Acting Against Lead

Public concern over lead pollution in Dhaka city has for long been one of the least addressed of issues in the policy arena. But the expression of public anger appears to be having some effect. At long last, the government has decided to reactivate a project designed to ensure elimination of lead from fuel refined at the Eastern Refinery Ltd. This coincides with approval of a World Bank assisted plan to improve traffic conditions in Dhaka including measures to clean up the air polluted by emission from petrol-powered vehicles. Taken together, it appears that things are certainly moving in the right direction as far as making Dhaka air fit for human consumption goes.

According to World Bank estimates, exposure to polluted air causes 15,000 premature deaths and millions of episodes of sickness in Dhaka every year. This is a fairly horrifying piece of statistics, but this may not even give the whole picture. The effect of lead poisoning on children is a major problem, which such statistics cannot reveal. Effect on children can lead to life-long sickness. Yet, there has been little or no effort to reduce lead content in fuel or smoke pollution in the city. There is never a dearth of excuses for doing nothing, even when this exposes millions of citizens to chronic sickness, reduced productive energy, spiralling medical costs to treat symptoms and even death.

Given the above situation, it can be said that successive governments have been responsible for negligence of the worst kind. It ought to be remembered that ERL has for long had a lead separator unit which has simply been lying idle. Lack of official urgency and plain inertia had combined to make sure that lead remains in the fuel used by vehicles in the country. The question now is, how soon would the new government decision to make locally-refined fuel lead-free be implemented? The answer should be, "immediately". Only speedy implementation of the decision can ensure that bureaucratic inertia and political indifference, which characterise so many aspects of governance in Bangladesh, would not take over once the public outcry dies down. The government ought to be aware that there is no time to lose if the present and future generations are to be protected from this silent killer.