliminate it" is not objective in my view. There are lots of toxic things in our life, and for most of them including lead, it is impossible to show a maximum safe level for exposure. A discussion of how the maximum allowable exposure should be set would seem to be essential. Then, was the procedure for setting it followed or was it highly influenced by politics and special interests. (You may want to read about the limits for formaldehyde exposure as an example where politics seemed to have a very great influence as opposed to cost benefit analysis.)
Lead is a very toxic substance that can become hazardous to health and it was deemed necessary to remove it from electronics to keep the substance out of landfills. However, removing this lead has been the source of many problems including tin wiskering and poor solder connections from the lead free available solder.
I have always wondered why putting lead back into the earth was dangerous to people's health. Are you sure that lead in electronics wasn't just an innocent bystander that got included in more justifiable prohibitions, such as in paint and automotive fuel? What is the state of toxicity studies on the substitute metals being used in lead-free solder?
You will also want to describe the toxic forms of lead (usually an oxidized or organified form of lead) and non-toxic forms, as well as the relative risks associated with various routes of exposure. For example, children more readily absorb ingested lead than adults do. A lead bullet embedded in flesh and not near a bone causes no measurable increase in blood lead concentrations.
Here's where I'm stuck. The topic I've chosen reflects a very present controversy. Heck, there are numerous articles out there to choose from such as the one's I've listed above. However, I'm having a bit of difficulty searching for a specific case within this topic. A documented meeting or experiment/study is what we are to investigate.
Unfortunately, I don't have references handy where I am at present. The early and current thrust to prevent lead exposure is primarily because of its effects on neurologic (i.e., brain) development in children. There are studies throughout the world that document that toxicity. Some examples are studies in Africa where lead was mined and batteries re-processed as well as in American cities that compared intellectual development of children in urban settings to rural (exposure was presumed to be from lead in exhaust of vehicles using gasoline that contained tetraethyllead and from eating flaking paint chips in homes with lead paint) . There are also studies done in rural settings in which certain cultural practices, such as eating cookies made from river mud, led to high lead concentrations and measurable neurologic effects. That practice was common in areas along the Mississippi River in Missouri and South. Also note that blood lead concentrations are critical to all studies of lead toxicity. The results can be confounded by the difficulty of obtaining samples that have not been contaminated with environmental lead.
The real question to address is the effect each of the various prohibitions has had on the intellectual development of the target population. From a practical standpoint, that is an impossible study to perform. However, it is not impossible to assess the collective effect of all of the efforts on intellectual development. Many studies equate lowering blood lead levels to preventing impairment of intellectual development. In other words, they assume there is no safe level of lead. I think that assumption can be questioned with available data. Then, once a non-harmful level for blood lead is established, studies can be done to determine the effects of relaxing restrictions in certain industries. Rather than eliminating restrictions, however, I think the more likely political outcome will be to broaden the exceptions or to apply additional taxes to lead-containing products.
Good luck.
John