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Despite
an increased interest and demand in The LEAD Group’s free offered services,
governmental institutions decided to stop funding the largest public lead library and
referral database in the world, and corporations have thus far declined to take up this
perfect sponsorship opportunity. On July 1st 2005 the New South Wales
Department of Health, the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC)
and the South Australian Department of Health cut their funding to The LEAD Group by
reasoning that the funded goal – improvements to www.lead.org.au
- was successfully reached and that no further funding (even to keep the website up) would
be provided. [See The LEAD Group’s Annual Report: www.lead.org.au/anrepmmv/anrep2005-2.html]
With the past 10 years of government funding GLASS was able to increase its services to
the public and gain more public presence throughout the world. Having achieved media
publicity and the web-publication of important information about the danger of lead
pollution since our founding, we received over 41,000 inquiries in the past ten years as
well as over a quarter of a million web-hits.
The Annual Report 2005 of the Global Lead Advice & Support Service shows that www.lead.org.au had 173,543 web page views in just the
last financial year from 176 countries around the world. Furthermore we increased the
number of our available online files to 1,415, while welcoming 1230 new clients and
increasing the number of direct enquiring countries to 62 countries this year. [See www.lead.org.au/anrepmmv/anrep2005-1.html
]
Although the government set up a lot of laws and rules together with the lead producing
industry to prohibit further lead pollution, the number of calls makes it obvious that the
environmental sins of the past won’t vanish even when new pollution is reduced to a
minimum. People with health problems caused by toxic lead won’t stop living and new
cases will be discovered and dealt with by our services. The existing number of countries
still selling leaded petrol [perhaps as many as 80 – see www.lead.org.au/fs/fst27superseded.html
] as well as the lead used in paints, plastics and other consumer products are still an
enormous risk for our health and should not be forgotten.
GLASS works with government and industry to create better environmental standards which
will enable our children to live a better life. Nevertheless we need financial support to
continue to offer telephone counselling for adults and parents of lead poisoned children,
distribution of free information packs and the biggest online library about lead giving
the world the newest information available. GLASS is a perfect corporate sponsorship
opportunity waiting to happen.
For further information please contact Elizabeth O’Brien
(ph (02) 9716 0014), donate online [see www.lead.org.au/sb.html ],
or read the newest published article about GLASS in the Sydney
Morning Herald: www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/09/18/1126981947812.html. ###
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