Lead poisoning in Australian mining towns is a surprisingly contentious issue. Town mayors usually try to cover up and deny any evidence of lead poisoning, because without the mines, there is no town.
The broken hill that the town of Broken Hill is named after no longer exists. The mullock heap pictured in the article is all that remains: the entire hill was dug away when the original mine was active. As you can see on OpenStreetMap[0], the slag heap sits right in the middle of the town, with lead-laden dust blowing down into the streets and backyards every time the wind picks up.
The other town mentioned in the article is Mount Isa[1]. Mount Isa has both a mine and a smelter, both located immediately to the west of the town. The prevailing winds are westerlies, so again the toxic dust falls on the town.
Combine a large lead smelting plant with one of the world's largest producers of (unenriched) uranium, and a dozen other metals like copper and zinc. Add zero effective environmental regulation on top, and you get us.
According to government data, lead concentrations in the top soil are measured in hundreds to several thousands of milligrams per kilogram, depending on location. The norm is low dozens, if I am not mistaken.
No blood level studies have been done since the end of the 1980s. Thanks to this link, I at least have a reference point from a relatively transparent and accountable society. All I can say, back when I was in middle to high school, it felt like every other kid was diagnosed with anemia (yours truly included), and skin conditions like atopic dermatitis or recurring abscesses covering half the body were very common.
Personally I have never felt like having a sharp mind, but it's difficult to say how much impact lead may have had on this.
This is how it typically looks on the ground, if you're interested:
Don't know why I'm writing all this, I guess to let it be known that there are far worse places out there than a couple of small Australian towns (with what to me looks like very clean air).
> I guess to let it be known that there are far worse places out there than a couple of small Australian towns (with what to me looks like very clean air).
It sounds like the situation in your town was very bad. That neither diminishes nor invalidates a bad situation elsewhere. We should all be striving for better, no matter where we start from.
I grew up in this town too in the 90s. It was very common to see everyone outside suddenly start coughing because of sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant.
Just looking at that location on the map, it struck me how 'continental' it was, i.e. how inland it was. Turns out it's actually pretty near Eurasia's "Pole of inaccessibility", which is basically on the border between Kazakhstan and China [1].
As an Australian, I find our vast hinterland somewhat intimidating and haven't spent much time there. Like most Australians I live on its coastline. I also feel somewhat intimidated by Eurasia's vast inner continent, but also curious about it too. Would love to visit Kazakhstan sometime, but maybe not your hometown.
You weren't kidding, that one mine has polluted a significant percentage of the entire earths surface [1]:
> "The idea that Amundsen and Scott were traveling over snow that clearly was contaminated by lead from smelting and mining in Australia, and that lead pollution at that time was nearly as high as any time ever since, is surprising to say the least."
> The similar timing and magnitude of changes in lead deposition across Antarctica, as well as the characteristic isotopic signature of Broken Hill lead found throughout the continent, suggest that this single emission source in southern Australia was responsible for the introduction of lead pollution into Antarctica at the end of the 19th century and remains a significant source today, the authors report.
> Town mayors usually try to cover up and deny any evidence of lead poisoning
After moving to the West from a developing country was surprised to discover that things our politicians do for a big bribe western politicians sometimes do for free.
Exactly, corruption is more sophisticated, but it exists and is huge nonetheless. The big difference is that the starting GDP is higher, which allows for a little more to reach normal citizens after corruption is taken into account.
An old friend of mine who was originally from Iran told me something a family member of his said to him, which was basically: "In the west you may not have bribery, but the ability to influence decisions is mostly out of your reach. At least here little people can have some small control over their environment through small bribes." I had never heard bribery pitched that way before, and it's obviously... a garbage... way to run a society. But.
In Roman times, decision making, power, etc was in large part done through systems of explicit patronage. We now -- in public at least -- consider patronage to be a corrupt and awful thing, but then having a powerful patron was a sign of virtue and goodness. Having a wealthy famous patron literally made you a better person, "not-guilty" in various crimes, etc.
I am not convinced that that ethic has ever really gone away. Just maybe more hidden.
> but the ability to influence decisions is mostly out of your reach. At least here little people can have some small control over their environment through small bribes
This is mostly comforting nonsense.
