POISON information coordinator at the Caribbean Poison Information Network (CARPIN), Sherika Whitelocke-Ballingsingh, says the Government’s move towards protecting the Jamaican population from exposure to lead in paint is a step in the right direction.

She was addressing a JIS think tank on Wednesday, where she gave an update on the Draft Jamaican Standard for Specification for the Limit on Lead Content in Paint, which was made available for public comments between October and December of 2021.

Whitelocke-Ballingsingh is vice-chair of Bureau of Standards Jamaica’s (BSJ) Paint and Surface Coatings Technical Committee, which is mandated to establish a lead-in-paint specification for Jamaica.

“We have reached the phase in the discussion from the public comments that were shared. From there, the team will go into the reviewing process…where it goes through the relevant committees of the Bureau of Standards, then on to the Ministry [of Industry, Investment and Commerce] level,” Whitelocke-Ballingsingh told JIS News.

She explained that one important aspect of the public discussions is that persons from different institutions and technical bodies were asked to be a part of the process, noting that this ensures openness and transparency.

“It also shows a move into giving everyone the opportunity to be a part of this process, to be aware of it, to actually pose the relevant questions in regards to what the Government will be putting together to protect the people of Jamaica; whether it’s a layman question or it’s a technical question,” she noted.

The stakeholder group, which includes CARPIN, the Jamaica Customs Agency, paint companies and members of the scientific community such as the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences at The University of the West Indies, participates in regular meetings at the BSJ.

“Under the BSJ mandate, the stakeholder group is presently reviewing the paint standards for the country and from those standards, what you’ll see when the final publication comes out, is how is it that we’ll control our ports, how we’ll conduct testing in country, how we’ll do monitoring,” Whitelocke-Ballingsingh said.

“We’ll see the role of the industry, the role for civil society and the role for Government entities coming out of that,” she added.