Petitioners call on Sherwin Williams, PPG to stop making lead paint
By Rachel Dissell, Brie Zeltner, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio— More than 5,300 people have signed an online petition calling on Cleveland-based Sherwin Williams and Pittsburgh's PPG Industries, two of the nation's largest paint producers, to stop making lead paint for sale abroad.
Lead-based paint has been banned from residential use in the United States since 1978 because it causes irreparable harm to the developing brains of children and can lead to learning disabilities, behavior problems, and lifelong health issues. At high levels, exposure to the toxin leads to seizures, coma and even death.
Yet lead-based paint is still manufactured by U.S. companies, usually as industrial coatings, which are supposed to only be sold commercially and used on metal surfaces such as cars and bridges. Lead makes the pigment more durable, the companies say.
In dozens of countries, though, this paint is sold to consumers in hardware stores with no warning labels and often ends up on doors, windows and other surfaces in homes, said Perry Gottesfeld, head of San Francisco-based Occupational Knowledge (OK) International, which aims to reduce workers' exposure to industrial pollutants in the developing world.
OK International, which published the change.org petition about nine months ago to draw attention to the issue, first found this lead-based paint about ten years ago on shelves in India while working with partners in that country. In the past decade, their group and others have found similar results in Latin America, Africa and other Asian countries, Gottesfeld said.
"Every country we looked at had some lead in the paint, and most cases it was in more than half of the new paint we bought in hardware stores," he said. Published studies on some of their results can be seen here.
"It comes as a shock to a lot of people that lead paint is still being used and made. There is a lot of disbelief around this."
Many of the petition's hundreds of comments echo that sentiment. The petition currently has more than 5,300 signatures, from supporters as far flung as Canada, Cameroon, Tanzania and the United Kingdom.
A lot of different companies sell the dangerous paint, according to published research, including Sherwin Williams. In Lebanon, a recent test of the company's Dutch Boy brand oil-based paint found lead in three new samples taken from hardware store shelves and labeled "lead-free." One sample contained 360 times more lead than the acceptable U.S. legal limit.
When reached for comment, Sherwin Williams spokesman Mike Conway said the company's lead-based paint products are "not being used in homes."
"You wouldn't walk into a local store and find it," he said. "It can't be accessed by the consumer."
PPG emailed the following comment: "PPG does not use lead as an ingredient in its consumer paints and coatings anywhere in the world."
It's the same argument many other companies have used in justifying their continued sale of lead-based paint and other toxic products such as asbestos, said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, an epidemiologist and lead poisoning expert at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
"They may argue that it's only used for industrial purposes, but I find it hard to believe that they track it to make sure that it's not used in homes or daycare centers once it leaves their hands," he said. "They can't be confident that products that contain excessive amounts of lead aren't being used in homes or in close proximity to children."
Conway said that Sherwin Williams licenses lead-based paint products to companies abroad, but that these companies have to sign "specific terms" agreeing on how and where the products can be sold.
When asked how researchers have found Sherwin Williams products in stores that tested positive for lead, Conway said he "couldn't speculate."
"I don't have any information that it's happening so I can't answer a negative," he said.
'Small piece of the pie'
Conway also said the bulk of Sherwin Williams' business is in residential paint, which does not contain lead.
"This is a tiny, tiny piece of our overall pie, given that what we're known for is house paint," he said.
Gottesfeld finds that argument familiar but unconvincing. "If it's such a small part of the business, why Is it such a big deal? Why are we preserving it then?"
More than 50 countries have legal limits on lead in paints, particularly in decorative paints most likely to harm children. Only one paint company has entirely removed lead from its products, according to the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint.
AzkoNobel, the multi-national paint, coating and chemical company with local offices in Columbus, stopped manufacturing lead paint in 2011. In a white paper on the topic, the company's sales manager for extrusion coatings, Ben Mitchell, said the effort serves both business and environmental interests.
"Our customers care about their own sustainability. We all want a better, healthier environment. Our commitment, foresight, and financial investments in lead-free products will result in healthy sales growth and healthy lifestyles for all of us," he said.
In 2014, a group of Sherwin Williams and PPG shareholders pressured the companies to report to board members on options for reducing or eliminating the production of lead-based paint products. The companies separately petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to have the proposals removed from their 2015 shareholder meetings, citing two reasons: it would enable shareholders to "micro-manage the company product selection on an uninformed basis" and because the proposal contained misleading information about lead poisoning.
The SEC agreed with PPG. The Sherwin Williams shareholders withdrew their proposal after "productive dialogue" with company Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications Robert Wells, according to a letter appended to that SEC filing.
The company told shareholders it was involved with UNEP's Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint.
Company spokesman Conway said Sherwin Williams supports the alliance, but could not say what form that support takes. The alliance's two-year plan calls for an increase the number of companies that have phased out lead from their products, but offers no firm deadlines or penalties for non-compliance.
Last week, Sherwin Williams agreed to buy competitor Valspar for roughly $11.3 billion in a cash transaction.
Workers, refugees also at risk
Lead-based paint, even for commercial uses, doesn't pose a lot of direct risk to Americans. It's been phased out since the 1970's because of its environmental and health hazards, even though its use on structural steel hasn't been officially banned.
But the workers who make the products are often in countries with less stringent occupational safety laws than our own, said Lanphear.
"Workers also take that exposure home to their children," when they've been handling dangerous chemicals and don't follow safety measures to ensure proper clean up, he said.
Sherwin Williams did not respond to a request for a list of company or subsidiary manufacturing facilities where workers make or handle lead-based paint products.
Globally, over 90 percent of children who have lead poisoning live in developing countries where much of this paint is being sold, Lanphear said. And many of these children come to the United States as immigrants and refugees already poisoned.
Jamie Bullus, the refugee clinic coordinator for Neighborhood Family Practice in Cleveland, said that refugee children are exposed to lead overseas from a variety of sources, and some arrive in the city with lead in their blood. They remain more vulnerable to further exposure to lead contaminated soil and housing after settling in the United States due to malnutrition, iron-deficiency and living in high-risk older housing.
"This is a problem that comes back to haunt us, and we see it in every large city in the country," Gottesfeld said.
Lanphear and other lead poisoning experts question the logic of companies continuing to make products they know are hazardous.
"If there are alternatives, and there are, why would we continue to use paint that's toxic to humans and the environment?"