A national Referral Centre for Lead Poisoning, India's first facility to test for lead poisoning, has come up in Bangalore. The St John's National Academy of Health Sciences and The George Foundation (tgf) of Bangalore have jointly set up the centre. The facility would provide simple, accurate and inexpensive tests for presence of lead in blood. Apart from this, the centre would disseminate information on lead poisoning to government authorities, non-governmental organisations and other institutes. According to Thomas M George, founder of tgf, the problem of lead poisoning is assuming serious dimensions in the country. A study conducted by tgf shows 50 per cent of the children below the age of 12 in major Indian cities suffer from lead poisoning.