Knowledge about lead as a public health issue has increased substantially in the past few decades, but decision-making to deal with public health issues due to lead exposure has largely been absent.

The degree of public health protection enacted by our decision-makers can only be described as negligent. It is also apparent there is a huge difference between the acts of passing laws to minimise lead exposure and enforcing them.

As a result, lead affected children may be misdiagnosed with autism, lead exposure resulting in behavioural problems results in teenagers being jailed, and lead-affected adults suffer from a dizzying array of degenerative diseases before finishing up with lead-induced dementia if they don’t die of lead co-morbidities beforehand.

Think about the fact that lead paint has been banned, but is still in use in the automotive industry. Think of the fact that there is an EPA warning of the dangers of renovating pre-1980s homes, but no legislation to mandate appropriate care, like asbestos?

I learned a new acronym which is relevant to this continuing discussion, CSR. That’s not Colonial Sugar Refining but Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility, which is an interesting concept.

In an ideal world CSR is intended to align a company’s social and environmental activities with it’s business purpose and values. In doing so CSR activities should mitigate risks, enhance reputation and contribute to business results.

Unless you’re a big mining company like Glencore of course.

I realise it’s pretty hard to generate a positive spin when it comes to environmental activities. I probably don’t need to give any examples to make this point, though I do have some since I’ve worked with a few mining companies in the past. 

Still, an indication of a bit of social and moral responsibility would be nice. Being caught paying corrupt government officials with bags of cash kind of dampens the moral status of a company though, even if that’s the accepted way that business has to be done to get favorable prices for your commodities. I realise that you do business however you must, but openly carrying out corrupt behaviour does tarnish things a bit, even if everybody else does it too.

How about social responsibility then? I think I could argue that’s a failure as well. If you compare Glencore’s predecessors’ actions to Glencore’s, there is a marked difference. If someone comes to a company and presents irrefutable evidence that existing safety measures are harming employees of the company, is hiding behind misguided regulations the most responsible action? A sponsored pilot to gather information and develop alternatives would have been so much more responsible and enhanced their reputation. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on Glencore’s web site to be impressed with all their responsible actions. If you read some of the environmental comments about Mt Isa you won’t be impressed, though the miss the fat that the worst lead hazards in Mt isa are old houses.

They either don’t care, or equally likely are not allowed to care depending on the larger corporate culture. So we’re either dealing with people who don’t give a damn about worker health, or who are afraid to speak up because it will destroy their careers. That doesn’t say a lot of good things about their employer or work environment from a CSR viewpoint.

If the treatment of whistle-blowers (think ATO and ADF) is any indication, it takes a pretty special kind of person to lay it all on the line to reveal the unpalatable truth. The reaction of governments, who on the one hand praise whistle-blower’s activities and then jail them, makes it fairly clear that speaking up is a really bad idea. I’m pretty sure the same would go for company employees that cause embarrassment, even if black-listing someone in the industry isn’t quite as bad as jail, or is it? In this sort of environment, blaming employees for inaction seems somewhat unrealistic, even if doing nothing could result in significant harm to workers.

Even Universities and public broadcasters aren’t immune.

I can think of an instance where researchers from Newcastle University were testing water quality in Tasmanian rivers and were starting to find fairly extreme heavy metal contamination. One of the researchers talked about the results to a local (Hobart) radio station and the researchers were summarily recalled to Newcastle, the project terminated.  Would it surprise you to learn that the only diagnosed case of Minamata disease (methylmercury poisoning) in Australia was in Tasmania?

The ABC had a science program called Catalyst that was pretty successful until the day they screened a couple of very-well researched and somewhat controversial programs about the usefulness and risks of statins. Pressure from outraged drug companies resulted in the crew that produced the programs being fired, and the Catalyst series being shut down.

So here we are, with things FUBAR to use a military term. We have a company where the acronym CSR (as defined above) has no meaning, government departments who are either too incompetent, spineless or corrupt to admit there might be a problem, and health services run by the 3 wise monkeys as far as lead is concerned.

What are the chances of a positive outcome in trying to inject a bit of sanity with regard to lead biohazard management and treatment for sub-clinical lead poisoning?

If I’m silly enough to be honest, pretty slim, but we’ll have to see. It turns out there are other people who care, and if enough of us can get together, who knows?

I think I’ll go fairly quiet over Christmas, but expect to hear more from me in the new year. People have remarked I’m too stupid to give up so who am I to argue.