My random thoughts are, perhaps you use them for inspiration:
1) Are there any paint chemists’ WhatsApp groups? You could offer assistance in reformulating paints with little to no cost premium for health reasons? It should be easy for them to talk to the managers (in a way which would make them cool or gain a salary bonus), such as forwarding an image that highlights possible health marketing and thus profit. This could cause a ‘race’ toward eliminating lead, since competitors could point out other paints’ harmfulness.
2) How many labs for $30-50k are needed per country or region? Can the lab make profit in other ways too, using the same equipment? Would some regulators be interested in getting the equipment, testing samples from around, and making profit?
for example in this memo for the US Federal Government
Do you know about regulations.gov? These documents that mention ‘lead’ are open for comments. The EU Commission’s initiatives also are open for feedback and evidence. Maybe something related to import? As a sidenote, affluent market regulations should prohibit lead paint. Selling at these markets is a forgone opportunity for manufacturers of unsafe paint. Also, are there any MNCs that would have subsidiaries in different nations of different safety levels? That would be a bad rep.
1) We don’t know of paint chemists’ WhatsApp groups, but there could some out there, or some other kind of association that we could offer assistance to directly. There are definitely paint manufacturer associations in some countries, and this seems like a good approach.
2) It’d depend on the size of the country, but probably only one analysis machine would be needed in most of the African countries we work in, and it would have a lot of spare capacity for analysing other things or samples from other countries. Yes, the labs can be profitable and can test for multiple things using the same equipment (other sources of lead, other heavy metals), but there would need to be a demand for analysis. It could be that the demand will be created by regulation, and labs will start opening up once there’s a market for it. But if governments are reluctant to put in regulation until there is local testing capacity, it could be hard to make a start.
Thanks for the reply! … Well, that seems like a unique profit opportunity for the government that first invests into a testing facility: when countries pass regulation, then they would test in the lab which has been built first.
So cool.
My random thoughts are, perhaps you use them for inspiration:
1) Are there any paint chemists’ WhatsApp groups? You could offer assistance in reformulating paints with little to no cost premium for health reasons? It should be easy for them to talk to the managers (in a way which would make them cool or gain a salary bonus), such as forwarding an image that highlights possible health marketing and thus profit. This could cause a ‘race’ toward eliminating lead, since competitors could point out other paints’ harmfulness.
2) How many labs for $30-50k are needed per country or region? Can the lab make profit in other ways too, using the same equipment? Would some regulators be interested in getting the equipment, testing samples from around, and making profit?
Do you know about regulations.gov? These documents that mention ‘lead’ are open for comments. The EU Commission’s initiatives also are open for feedback and evidence. Maybe something related to import? As a sidenote, affluent market regulations should prohibit lead paint. Selling at these markets is a forgone opportunity for manufacturers of unsafe paint. Also, are there any MNCs that would have subsidiaries in different nations of different safety levels? That would be a bad rep.
Thanks for these thoughts!
1) We don’t know of paint chemists’ WhatsApp groups, but there could some out there, or some other kind of association that we could offer assistance to directly. There are definitely paint manufacturer associations in some countries, and this seems like a good approach.
2) It’d depend on the size of the country, but probably only one analysis machine would be needed in most of the African countries we work in, and it would have a lot of spare capacity for analysing other things or samples from other countries. Yes, the labs can be profitable and can test for multiple things using the same equipment (other sources of lead, other heavy metals), but there would need to be a demand for analysis. It could be that the demand will be created by regulation, and labs will start opening up once there’s a market for it. But if governments are reluctant to put in regulation until there is local testing capacity, it could be hard to make a start.
Thanks for the reply! … Well, that seems like a unique profit opportunity for the government that first invests into a testing facility: when countries pass regulation, then they would test in the lab which has been built first.