By Bernice Bessey
An environmental non-governmental organisation, Ecological Restoration, has joined the international community to campaign against paint lead poisoning that is having a harmful effect on humans, especially children.
According to the NGO, research carried in Ghana indicated that 6 out of 18 tested 33%od lead concentration, five tested 28% and three 17%. This outcome was arrived at when the NGO participated in a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research in 2013, where 18 paints purchased from retail shops all tested positive with lead poisoning.
To address this health hazard, the Executive Director of the NGO, Emmanuel Odjam-Akumatey, said preventive measures had been adopted, which is a national mandatory policy that would phase out the manufacturing and sale of paints containing lead, a major source of childhood lead poisoning.
“It’s essential for our society to respond to this global challenge and make the phasing out of lead paint a top public health priority. We must act with urgency, as the health of health of our children can be permanently and irreversibly damaged, even at very low exposures, from lead,” he noted.
Lead is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as one of the 10 chemicals of major public health concern, he stated. It is also a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems, and is particularly harmful to young children. Childhood lead exposure is estimated to contribute to about 600,000 new cases of children developing lead poisoning.