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The Cradle to
Grave Impacts of Lead in Cars
by Elizabeth O’Brien and
Adrian Hill
This LEAD Action News has been designed as
something of a scenic tour through the area of Cradle to Grave Management for lead in
cars. We start our journey looking at the lead mining and smelting communities, follow the
lead into petrol, shoot out through the exhaust pipe and into the environment.
Cradle to Grave Management, or as it is
more recently termed, Life Cycle Analysis, is the process of evaluating the effects
that a product has on the environment over the entire period of its life cycle. We would
really like to have written an article on the cradle to grave impacts of lead, but since
there is enough material there for a whole book, we decided to concentrate on lead in
cars, since around two thirds of all the lead produced on the planet goes into the cars
most of us view as "a necessity of modern living".
Lead is "born" in many different
mines around Australia (see LEAD Action News vol. 3 no. 3), but we look at one of the
biggest - Broken Hill. And things are getting tense in the community out there as the
deposits are running out. Theresa Gordon then writes about the impacts of car batteries
from the point of view of an Australian lead smelter town community and Robin Mosman
writes about the rather worrying lead emissions at the copper smelter in Port Kembla.
Into the "adolescent" phase of
the life cycle, Elizabeth O’Brien has written an article on the impacts of lead in
petrol from the cradle to the grave, we have a fascinating article on changes in transport
policy in the U.K. and we have an expose on Associated Octel (who manufacture lead
additive in petrol), who have been telling "nonsense" to governments in
developing countries.
Talking of developing countries, Greenpeace
have given us fantastic help in updating an article first published in their magazine, on
exporting waste batteries to the Philippines. We have an article on lead and tooth decay
for you to chew on, an update on the gold mine laboratory worker trying to sue for damages
(see LEAD Action News vol. 4 no. 3) and an inspirational story from the U.S. on government
grants for removing lead in homes.
As things get older they get warm and
cuddly (well we like to think so) and so as we move into the later stages of the
newsletter we have the letters page, which is warm and cuddly in parts and lastly we have
news in brief and some warm and cuddly subscription opportunities.
Talking of solutions, a summary of one of
the best studies we know of about the cradle to grave impacts of cars has already been
published in LEAD Action News (vol 3 no 2 1995 "The Environmental Cost of the
Car" by John Whitelegg). This German study concluded that it would cost the same
amount as the government currently pays in the external costs of all pollution, accidents
and noise from each car, for the State to give "each car user a free pass for the
whole year for all public transport, a new bike every five years and 15,000 kilometres of
first-class rail travel." And that was for a new car which ran on unleaded petrol!
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