The average American has more say, potential and actual, in their government than the average Iranian. (And the average Iranian more than the Saudis.) What in a bribe economy one pays for with cash in a civil society takes effort. The tragedy in American civics is far too many are too poor, tired and/or uneducated to fully engage.
And one of these states is preferable to the other. My Indian family used to speak similarly. Yet when they have the chance, they vote against corruption. To the degree India has become less corrupt over the last decade, it's been celebrated by them out of both pride and personal interest.
> First Past The Post voting ensures I have no viable political party to vote for that would reasonably represent me
Nobody does. In any system. There is always error in any heterogenous group. That isn't an exoneration of our two-party system. Just pointing out that not having a party that perfectly represents you is inherent to civilisation.
What issue do you care most about? Engage on that. With others who think similarly. That’s what engagement means. And due to the shocking lack of civic engagement, it’s ridiculously powerful. I have personally swung judicial elections in New York City by taking some tenant association heads to dinner. I’ve gotten language into state bills because nobody else called and it wasn’t one of my rep’s core issues. I did this before I made any money to speak of; in some sense, I had the time to engage for lack of money.
This is just denial of reality. Proportional representation gives you diverse representation.
In fact you have to address the growing evidence that voter preferences have no effect on American policy and lawmaking, you have to make a positive case that civil engagement is working.
> The average American has more say, potential and actual, in their government than the average Iranian
Sure, if you know the right people or can buy a lobbyist. Otherwise all you can do is complain to a wall. Even lawsuits don't generally have net positive effects on society—nothing changes, we just do the same things at greater expense.
Most of our society is privatized and well out of the reach of democratic output. If you're lucky, the market in question might have some limited competition and you can choose the slightly lesser poison. That's about it.
> if you know the right people or can buy a lobbyist
This is cynical nonsense.
If you can get to a polling station you have more influence than the average Iranian. If you can write a coherent letter to an elected or maintain emotional composure on a call, you have more than anyone in their non-elite class. If you can attend local government meetings, join an advocacy group or travel to canvas or protest you have more power than their minor elites. (If you are in the leadership of those groups, you have more power—in most cases—than donors who give thousands a cycle.)
One of the major elements of the uneducated pillar I cited is Americans who were never taught or shown how to civically engage getting cynical out of a lack of education.
> If you can get to a polling station you have more influence than the average Iranian.
Have you not been watching the news? Iran has proven itself to be at least better at performing like a democracy than most of our allies in the region, excepting maybe Turkey.
Regardless, it's extremely difficult to wield real influence with a vote (or via advocating for any sort of elected official) as most problems are directly avoided during campaigning, and citizens can be safely ignored when reelection isn't under threat. And anyway, most of our society is owned privately and outside the reach of democratic oversight.
Anyway, lip service to democratic processes is not the same thing as actual democratic will. Just because you're performing the aesthetics of what you're taught democracy is doesn't demonstrate any actual influence. For the most part, problems are decided long before they hit the ballot box and you can only really weigh in on certain wedge issues.
> Iran has proven itself to be at least better at performing like a democracy than most of our allies
Sure. That wasn't the question. The comparison was between Iran and America, and whether being able to bribe people gives Iranians more power than Americans. It doesn't.
> it's extremely difficult to wield real influence with a vote (or via advocating for any sort of elected official) as most problems are directly avoided during campaigning
You're focussing on Presidential elections. Of course in a national vote the individual will be diluted. That's the point. Go more local (and earlier, to primaries) and you see massive questions resolved with tens of votes, even in New York.
> problems are decided long before they hit the ballot box and you can only really weigh in on certain wedge issues
Correct. Most of what I described above is before the ballot box. That said, even the multiple-choice power exerted at the ballot box is more power than the average Iranian has. (There is an argument to be made that if someone doesn't believe this, they shouldn't vote.)
> Go more local (and earlier, to primaries) and you see massive questions resolved with tens of votes, even in New York.
You have influence over local issues in dictatorships. Putin does not care or engage in zoning and other minor issues. They are open to influence by both residents and bribery.
That's because the seat of power in the west is not with governments at all, but with business. The gov't ends up being there to keep them happy and avoid conflicts between them.
