Health, environment experts renew calls for government to ban lead paint in Indonesia

Experts and activists have renewed their calls for the government to ban the use of lead-based paints, which can pose a health hazard, particularly for children. Cofounder Yuyun Ismawati of the Nexus3 Foundation, which focuses on environmental health, said that the harmful effects of lead for human health had been discovered millennia before the global phaseout of lead and lead-based products. Unlike other countries that have banned lead paint, Indonesia still allows the general use of the product and the regulatory instruments it has to limit the lead content in paint are mostly voluntary. In 2015, Nexus3 studied 121 paint products from 63 brands and found that 83 percent contained more than 90 parts per million (ppm) of lead. The study also surveyed 119 units of playground equipment in 32 parks in Jakarta and found that 69 percent used materials containing over 90 ppm …