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Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint

Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint (GAELP) is a voluntary partnership established to help achieve international goals to prevent children's exposure to lead paint and to minimize occupational exposures to lead paint. The broad objective of the Alliance is to promote a phase-out of the manufacture and sale of paints containing lead and to eventually eliminate the risks that such paints pose. Substitutes for lead paint are cost effective and relatively easy to obtain. Paints without lead additives have been used in many countries for decades and have proven to be viable, cost-effective alternatives to lead paint. Establishing legal limits on lead in new paint has been shown to be an effective tool to decrease the sale and use of lead paint. Yet there are still many areas of the world where it is legal to sell paint containing lead additives. Working together through the Global Alliance, governments, industry and NGOS are working to protect people around the world from exposure to lead through paint.

The overall goal of the partnership is to prevent children's exposure to lead via paints containing lead and to minimize occupational exposures to lead in paint. The broad objective is to phase out the manufacture and sale of paints containing lead and eventually to eliminate the risks from such paint.

Specific objectives are:

  • To raise the awareness of government authorities and regulators, the private sector, manufacturers, consumers, workers, trade unions and health-care providers about the toxicity of lead in paints and the availability of technically superior and safer alternatives;
  • To catalyse the design and implementation of appropriate prevention-based programmes to reduce and eliminate risks from the use of lead in paints and products coated with lead paints;
  • To help identify paint manufacturers and formulators that continue to produce and market paints containing lead so as to foster actions to phase out lead from their products;
  • To promote the establishment of appropriate national regulatory frameworks to stop the manufacture, import, export, sale and use of lead paints and products coated with lead paints;
  • As appropriate, to promote international third-party certification of new paint products to help consumers to recognize paint and coatings without added lead;
  • To share guidance and promote assistance to identify and reduce potential lead exposure in and around housing, childcare facilities and schools in which paint containing lead and paint dust is present and in industrial facilities producing or using paint containing lead to reduce workers lead exposure.