They've mostly stripped themselves of the ability to do anything they could be bribed over.
It’s rarely that sinister on the political level in my experience. Having worked a decade in the Danish public sector with access to the higher echelons of decision making I’ve never really witnessed influence or blatant corruption amongst the elected official. Well, there is influence but it’ll typically be along the lines of getting better road access or being allowed to expand in zones that weren’t really meant for it. Not because of personal gain but because jobs are just so valuable to a political administration.
Where things get more complicated is typically with the unelected administration. Basically you can view most political decision making as an administration working out action plans and presenting them to politicians. Which is a good concept, until people stop participating in things like public hearings. Because the officials who work in the administration are professional and politicians in cities are often… well you or me. This means that it’s sort of easy for officials to influence decision making by writing and presenting the different action plans in ways where they know which are more likely to be selected. This is sometimes influenced by corruption, and usually that gets caught eventually around here. It’s much more often that it’s simply influenced by the different silos protecting themselves. Which will lead to bad decision making.
Now, I mentioned things like public hearings earlier and these are actually immensely influential because most politicians are actually very open to hear from the public. The big issue is that most of the people who attend or respond to public hearings are either fanatics or crackpots. When regular people actually participate in their local democracy they can have a huge influence, much more so than both administration and business, but people don’t. I’m not a saint myself, it’s been more than a decade since I even bothered to read the proposals which are sent to me. To make things even worse, fewer and fewer people register as members of political parties which means they give up their influence on selecting candidates and when it’s time to vote, many simply vote on a party, not on a specific candidate. So we’re gradually giving over power to anyone who actually does participate, which is often going to be business.
I don't know man. The US government spends in a couple of months what the biggest companies are worth in total.
According to this [0] Uncle Sam is obligated to spend 6.3T this year. That's 500B per month. Compare to the market cap of mammoth companies [1]. ExxonMobil, UnitedHealth, and Mastercard are all in the top 20 US companies and worth around one month of government spending.
Because government is not a singular entity, but made up of lots of individual people. And the overall electoral process of using a silver tongue to convince millions of people that you agree with all of them on everything, especially on things they disagree with each other on, and/or that the world will end if the other guy gets elected, ensures you select away from any sort of pesky things like values or ethics.
The wildest thing, to me, is just how cheap it is to buy a politician. Senator Menendez [1] made it a bit too overt and ended up getting convicted so there's no speculation involved there. International/country level corruption of a senior Senator, who was also the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including getting him to directly interfere in criminal cases? Less than a million bucks. I guess it's more of a buyer's market, which is pretty 'funny' in and of itself.
The government is designed for rich people from its foundation, it's a cozy revolving door for the elites and functions to repress popular movements. Officials identify with business and owners and can pick up do-nothing or interesting jobs after their government services.
US elections are some of the most expensive in the world and politicians rely on donations to win their campaigns. The connections between business and government are a spider web. Business also isn't a set of individual companies, they in fact cooperate on public policy through think tanks such as the chamber of commerce and the business round table.
Furthermore, since business controls the commodities and processes that sustain life, business holds a veto over economic policy with "capital strikes". Government could seize these properties, but our left wing is very weak.
Think about it another way, why do you assume that elected officials have any obligation to the public when there is essentially no recourse except through elections and elections generally require oodles of money to win?
Right. It is worth noting that the total allowable cost of the recent UK election was 54k per seat per party, meaning that a political party could only spend 34M GBP contesting every Parliamentary seat.
I don't disagree with the idea of limiting funding, but this is a bad comparison. You're talking about a campaign to reach about 50m voters, vs about 300m voters. You should probably at least adjust your UK figure accordingly, to make it reasonable.
The actual cap is 54k per seat, so it can scale. You can bring that number up or down as needed to adjust for the seat representation size in the US, but it is significantly below, say, Hakeem Jeffries raising $17M and Mike Johnson $13M.
The other bit is that the Parliament has more constituencies than the US House despite the House representing more people, so the number of people per House member is quite high. And that's not actually specified in the Constitution but a law that could be changed by Congress at any time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
Because there lying and cheating for bribes are how politicians make money. Here, lying and cheating are how they keep the job that allows them to make money in other dishonest ways.
