| Total Environment Centre's View of NSW
Parliamentary Select Committee
by Jeff Angel, Director – TEC
The NSW Parliamentary Select Committee upon Lead
Pollution published its report in December last year. TEC appeared before the Committee
and assisted with some aspects of the report. We generally support the recommendations of
the Committee, but don't think they go far enough, in that they do not call for
legislative change.
Some examples:
Health goals
Our position is that the
"health goal" for lead in air has to be made into a standard, and a step-wise
reduction of ambient levels incorporated in the NSW Clean Air Act for the following
levels:
- 1.0 µg/M³ by 1996
- 0.5 µg/M³ by 1998, and
- 0.15 µg/M³ by 2000.
Lead in petrol
We call for legislation to ensure that petrol sourced (i.e., refined) in NSW
meets a maximum level of 0.2 grams of lead per litre of petrol. As things stand at
present, it is possible for petrol sold in country areas to contain lead up to 0.84
g/litre. Additionally, we call for legislation to bring down the lead content of petrol to
0.05 g/litre by the beginning of 1996, and to zero added lead by the end of 1996.
Lead shot, lead sinkers
We would like to see these
banned. Anti-duck hunters in NSW seem to disagree with us, on the grounds that replacing
lead with steel shot for duck shooting might seem as though that is all that needs to be
done - which is clearly not the case. However, the anti-duck shoot campaigners in Victoria
say that steel shot has the effect of making it too expensive for some shooters, thus
cutting the number of ducks that die by shooting as well as the greater number of ducks
that die by lead poisoning.
We are concerned that the Lead Reference Centre promised for early 1995
by the former Environment Minister, Chris Hartcher, has been put off until July this year
- this makes us uneasy as to whether it will really happen. More importantly, we want such
a Lead Reference Centre run by a NGO - such as The LEAD Group. NG0s (non-government
organisations) are best placed to run community services of this sort we believe the NG0s
have more credibility, and are more committed to actually helping people than a
bureaucracy can ever be. |
