‘Don’t give toxic medals to outstanding students’
MARCH being the month for graduation rites, an antitoxics watch group yesterday reminded school officials to make sure that the medals and trophies they hand out to their best students are free of lead and other dangerous ingredients.
The EcoWaste Coalition noted that despite previous warnings, some schools inadvertently give out to their outstanding students medals coated with lead-tainted paint.
It said that even in small amounts, the absorption of lead through inhalation, ingestion and to some extent skin absorption may cause serious neurological and behavioral problems among children.
“Please don’t award your stu- dent achievers with tokens laden with brain-damaging lead,” EcoWaste coordinator Thony Dizon reminded school authorities.
He urged them to tell donors or suppliers to make sure that the medals to be handed out to graduates do not contain leadtainted paint coatings.
“Aside from medals, purchasers should likewise require unleaded paint for other tokens of recognition such as trophies or glass, metal and plastic plaques,” Dizon added.
He said that the use of lead in the production of school supplies was strictly prohibited under the Chemical Control Order for Lead and Lead Compounds of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
The DENR has set the allowable limit for lead in paint at 90 parts per million (ppm).
But Dizon said that most medals they have examined contained dangerous levels of lead, way above the allowed amount.
In 2013, the EcoWaste reported that it detected a high lead content of up to 123,880 ppm in 22 out of 30 medals they examined in some schools and stores selling medals in Manila.
Last year, the group again inspected medal and trophy stores in Manila and found out that all 10 medals they tested had dangerous lead levels of up to 39,500 ppm. In addition, all the three trophies they examined contained as much as up to 11,500 ppm of lead.
Dizon asked schools to issue a general precaution advising recipients not to bite or play with their medals to avoid ingesting paint chips that may contain high levels of lead.
According to the World Health Organization, lead is one of the “10 chemicals of major public health concern” and lead-based paints are a major source of children’s exposure to the toxic chemical.