Seems crazy that you’d build a town so close to the mine (or a smelter so close to a town). It’s not as if Australia is short on space for building things!
Perhaps it should be a condition of operating a lucrative mining site that you build/subsidise worker’s accommodation at a reasonable enough distance to be free from contamination.
As I understand it, much mining is done in Australia through FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) nowadays. It greatly reduces the need for infrastructure, boom-bust towns and issues like these.
It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently damage the human mind. I have to admit there's a part of me that almost wants to be skeptical, that mg of a rock could overcome the wonderous self-aware human mind. Every so often I have to remind that skeptical piece of me that it's an idiot and that every human alive is wildly fragile to any number of elements and chemicals.
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Onto the article, if I ran a production software system, I'd be collecting data on the health of all my servers.
If I ran a country, I'd collect health data on all my towns (perhaps blood tests of 1% of the population each year).
Of course in malfunctioning environments, measurement is scary to leaders because it can give evidence that they aren't doing their job.
This list is a mix of chemical substances (e.g. water), categories of substances (e.g. salt) and elements (e.g. carbon), so it doesn't really make sense. It would make more sense to stick to elements, e.g. list hydrogen and oxygen instead of water.
Also, ammonia is very toxic and only exists in trace amounts in the body.
Apparently it's a quote from the manga series Fullmetal alchemist.
This leaves out the fact that attempting to make a human out of these just results in an abomination (and the ability to do alchemy without a transmutation circle).
Just reversed the downvote that was on yr comment because I interpreted it as not so much as saying the Bible story is what literally happened but that biogenesis feels very unlikely (even over billions of years). I feel similarly and my personal belief is that life has always existed and that it's fundamental to the universe.
> It's really scary how a tiny amount of a mineral can permanently damage the human mind.
It's scary how certain things in tiny amounts can have huge effects on humans:
- ricin (1mg or less can be lethal)
- insulin (.05 mL can easily put you in a coma if you don't eat enough sugar to cancel it out)
- countless other toxins, poisons, chemical compounds
- viruses or bacteria since they can multiply might be smallest things of all that can hurt humans
Also related: how much energy is stored in tiny amounts of matter. When fission bombs go off, only a tiny amount of matter is converted to pure energy.
Solutions to negative externalities are always hard. Testing is an inherent problem that can lead to accountability and demands for remediation or renumeration.
No, Lead is not magnetic to any significant degree.
What happens is that calcium is very important for your neurons to operate and signal each-other, and lead happens to be "close enough" that is competes/interferes with those mechanisms, gumming things up permanently.
This causes the cells and their connections to wither and die, or to fail to form properly at all.
I know this always ventures into conspiracy territory, but this connection with aluminum’s affect on the brain is one of the most contentious issues around the topic of autism.
People have been asking for studies for over a decade and it’s been crickets.
Public Health agencies (at least in the US) collecting data about residents is a thing. People just get a little touchy about government programs collecting all this data ...
What? Public health agencies are "goverment programs."
Also: corporations lobby against funding / legislation / regulation for public health data collection - and then tell conservative voters it's about "their privacy."
Meanwhile, corporate America is selling literally every scrap of data it can to each other, LexisNexis, Palantir...
It's not just other corporations buying up that commercially available data; it's intelligence agencies and law enforcement, too.
Yes -- I wasn't implying that public health organzations != government.
And I know that (at least they're supposed to) government collected data has strict policies on handling + processing it, where as commercially available data is more "loosy-goosey". (Which, government has learned they can also use with little more than a polite word)
> If I ran a country, I'd collect health data on all my towns (perhaps blood tests of 1% of the population each year).
And maybe flag 0.1% of your population for lots of medical testing, for their whole lives. Partly to catch unsuspected stuff, partly to have really solid baseline statistics.
And if some of those those tests are widely know to be less-than-pleasant (bone marrow sampling, colonoscopy, etc.), and the busybodies & hypochondriacs find it easy to get on "the list" - that may increase citizen satisfaction with your heath care system. Both in those with more-is-better mindsets, and those too quick to imagine that the forbidden fruit is sweeter.
