At the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) held in Budapest 25-29 September 2006, Forum V adopted a statement on mercury, lead, and cadmium urging IFCS participants and the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) to “consider actions at the local, national, regional and global levels for mercury, lead and cadmium, as appropriate, with particular emphasis on the needs of developing countries and countries with economies in transition.”1 The statement followed the commitment by States at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to “Promote reduction of the risks posed by heavy metals that are harmful to human health and the environment, including through a review of relevant studies, such as the United Nations Environment Programme global assessment of mercury and its compounds”;2 and the UNEP Governing Council’s decision urging “Governments, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations to work with the private sector to identify effective ways of reducing exposures to lead and to strengthen monitoring and surveillance efforts and the treatment of lead poisoning.”
This Thought Starter and the Forum VI session on lead and cadmium respond to these requests by examining whether the dispersal of lead and cadmium through international trade of these metals as commodities and in products and wastes may warrant coordinated international action to protect human health and the environment. The Thought Starter analyzes whether such trade may lead to problems that cannot be addressed by countries acting alone, whether those problems may rise to the level of an international concern, and thus whether they call for a coordinated international approach to addressing them. The Thought Starter and Forum VI session are intended to complement other ongoing United Nations work on lead and cadmium by providing input to discussions on the subject that may take place in 2009 at the second International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM-2) and the Twenty-Fifth Session of the UNEP Governing Council.