PROVIDENCE -- Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch yesterday decried an agreement requiring paint makers to put warnings on paint cans as "an empty gesture," which he says is apparently designed to influence Rhode Island's upcoming retrial of its lead-paint lawsuit.
Attorneys general from 45 states crafted a national agreement with the paint industry to require paint makers to print warnings on their cans telling consumers that preparing an old surface for painting could disturb prior coats of lead paint, which has been banned since 1978.
Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Thomas Reilly, who helped craft the agreement on the warnings, said in a statement that, "Paint companies tell consumers to scrape and sand old paint to prepare for painting, but their [current] warning labels fail to explain that this creates harmful lead dust."
Lead dust is poisonous and especially harmful to children.
Rhode Island is one of five states that have not signed on to the agreement with the paint companies. Utah, Vermont, Missouri and South Carolina are the others, according to Lynch spokesman Michael Healey.
Former Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse sued paint makers to recover damages caused by the lead paint they once manufactured. The paint makers insisted they didn't know lead paint was harmful when they made it. The case attracted national attention last year during a seven-week trial, which ended in a mistrial.
Lynch is pursuing another trial against the paint companies.
He said the agreement to add warnings to new cans of paint was "too little, too late" and "nothing more than a smoke screen."
"These warning labels only address a small portion of the overall problem related to childhood lead poisoning," Lynch said in a statement. "This agreement fails to address the full extent of the dangers of lead paint and, perhaps purposefully, it comes as we are taking steps to retry our case against the lead pigment manufacturers.
"It is difficult not to infer from its latest gambit that the industry is attempting to poison the judgment of potential jurors in the state's retrial of the lead-paint case."
The manufacturers didn't need the approval of attorneys general to warn consumers about lead-paint dangers, he said. The deal requires manufacturers to put warning stickers on cans of paint for only the next 19 months, and to provide consumer education and some training from 2003 to 2007, Lynch said.
Andy Doyle, president of the National Paint and Coatings Association, said in a statement that the warnings "can serve to help consumers avoid lead-dust exposure during the remodeling, renovation or repainting of buildings which may contain old lead-based paint."
"How ironic," Lynch said. "As early as 1939, a paint makers' association told its members the same thing, that they, the lead-paint makers, should warn consumers about the 'dangerous properties' of their product."
Lawyers for the state and the paint companies were in court May 2 to discuss how the retrial should proceed. They are due back in court May 29 to continue the discussion with Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein.