- You're free to keep track of how each person ended up on the list
- Your supply of "random volunteers" for life-long medical testing may be limited
- The costs/benefits of being a health busybody or hypochondriac, in the context of a wide variety of diseases and maladies, is itself worth study
- At the "I run a country" level, ensuring long-term political support for good healthcare is as important as ensuring that your current healthcare system is good.
Anyone know a simple method of testing for lead in food? Say a wet chemistry method?
I live in California, and I've noticed that everything has a CA Proposition 65 warning label. When I look into it it's generally lead that has bioaccumulated in the plant. What I can't find is how much or how widespread it is in the food.
Those test swabs work quite well. They are designed to test ceramics, clay etc. You can find them in pottery supply stores.
If trying on food,I would soak or boil that food to reduce water and thereby increase concentration if there is any. You could add lemon to the water, as acids (vinegar for example) help extract metals.
The problem is you don't get an actual number, just over a certain limit.
I think it might be 50 ppm.
But it's been twenty years, so please check that number.
Alternative is to send to a lab, ask for a 32 element icp. Should cost between 50-150$, especially if you state you don't need chain of custody proof. You will get 32 elements. Which is fun.
(Can even look for gold, but that's extra $ testing.)
Lead naturally occurs in the environment, depending where, in the world you are, from 2 to 20 even UpTo 50 ppm.
Industrial/commercial sites are common to have up to 150ppm.
Contaminated toxic sites way over that, over a thousand. We could go on.
But the swabs work as a starting point.
There's test swabs for leaded paint, but I don't know if they'd be sensitive enough for food. At least where I live, they're pretty cheap, so it could be an interesting experiment.
I remember seeing an article a while ago, where some local councils here specifically recommended building raised garden beds for veggie gardens. They apparently found, that in cities/towns older than about a hundred years, the risk of soil contamination can be pretty high, the main suspects being lead and arsenic. Raised garden beds is an easy way of eliminating that risk.
> I remember seeing an article a while ago, where some local councils here specifically recommended building raised garden beds for veggie gardens. They apparently found, that in cities/towns older than about a hundred years, the risk of soil contamination can be pretty high, the main suspects being lead and arsenic. Raised garden beds is an easy way of eliminating that risk.
I'd recommend raised beds to anyone who lives in a suburb or city that's even a few decades old. The particulates and oils washing off the street and down roof shingles alone introduces plenty of contamination. Very rainy regions like the Pacific Northwest have to build rain gardens [1] everywhere to filter out baseline levels of suburban pollution, otherwise their water gets really bad.
Yeah, City Slickers in Oakland stopped testing the soil and just told everyone that they should use raised beds. Problem is that there are so many fruit trees and self starting plants that I want to eat (I'm looking at you collards), but I'd like to know what I'm getting into.
Also I've read that sunflowers are really good at pulling up heavy metals, and all of the bags that I purchase have warning labels on them. I'm curious if this is a real concern!
IIRC sunflowers store heavy metals in their fatty tissues, which means it's particularly concentrated in their seeds, so if you're using them to pull heavy metals out of your soil you should probably be sending the wilted plant away at the end of the season, seeds and all.
Rice is good at sucking up heavy metals from the ground. American rice fields often occupy old cotton fields where lead products were used as insecticide.
To answer my own question: potassium rhodizonate mixed with glacial vinegar creates a visual test for lead.
I assume that I could grind up the food, test the slurry and then maybe do a more in depth test involving putting the food in a kiln and testing the ash for lead (assuming you use temps low enough to not vaporize the lead, below 1750C).
Tangentially, a bunch of movies have been filmed in and around Broken Hill[1], including Mad Max 2 and 4, Mission Impossible 2, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Wake in Fright, and my personal favourite cheesy Australian B-Movie, Razorback.
The landscape typically lends itself to that kind of dry post-apocalyptic look, however shooting for Mad Max: Fury Road was relocated to Namibia[2] as heavy rains had caused the area to break out into bloom.
I once moved to a home in Hamburg, and coming from Southern Germany, I didn't even know that it could be possible, but then in the mail came a letter, warning that we have been drinking water with 16x the amount of allowed lead, because the home was from before the 50s and had all lead pipes. We lived there just for a few months, but my daughter drank the water (me, too, but I am not that worried).
