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Lead Poisoning Awareness Day is the occasion to remember that lead is a highly toxic accumulative poison. Lead can be ingested, inhaled and absorbed through the skin. It can affect the health of people of any age, but young children are particularly vulnerable.

However, the quiet undermining of the health and intellectual potential of the many children affected by lead poisoning in the inner west suburbs of Sydney – or in any part of the country - is no newspaper headline material. The rare times lead poisoning rates a newspaper mention these days is when a lead smelter community initiates a class action. Lead is however still present around us in many forms: in leaded petrol, which can still be legally sold in Australia until the 1^st January 2002, in consumer products such as candles – which can still be found for sale despite the Federal and State bans declared last year on lead wicks, in ceiling dust, garden soil, tap or tank water, and pre 1970 paint, to give a few examples. At the Lead Advisory Service, we are well placed to observe that the lead problem is far from having been resolved. Not a day goes past without someone calling us with a lead related problem: a lead poisoned dog having eaten dirt in a backyard contaminated with paint peeling off the neighbour’s garage, or alarmed parents realising that the bedroom they have just sanded had been painted with lead paint.

Despite some 5,500 calls handled by the Lead Advisory Service in the last financial year, both the NSW Health and NSW Environment Departments have rejected our funding application. As a result, as from the end of November 2000, the Lead Advisory Service NSW as we knew it will cease to exist, with the associated adverse effects on all people faced with a lead poisoning issue.

So if you are at risk from lead, have a blood test and call the Lead Advisory Service on freecall 1800 626 086, …quickly … time is running out.

WHO’S AT RISK FROM LEAD

• Unborn children and pregnant women

• Young children (up to 4)

• Occupants/renovators of pre-1970 houses

(and their neighbours)

• Building, construction and demolition workers

• Lead industry workers

For more information contact Patricia Parkinson on 9716 0966,
or Elizabeth O’Brien on 9716 0014 ###