ILA member companies continue to deliver reductions in employee lead exposures

Enrolment in ILA’s Voluntary Blood Lead Reduction Programme is a condition of membership of the Association. Launched in 2013, the programme is designed to facilitate best practice sharing between companies to ensure continuous reductions in employee lead exposure.

On Day Three of our recent Pb Online event attended by over 180 delegates, Dr Khareen Singh presented the results of the latest analysis of employee blood lead levels at the original 32 member sites based in Europe and North America that joined the programme in 2013. This highlighted that the average blood lead in this cohort at the end of 2020 was 11.3µg Pb/dL blood compared to over 17µg Pb/dL blood at the end of 2013.

Our Programme is designed to go beyond mere regulatory compliance and is based upon the concept of continuous improvement, sharing of best practice through workshops, peer to peer dialogue, annual benchmarking and the establishment of a challenging target. This has encouraged year on year reductions in employee exposure across both primary and secondary (recyclers) lead producers. At the end of 2020 less than 10% of workers had blood lead levels exceeding our industry voluntary target of 20µg Pb/dL blood. This is a significant achievement but our companies are not content with this and will continue on the journey of reducing employee lead exposures to levels as low as reasonably practicable; a commitment made in our seven Material Stewardship Guiding Principles.

In recent years we have been encouraged that lead producing sites in China and India have joined our Voluntary Blood Lead Reduction Programme and we look forward to helping them deliver improvements in worker conditions by participating in this important Industry initiative.

Read more on how ILA members continue to deliver reductions in lead exposure

Cover image: photo credit: Campine.