Genuine question. Wouldn't it be more efficient to check the levels of lead in the people periodically? If a sparrow has high levels of lead then you still need to check the people.
It seems like it would be fewer steps, fewer tests, and less messing around by making testing more available to the people.
Lead poisoning is quite common in suburban and urban areas, when houses / buildings are demolished. There's a huge plume of lead and asbestos dust that is generated, even if the contractor is making some effort to wet the site.
If a building or home in your area is being demolished? Don't open your windows, and don't go outside without a well-fitting dust mask. Never attend a building demolition event.
Contractors and developers are supposed to take measures and inform local government...if they're stupid enough to inspect for lead / asbestos before construction and declare that they're doing asbestos / lead abatement. Every piece of regulation and law I've found uses a very fascinating phrasing - you're required to do things if conducting abatement.
Many states go further and exempt anything under a dozen or two units or commercial buildings. It's an absolute shitshow.
That's sadly true. There is no requirement to test; there is only a requirement to abate if you know its there.
A friend of mine had a contractor say "those look like asbestos tiles, but you havne't tested them right ;) ;) ? If I dont know they are asbestos I can do this job for $X. Otherwise it will be $X + $5K so I can do abatement"
This is neat, but why can't they just test the children's blood directly? In Massachusetts 70% of all children aged 9 months to 4 years old had their blood tested for lead in 2022. I'm not sure what the national average is.
Because you can test the sparrows without having to raise an infant on the site. If you can demonstrate areas that are unsafe or illegal to raise children in, then perhaps people won't raise children there (or not, given we already know these mining towns are toxic and children raised in them will be victims of lead poisoning to various degrees). The reason they are testing children in the article is to confirm that the sparrow test is a valid proxy, and we will be able to test on a wider scale around the country.
In the specific case of this study they tested both (and looked back at historic records) and now know that sparrows make a very good proxy for human results.
This is useful because:
The Macquarie University environmental scientist and PhD candidate said collecting blood samples from people, especially children, can be difficult to conduct, and can raise significant logistical and ethical issues.
As a result, data on children's blood lead levels is unavailable in many parts of Australia where communities intersect with mining and smelting operations.
~ Linked article, towards the end.
It's also not just Australia where human proxies are useful.
> collecting blood samples from people, especially children, can be difficult to conduct, and can raise significant logistical and ethical issues.
Really? Children visit family doctors relatively often in my experience and taking a blood sample is a trivial and routine task for the nurse at my GP's surgery. What ethical issue is there?
Well, that's all that counts then I guess, never mind the stated opinion of medical researchers in the field with broader experience.
Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose blood transfusions and small town groups (which can be quite large in specific towns and non existant in others) can oppose blood samples also.
Various indiginous groups within Australia and elsewhere can be opposed to medical tests .. for fear of being guinea pigs in experiments again. Some people just don't like giving samples.
If they have numbers o support their supposed wider experience I'd love to see them.
You can always find someone opposed to something, that doesn't necessarily mean that the thing is impractical.
How was the blood extracted from the sparrows? There was a surprising lack of information about animal welfare in the article. People interested in that might be opposed to those medical tests too.
There are many kinds of sparrows, but the one people usually refer to as a pest is the Eurasian House Sparrow. Can be found on 6 continents, reproduces quickly, and are gregarious (most other sparrows don't live in groups).
I find their antics to be interesting, but they're aggressive to other birds, especially for nesting sites (and they'll nest anywhere, unlike many of the birds they compete with).
The broken hill that the town of Broken Hill is named after no longer exists. The mullock heap pictured in the article is all that remains: the entire hill was dug away when the original mine was active. As you can see on OpenStreetMap[0], the slag heap sits right in the middle of the town, with lead-laden dust blowing down into the streets and backyards every time the wind picks up.
The other town mentioned in the article is Mount Isa[1]. Mount Isa has both a mine and a smelter, both located immediately to the west of the town. The prevailing winds are westerlies, so again the toxic dust falls on the town.
[0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/-31.9653/141.4597
[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/-20.7339/139.4831