GLASS Continues Despite Lack of Funding for Staff Wages

The situation of funding for The LEAD Group’s GLASS (incorporating the Lead Advisory Service Australia) only becomes more desperate, whilst our service provision is becoming all the more valuable and utilised.

On July 1^st 2005 New South Wales Department of Health, NSW Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) and the South Australian Department of Health cut their funding to GLASS on the grounds that the set project funded by the grants (web-site improvement) were completed. GLASS seems for the greatest part an evolving service, one that cannot be artificially limited by being termed a project. It is here that the greatest problem arises when seeking out funding. Over 20 appeals to both government and corporate sectors have been sent in the last month (July 2005) in an attempt to glean a small amount of funds from the astounding profits and royalties various sectors gain from mining lead in Australia. It is unthinkable now that our website has over 2,000 visitors a week, that we could just take the website down so until our donations from last year run out, we’ll continue!

While attending to the urgent need to acquire grants or sponsorships, GLASS strives to send out information and to ease the concerns of many people who have come into contact with lead and wish to know what steps to take to properly manage their situation. In this past financial year alone, GLASS has fielded 4,059 calls on lead poisoning, prevention and policy. At last count, people from 62 countries have made enquiries and were given referrals on the subject of lead in various issues.

We believe this job is essential, and we will do it until our goal is reached or our doors close. A total of 99 volunteers worked during this report period (including the Manager, Elizabeth O’Brien and the Webmaster David Ratcliffe), all giving their valuable time for free to help the service in varying aspects. This group has accumulated an estimated 750 days at least (estimated value $150,000) servicing a great community need, and we feel that the greater public is all the better for it. Appendix 1 contains the total list of volunteer staff members who worked in this report period. The wonderful members of The LEAD Group Committee and Technical Advisory Board have also continued to give their time and advice for free.

Our fine volunteer staff have come from varying sources, such as volunteer online search sites and word of mouth. At the time of writing this report, we have acquired four more interns from Sydney University, The University of Technology Sydney and myself, Cornelia Dost from the University of Trier in Germany. These interns we hope will help us to write Elizabeth’s Mineral’s Council Conference speech on Product Stewardship, to write a report to help NICNAS (National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme) ban leaded surface coatings and cosmetics and to encourage NGOs to ask their governments to ban leaded petrol in the 67 countries still selling leaded petrol. While we are forced to rely on volunteers, such as a group of Postgraduate students, the benefit is that we believe we are providing opportunities for young minds to understand the risks lead poses to the global community and contribute to reducing those risks.