It comes out at night, an invisible haze that blankets Jane Stevens's Port Pirie, Australia home and contains a chemistry she knows can't be good for her kids.
"It depends where the wind is blowing at the time," Mrs. Stevens, 39, told the Australian. "It can be like fog coming down ... sometimes you can't see anything but you know something is in the air because it's burning your nose and you are smelling it."
It is a “haze” of lead and it is sickening the children of the town of Port Pirie.
You see, Port Pirie is home to the world's largest lead smelter.
Lead levels in the blood of Port Pirie children are more than five times higher than the preferred safe level set by world health experts and indicate urgent action needs to be taken.
Mrs. Stevens has no idea what emissions from the smelter are doing to her children's health. "They're getting a lot more colds than what they used to," she says. She says the local schools carry out sporadic testing but the children are picked at random.
Michael R. Moore, director of the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology in Brisbane and an expert on the biomedical effects of lead, said there was "solid evidence" that overexposure to lead irreversibly lowered intelligence, particularly in unborn babies and young children, and damaged nerves. It also damaged the heart and caused other problems, such as reducing the body's ability to make red blood cells.
South Australian Health Minister Lea Stevens revealed blood lead levels in 370 out of the more than 600 Port Pirie children tested last year were greater than 10mcg/dl. The average blood lead level of all the children was 10.6mcg/dl, a rise of 4 per cent in 12 months, and the highest mean level among children in Australia.
Professor Moore said people living with levels of 40mcg/dl had "unequivocal evidence" of damage, and by increasing levels higher than that "you go into the sphere of death". However, he conceded that there was "a continuum of effects" and any amount of lead in the blood would cause damage to some degree.
"Some people believe a figure of 1(mcg/dl) is still too high."
Operators of the Port Pirie lead smelter, the world's biggest, will hold a crisis meeting with the South Australian Government today over the rising rates of childhood lead poisoning in the industrial city.
The Australian Environmental Protection Authority has confirmed that increased emissions at the 120-year-old smelter, operated by publicly listed mining company Zinifex, is responsible for the increased rates of lead poisoning.
The company, which reported a net profit of $234million last financial year, has committed $15million over five years to upgrade areas of the smelter thought to be responsible for contamination.
It doesn’t seem to be doing one hell of a lot of good.
The smelter, which began operating in the city in 1889, reported. In contrast, the Health Department estimated in 1998 that 1000 tons of lead were emitted.
The Port Pirie Regional Council in South Australia has been accused of inaction over increasing levels of lead in the blood of local children.
Greens MP Kris Hanna told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the local council, as well as Zinifex, should be doing more.
"They need to explain why they haven't got a strategic plan to deal with dust management ... because everyone in Port Pirie has to work together," he said. "I mean I'm not a local but it's just commonsense ... the company, the Government, the council and the community have to work together on this."
Hanna also says the State Government should have taken action much earlier.
"What the Government is doing now is what I was doing earlier in the year, asking Zinifex to explain what they're doing," he said. "I'm glad that the Government are doing something but it has to be more than just talk.”
In Port Pirie people tend to keep to themselves. Many want to remain anonymous, fearing people's reaction if they speak out about the lead emissions coming from the smelter.
"I don't want a bar of it, mate," a Port Pirie resident said when asked about emissions. "But you come here for a look there at 3o'clock or 4 o'clock in the morning and you see all the crap that comes out of the smelter when everybody is asleep. Even today I was out on the motorbike and you could taste the acid in the air."
Meanwhile the mother of Jayden Evans is worried for her young son’s health.
"He is just a normal child ... I don't know whether the lead is going to do something to his health and I won't know until he is older and they can do tests," she told the Port Pirie Recorder. "I won't know whether anything has changed him mentally or anything like that.” Sources: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Port Pirie Recorder, The Australian, Advertiser (Australia)
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