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The Lead Education and Abatement Design Group
Working to eliminate lead poisoning globally and to protect the
environment from lead in all its uses: past, current and new uses
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Slide shows and Conference Papers Films / Videos Transcript
  1. Dr Ben Balzer’s Lead Poisoning Slide Show

  2. Lead Poisoning Slide Show

  3. “Green Lead” – oxymoron or future vision?

  4. Ceiling Dust Slide Show

  5. Climate Change Slide Show

  6. NPI Heavy Metals Emissions Data Problems

  7. End of Leaded Petrol - Presentation Nairobi

  8. Nairobi Presentation 20111026-27

  9. Consumer Products and Lead Exposures: Vision for a Lead-Safe World ppt
    Consumer Products and Lead Exposures: Vision for a Lead-Safe World html
    Speech Notes - Consumer Products and Lead Exposures: Vision for a Lead-Safe World
    PDF

  10. The Problems Schools and Childcare Centres have with Lead PDF

  11. VAP made easy - how to create a winner - for classroom or home viewing 20140803.ppt

The Green Machine.wmv

E waste Report.wmv

Requires Windows Media Player

LeadPro's Green Machine
Voiceover for the video showing The Green Machine in action.

Please note that The LEAD Group is not affiliated with the Green Machine and LeadPro and is unable to provide further information. For more information please contact Robert McClelland, Email Phone: +6 12 9997 1712, mobile: +6 1416 294 942, LeadPro Pty Ltd, 8 Barkala Road Bayview NSW 2104.

Lead Poisoning: THE SILENT EPIDEMIC.
Transcript of Video made by Joan Luckhardt, produced for the New Jersey Lead Poisoning Prevention Program in approximately 1992. Transcribed by Kate Finlay-Jones

Green Lead MCA speech Notes for the PowerPoint presentation
Elizabeth O'Brien Bio html
Green lead conference paper
html
Green lead conference paper PDF 482 KB

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"GREEN LEAD" – OXYMORON OR FUTURE VISION?

Elizabeth O’Briena, Cornelia Dostb, Bei Quc a Manager, b,c Interns,
Global Lead Advice & Support Service (GLASS)
run by The LEAD Group Incorporated

Conference Paper Presented by Elizabeth O’Brien at the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA)
Conference on Sustainable Development in the Product Stewardship Session:
Tue 1st Nov 2005, 11am-1pm, Alice Springs

Contents
Introduction
Leaded Petrol Ban
Batteries
E-equipment
Facts of lead poisoning worldwide
Corporate work/International action
Global Lead Advice & Support Service (GLASS)
References

Global Lead Advice & Support Service (GLASS)

We as a charity organisation cannot sit by and wait until the goals of sustainable development are achieved. Therefore, a credible information service is needed to respond to continuing community concerns about the prevalence of lead hazards in homes, public buildings and workplaces. Governments and industry need to invest in providing a credible information service. GLASS has and must continue to fill this gap.

Without GLASS, people might call several government departments or nongovernmental groups when seeking information, wasting time as they are passed from person to person, often emerging unsatisfied. No one but GLASS is equipped for handling complex inquiries about lead. GLASS is an international referral service, and a cost-efficient way of providing credible environmental health services that people trust. GLASS is the community information service on lead managed by The LEAD Group, a community organisation incorporated in 1992 with the aim of eliminating childhood lead poisoning and protecting the environment from lead.

As of May 2005, the LEAD Group’s information service has been operating with government funding for exactly ten years. We have received over one million dollars in government support for GLASS and it’s predecessors. A similar level of funding is required until green lead becomes a reality.

Over the last 10 years, GLASS has directly handled over 41,300 calls about lead hazards. We have developed the systems, technology and staff to provide an efficient and credible service that assists the public and professionals alike with information, advice and referrals. GLASS is based in a two-room office in Summer Hill, Sydney, NSW, and operates with a national free call phone number.

Main Tasks

  1. Information & referral
  2. GLASS handles approximately 300-500 inquiries a month from people worldwide seeking advice, information and referrals, including post, fax and email inquiries from over 64 countries.

  3. Technical network support
  4. If GLASS receives an inquiry which we have limited knowledge of, we seek the advice of The LEAD Group’s Technical Advisory Board, Global Lead Network, Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance (ABLES) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Plumbism & Autism Network (PAN), Lodged Lead Shot & Bullet Support Group (LLSBS) & Lead Workers e-groups etc, and our aim is to answer every lead question put to us.

  5. Lead resources database
  6. Nearly 8,000 lead references are stored in our indexed Microsoft SQL database, the largest publicly accessible resource on lead in the world, and over 1,500 of these are in a searchable web-published database on our website.

  7. Referral database
  8. Over 4,500 experts, products, service providers, community groups and responsible parties are recorded on our searchable database, soon to be web-published if funding allows.

  9. Information development
  10. Fact sheets, newsletters, articles and lists are continually developed and updated to meet specific demands (e.g. nursing mothers, tenants, on ceiling dust, health effects of lead, countries still using leaded gasoline etc) A proposed online Lead Forum and e-newsletter could also be easily developed if funding were provided.

