USAID provides grant for lead level tests

BANDUNG: The United States Agency for International Development has given a US$25,000 grant to a program that will test lead levels in schoolchildren and street vendors in Bandung.

Suzanne Billharz of the USAID's US-Asia Environmental Partnership said on Monday such tests were important to determine the influence of leaded gasoline on human health in order to push the government to speed up the switch to unleaded gasoline.

"We have provided a grant for two forms for examination; test kits for 220 elementary school students and direct examinations (conventionally done by taking blood samples for laboratory testing) for about 200 other residents," she said.

There have been reports chronicling worsening air quality in Bandung, with high lead levels in some parts of the city. Recent checks of vehicles in Bandung found 63 vehicles that failed emission tests, according to air pollution expert Puji Lestari from the Bandung Institute of Technology.

"Forty-seven percent of 64 people we randomly examined, from school children to policemen and parking attendants, showed increased lead levels in their blood, higher than allowed levels," she said. -- JP