Thanks for all the detective work and for sharing the moving backstory of the song and PSA. I'm so glad to see so many remember this ad the way I do. It was a really good song.
Iron Eyes' Keep America Beautiful commercial was the other side of this problem and the announcer's ominous voice captures part of our mood of that time, too: "People start pollution, people can stop it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Suu84khNGY
I grew up in Baltimore. My parents were so worried one summer about the paint peeling. I had a baby sister and that ad and a picture in the news of a mother washing her lead poisoned child were like finding out that monsters are real. The pediatrician warned us not to touch the paint. It was to scary to see my parents' mood change when they warned us to stay away from the paint, and got angry about it with the "fix it man."
It was so great when we came back from a week at grandma's and all the lead paint pollution was gone.
After that I remember hearing that the lead paint was still a danger. The adults were worried about our dirt! It was like finding out that the monster was still outside. The paint dust was in the soil. Paint flecks blew around when it was dry. Men came back and carefully dug out the flower beds and then paved over them. It was a relief to move to a house where there wasn't a lead paint problem.