  11. Call records

Our call database records the nature of all contacts allowing easy tracking & performance

fig7.gif (28916 bytes)

fig8.gif (22846 bytes)
From Figure 7 you can see that our peak call rate occurred during 1999-2000 which coincidentally is the time of our peak level of government funding which enabled the employment of 7 paid staff. Figure 8 demonstrates the striking increase in the level of calls on our service (mainly by email) from overseas, now that we have one of the world’s most popular lead web-sites.

  1. Information distribution
  2. Information packs are assembled and sent to inquirers without charge, including to enquirers overseas. Bulk copies are provided to relevant events, conferences or other distribution points. GLASS has distributed 904,503 lead information products by fax, mail or email between June 1995 and June 2005.

  3. Web site www.lead.org.au
  4. has provided over 250,000 web-users with news and information on global lead poisoning prevention and provides GLASS with increasing numbers of email clients, providing 41% of the 1,200 new enquirers (clients) in the last 12 months. Enquiries from outside Australia made up 21% of our calls in FY 2004-5.

  5. The LEAD Group represents the global community on the United Nations Partnership for Cleaner Fuels and Vehicles (PCFV).

Fundraising

Since June 2005 GLASS has asked the following lead companies and industry organisations for funding:

  1. BP Australia
  2. Caltex
  3. Holden
  4. Citibank (Citigroup Fund)
  5. Philip Morris
  6. Ian Potter Foundation
  7. Minerals Council of Australia
  8. Minerals Council of NSW
  9. Mars Metal MarShield Canada
  10. Lead Development Association (LDA) International
  11. ILMC
Mining Companies:
  1. Perilya
  2. Rio Tinto
  3. Xstrata
  4. Zinifex
  5. BHP Billiton
  6. Thiess
  7. CBH Resources Limited
  8. Ivernia West Inc.
  9. Kagara Zinc Ltd.

For the listed organizations and companies no positive answer has been received as at 23 September 2005.

The LEAD Group also applied for funding from the ministers of health and environment of Australia and NSW. Unfortunately, the Ministers do not see themselves responsible for funding the service. But the Hon. Senator Ian Campbell pointed out his hope that ‘the lead mining industry and major manufactures of lead products in Australia will look favorably upon this presentation and take the opportunity to support the organisation.’ Thus the organisation hopes that Australia’s mining companies consider the Minister’s advice and decide on sponsorship of GLASS.

Feedback from our service users

To demonstrate that GLASS has been successful over the years since its inception here are some statements from clients of the service:

  • "Thank you so much for responding to my questions regarding the stained glass lampshade (with leaded tin solder), and for your terrific website" says an overseas email client.
  • "The Office of Childcare, Children's Services Advisers, child care providers and parents regularly use the expertise of the Lead Advisory Service and find it an invaluable service. I commend you for your important work"
  • "Thanks, you have been 10 times more helpful than anyone else I have called today", says Federal Government employee.
  • "We are engineers doing properly contained abrasive blasting of red lead paint on sewerage system components at the Sydney Water Treatment Plant [after much advice given] I see you are an encyclopaedia there with all this information."

 

Conclusion

105 years ago when the Australian constitution was written the concept of "the environment" was somehow left out. Perhaps they thought the planet was flat and all the waste and pollution would just fall off the edges. And the federal government consequently has no powers to create environmental regulations. So today we have the ridiculous situation whereby the federal government cannot say to a producer – you must phase lead out of your products by a certain date. Instead they have to invite all the state governments and industry and environment groups to talk about what would be possible and they put the resulting lowest common denominator into a National Environment Protection Measure and then extend the deadline by a few years when one company whinges. So this is the process we can all look forward to for the Product Stewardship NEPM. For instance, now that the Vinyl Council of Australia has said it will take them til 2010 to eliminate lead stabilisers in PVC, the Product Stewardship NEPM will not bring that forward to any more reasonable time. It’s up to community groups like mine to ask the obvious: if they can take lead stabilisers out of potable water PVC piping by 1998, why can’t they take them out of all PVC sooner than 2010? We don’t want to see the "Green Lead" campaign hide the facts about lead for another 50 years and only achieve safe management of lead acid batteries globally more than 38 years after that.

The LEAD Group suggests:

  • To effectively protect the environment and human health requires networking at all related levels (regional. national and international) and interaction with responsible governments to establish and implement regulations as urgently needed
  • Find alternatives to minimize the use of lead in all products
  • Maximize the utilization of all lead containing products
  • Control the trade of scrap materials
  • Make sure the recycling of lead follows health and environmental guidelines in every country
  • Partnerships with non-profit-organizations dedicated to lead management information online, on-target, credible and up-to-date, like us, to make sure that everybody gets the information he or she needs to protect themselves, their families and the environment from lead.

There is a lot to be done for a sustainable future and we are convinced that by funding GLASS, industry can help decision makers to get closer to that goal since we form the locus in the network of stakeholders among the government, industry and community. So far we have put a huge effort into sponsorship and fundraising applications and this has hindered us from our main work, which is namely to keep providing this essential service and strive for a truly green lead future within our lifetimes.

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Contents
Introduction
Leaded Petrol Ban
Batteries
E-equipment
Facts of lead poisoning worldwide
Corporate work/International action
Global Lead Advice & Support Service (GLASS)
References

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Last Updated 21 August 2014
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