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Does Australia expose children to unhealthy lead levels?

Updated November 05, 2012 20:54:00


Source: 7.30 | Duration: 5min 51sec

Topics: air-pollution, child-health-and-behaviour, environmental-health, environmental-policy, australia


LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Up to a 100,000 Australian children may have elevated levels of lead in their blood and experts are saying we need action.

Excessive exposure to the heavy metal is bad for anyone, but particularly for children, who can end up suffering problems with brain function and behaviour.

A group of environmental scientists says Australia lags behind other developed countries when it comes to lead levels.

Mike Sexton reports.

MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: When Michelle Greig takes her son Darcy food shopping, she uses it as a teaching opportunity. A little bit of maths is combined with an awareness of health and hygiene.

MICHELLE GREIG: We do live in Port Pirie where we do have a lead smelter, so we've made adjustments to our lifestyle and it's about emphasising those extra little points of training good habits into our children.

MIKE SEXTON: It's a lesson well learnt by the six-year-old, who's happy to demonstrate the art of hand cleaning.

DARCY: I now do my wrist and the top and the bottom.

MIKE SEXTON: And why do you do that?

DARCY: So we can be healthy.

MIKE SEXTON: This is the reason why Darcy Greig wash his hands so thoroughly. Port Pirie is home to the world's largest lead smelter. Smelting lead is a dirty job and for generations pollution from the smelter has found its way into the city. Lead dust is particularly a problem for young children because it can cause learning difficulties, behavioural problems and reduced memory and IQ.

MARK TAYLOR, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, MACQUARIE UNI.: If there's lead in the air, that lead then gets deposited and these depositions then contaminate surfaces or objects which they then touch and they then put their hands or the object itself into their mouths.

MIKE SEXTON: The idea that lead is dangerous has long been settled, but what continues to be debated is how much of the metal can the body absorb without it having an effect? Lead is measured in micrograms per decilitre of blood. In the 1970s a reading of 30 was considered acceptable. In the 1980s, that was reduced to 25. And then in the 1990s came down to the current level of 10. Now that figure is again under review by the National Health and Medical Research Council because of changes by developed countries overseas.

MARK TAYLOR: The Germans a few years ago dropped the level to 3.5 micrograms per decilitre, the Americans in June this year effectively dropped it to five micrograms per decilitre and I understand that Canada are on the verge - this fall, they're gonna drop their level.

MIKE SEXTON: Environmental scientist Mark Taylor from Macquarie University believes Australia has no choice but to lower its threshold. Today in a letter to the Medical Journal of Australia, academics including Professor Taylor argue overwhelming evidence shows lead levels should be reduced below one.

MARK TAYLOR: We had a meeting on 5th June this year, we had a lead forum, we had some international speakers and the view was unanimous. There was no argument to the consensus that we need to reduce the acceptable blood lead levels. And there were people at that meeting who were a part of the NHMRC committee.

MIKE SEXTON: If the guideline level is reduced to five, Professor Taylor estimates 100,000 Australian children under the age of four will show too much lead in their system, not just in Mount Isa, Port Pirie and Broken Hill, but other places where lead has been handled such as Esperance, Townsville, Lake Macquarie and industrial suburbs of major cities.

Nowhere is the level of lead exposure more sensitive than in Port Pirie, where Geoff Brock spent more than 30 years working in the smelter.

GEOFF BROCK, INDEPENDENT MP, SA: In those days there was a heck of a lot of emissions coming out on a daily basis and at one stage I had a lead-in-blood count of probably about 70, 75.

MIKE SEXTON: He's now the independent state MP for the region and says there's been a change in the attitude of his constituents from denial to defiance.

GEOFF BROCK: Certainly in those days there if you had X number - you might have 10 emissions a day, people may - wouldn't say anything about it, they would say, "Oh, that's just a normal process." Now if you have one emission a month, visual emission a month, then people are on the phone to the Near Star or to the EPA reporting that. So things have changed.

MIKE SEXTON: Last year, the smelter emitted 44 tonnes of lead dust. The parent company Near Star funds an education campaign based around keeping that dust out of homes to help kids drop below the acceptable blood level reading of 10.

SA Health Department figures shows a long-term improvement in blood lead levels, with three quarters of the children in Port Pirie now having readings under 10. If the NHMRC further reduces the acceptable level, the department admits it would have its work cut out for it.

KEVIN BUCKETT, SA HEALTH DEPARTMENT: The NHMRC guideline is that everybody should be, and particularly the children, should be below 10 micrograms per decilitre. So that's how we measure things, that's how we record things. Clearly if the value was reduced then there would be more people above that value and it would intensify the work that we'd need to do.

MIKE SEXTON: Ultimately the public health campaign in Port Pirie could be helped by the very thing that creates the problem. Near Star declined an interview with 7.30, but is well into negotiations with the federal and state governments over funding for a $350 million overhaul of the smelter to reduce emissions. Those campaigning for a zero tolerance of lead believe the question for government is more moral than economic.

MARK TAYLOR: I think it's the Government's role to step in and protect those who can't protect themselves and especially children. And it's children who are the most vulnerable from a neurological perspective. We have responsibility to the future.

LEIGH SALES: Mike Sexton reporting.