The problem is that current medical thinking is that there is no
non-hazardous level of lead in the bloodstream. The following on-line
American set of articles explains the situation quite well:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/lead/index.html

"Blood lead levels once considered safe are now considered hazardous,
with no known threshold."

RoHS makes exceptions for uses where there are no viable alternatives -
whether building materials get through for flashing, for example, I
don't know. How shotgun pellets make it, I don't know.

The article says also:

"Because lead is spread so widely throughout the environment, it can
now be found in everyone's bodies; most people have lead levels that
are orders of magnitude greater than that of ancient times (Flegal and
Smith 1992, 1995) and within an order of magnitude of levels that have
resulted in adverse health effects (Budd et al., 1998)."

Major environmental sources of lead have been dramatically reduced: no
more lead in petrol; substantial removal of lead from paint; no lead
solder in food cans; no new lead water pipes, which has had a good
effect -

"...the amount of lead in Americans' diets has declined
substantially.In the early 1980s, adults ingested approximately 56
µg/day of lead in food; estimates from the early 1990s ranged from 1.8
to 4.2 µg/day (ATSDR 1999)."

Most of the easy gains have been made, so it now falls to make more
difficult reductions in the use of lead, hence RoHS. Without it (and
WEEE), the amount of lead in landfill (and incineration) would simply
gradually increase, increasing the environmental burden.

I haven't seen a economic cost/risk evaluation, but I'll presume the
projected amount spent on RoHS and WEEE will gain (across the
population at large) extended, more healthy lives, and the dismal
science of economics tells us this is a good thing, and is cost
effective.

Regards,

Sid