Lead contamination in santo amaro defies decades of research and delayed reaction on the part of the public authorities

Abstract

Lead contamination in Santo Amaro (BA) has been studied for almost 40 years since the first signs of evidence were found in the blood samples of employees at the Brazilian Lead Company (COBRAC), and in the urine and hair of fishermen. Continued contamination carries on motivating further research, 20 years after the closure of Cobrac, highlighting the lack of public policies to prevent the risks to the population exposed to contamination, especially children and adult women. This article presents a chronological and critical analysis of scientific literature on the case and discusses the limited participation of the social sciences in the discussion, as well as the need to include the affected population, based on the prospect of an extended peer community (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1997). From the perspective of feedback of the research to the original community (Di Giulio, 2010), it was found that only 6.45% of this scientific production is available in local libraries.