GLASS provides information & referrals on lead poisoning & lead contamination prevention & management, with the goal of eliminating lead poisoning globally & protecting the environment from lead.

Achievements & Highlights

•  Over 60 volunteers provided GLASS as a service to the public in this 6 month period

• GLASS handled & data-entered 3,685 calls (emails & phone calls) in the 6 months from May ‘06 to Nov ‘06 and 5607 calls for the 11 months of the calendar year to date in 2006

• GLASS calls to date in 2006 came from: NSW 2344 calls (42% of total), Overseas 1938 (35%), Vic 408 (7%), ACT 324 (6%), Qld 295 (5%), WA 162 (3%), SA 95 (2%), Tas 28 calls & NT 13 calls

• GLASS distributed to date in 2006, 985 copies of information products published by the Department of Environment and Heritage (DEH) for a total of 20,911 since 1998

• Subjects most often discussed in calls in this period were: lead poisoning 2630 calls (24%), policy (eg answering the questions “when was lead paint banned?” or “when will lead petrol be phased out globally?” or “why don’t governments force hardware stores to distribute lead booklets?”, - 1772 calls in 2006 year-to-date (16% of total call subjects), consumer products 1171 (11%), service referral 1029 (9%), other 989 (9%), lead workers 738 (6%),   paint 662 (6%), environmental testing/sampling 550 (5%), renovation 386 (4%).

• This compares with subjects most often discussed since 1998: lead poisoning (19%), other (which includes demolition, smelter/mining issues etc) (13%), service referral (12%), paint (9%) and policy (8%)

• GLASS volunteers added 534 information products to the GLASS library database since 1st July 2006, making a total of 8,917 items in the library and no-one has yet refuted the claim that this is the largest lead library on the planet

• There were 94,093 page views from 139 countries in the 5 months between July 01, 2006 and Nov 30, 2006 on www.lead.org.au