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| Media Transcript |
Legislative Council INTERVIEW: Radio Adelaide: Nyrstar’s Ten by 10 Project to lower children’s blood lead levels in Port Pirie June 4th, 2010 (Changarathil: Now while you may not think lead poisoning is something that can happen to today’s generation … if you live in Port Pirie it’s a different story. Data released earlier in the week by State authorities showed that in the 2010 first quarter … 43% of Port Pirie children … lead in their blood, above the World Health Organisation’s official level of concern of 10 micrograms per decilitre of blood. Fingers automatically start pointing to the local smelter as a cause, as the figures were in conjunction with increased levels of lead in the air. Nyrstar, the company that owns the smelter, has blamed mechanical problems for their recent low quality product and high emissions levels and say they are committed to correcting the problem, but how much damage has already been done … Mark Parnell joins us now to shed more light on the issue and talk about what he thinks needs to be done to fix this … has Nyrstar effectively failed in its Ten by 10 Project to lower children’s blood lead levels to below WHO standards by the end of 2010?)
Well, clearly they have because … we’re in 2010 … I think the EPA and the Health Department would all agree that when you’ve got the number of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood still around about half or 44% I think it was then clearly they’re not going to get down to their target of having only 5% of children in that category by the end of the year … the question is obviously can we point the finger at the Nyrstar lead smelter as the cause of the lead … I think absolutely we can. In the past there have been some confounding of statistics because we had lead in most petrol … since they phased out lead in petrol and since in Port Pirie this … smelter is the biggest show in town … biggest industrial facility there … it’s the only lead smelter, then clearly there is a direct correlation between lead levels … in people and the lead smelter … real question I think is what is being done and is it being done quickly enough to keep in particularly children safe? Now, the reason the emphasis is on children is that we know that elevated levels of lead in the body lead to reduced IQ, reduced intellectual development and brain functioning … I’ve seen figures that I think there’s about a three point drop in IQ for every 10 units of pollution … that’s why the focus has been on kids … to have a town where you’ve got … over 40% of children still in that dangerous bracket says to me that not enough is being done … it poses an awful dilemma for the people of Port Pirie … should they have to put up with brain damaged children in order to have jobs and economic security? And the answer has to be clearly no, they are entitled to live in a clean environment … they should also be able to have the economic opportunities that something like a lead smelter provides
(Changarathil: How’s lead actually absorbed into the body?)
Well, it comes in in a whole manner of ways … breathed in … it can come in through the mouth with people not washing their hands properly … I guess the main source of lead that is causing problems with people … some of it is sort of fresh emissions that are coming out of the plant … every day, but you’ve also got a lot of lead that’s already in the environment for the decades that the smelter’s been operating … dust on the ground … dust in people’s roof cavities of their homes … over the years there have been a range of programs to sort of clean up the town, clean up the homes; some people have even been relocated … further away from the plant … coming back to the kids, the fact that they do put their hands in their mouths, especially little kids … often more exposed to environmental dangers than adults …
(Changarathil: And how long does one need to be exposed to these lead levels to show visible signs of … lead contamination or brain damage or other issues?)
I honestly don’t know the answer in terms of exposure, but we just need to … think back to basic chemistry and biology … these are heavy metals … they are very persistent in the environment … that means they’re persistent in people’s bodies as well … really the object of the exercise has to be to get exposure levels down as quickly as we can … the fact that there are exposure levels shows that medical authorities are well aware of the dangers … this is … the biggest lead smelter in Australia … the people of Port Pirie are bearing the brunt of inaction … of many years … Nyrstar is the current operator, but it was Zinifex before then, Pasminco before then … this smelter has been in operation for a long time … the town of Port Pirie is heavily polluted as a result … the recent revelations show that whilst we thought progress was being made in terms of blood lead levels in children, it seems that this last year or so … the levels have gone back up, almost as bad as they were when the lead reduction program started 5 years ago
(Changarathil: Mark, what is the impact of this high level of lead contamination … in terms of plant and animal life in Port Pirie and waters?)
That’s a very good question … because the smelter is located in town … most of the emissions … it is a heavy metal, they’d fall out in fairly close proximity. I’m not aware of any studies that have been done … on surrounding bushland … if we take, for example, a similar pollution case just across the water in Whyalla the red dust pollution there, which is not lead … that mostly fell out within a few kilometres of the plant .. there wasn’t a great impact on sort of surrounding vegetation and animals, but no doubt any heavy metal that’s bad for people is also bad for cats and dogs … bad for native wildlife as well … the emphasis has been on people … children, especially that developing period when their minds, their brains are developing, when we know elevated lead levels can hold back their development
(Changarathil: Now, Nyrstar is supposedly a major employer … how will it impact them, should there be some stricter sanctions on their operations?)
Well, it’s the big dilemma Tom … it always is in industrial towns, where … the biggest employer … operation on whom … the town depends for its livelihood is being asked to do more, to spend more, to change their infrastructure, their filtration systems – it’s going to be an expensive exercise … companies always cry poor … companies have an eye to the bottom line … they will do whatever they are made to do … that’s when in the South Australian context we have to come back to the EPA … they’re the body … regulator that licences pollution … my understanding is that there were pollution targets built into the Nyrstar licence … I understand that those targets have been breached. What I’m not sure about is whether the licence contained any punitive action that results from a breach … at the most serious level … prosecutions are possible, but I think the most important thing for the people of Port Pirie is for the company to be made to spend whatever it takes to clean up their operations, so people aren’t exposed to ongoing new sources of lead pollution
(Changarathil: … this issue brings back to focus the whole planning issue … should housing be deadlocked in areas which is predominantly industrial …?)
Well, often what we find is that the planning rules, if there were any, go back so far that it predates the period when people were worried about it … it used to be that having houses close to the factory was a great thing … these days our planning laws do have separation distances … between houses and in particular noxious industries … it’s just an historical legacy I guess that … the smelter is right in the middle of town … the houses are relatively close by … it becomes an expensive exercise to relocate people … under our planning laws once someone is in a house and they’re living there they can’t be forced out. They need to be … compensated … so it’s an expensive and it’s an ongoing process, but rather than … blaming the victims and trying to just move the people away, the other solution is to make the plant cleaner … that’s got to be the starting point
(Changarathil: Mark, thank you for joining us this morning …)
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