Economy
Health heads must roll
The buck stops here: Health Minister Michelle O’Byrne and Premier Lara Giddings. Picture: Rob Walls, http://robertwalls.wordpress.com/
Yesterday’s revelations on the ABC program Background Briefing ( TT here ) have exposed the deficiencies of the Tasmanian Health Department.
The Department of Health has allowed public health to be put at risk, by failing to act upon high levels of toxic metals in five towns’ drinking water supplies. Tasmania must now be viewed as a Third World state with over one third of Tasmanian towns failing to provide raw drinking water that meets Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.
The Background Briefing program has highlighted the alarming levels of Lead, Cadmium and Arsenic found in drinking water; that the Department of Health and Human Services and Ben Lomond Water Authority did not take timely action and prevent further harm to the public is unacceptable.
The Department Of Health failed to:
• provide safe drinking water to the population who have been put at risks equivalent to those in Third World countries
• comply with national Drinking Water Guidelines
• comply with the deficient Tasmanian Drinking Water Guidelines as adequate risk assessments of raw drinking water sources and water testing was not complied with.
• provide sufficient and up-to-date information to the population of known and unknown risks from chronic and acute exposure to mixtures of heavy metals.
• take timely population sampling and immediate and ongoing protective health measures for those at risk especially to children exposed to metal levels that pose an ‘imminent and substantial danger’ (US Centers for Disease Control).
Ben Lomond Water has acknowledged from their testing that drinking water exceedences at Ringarooma were 2 to 4 times the official Australian Drinking Water Guidelines [ADWG] Lead level of 10 ppb. Lead levels in drinking water at Ringarooma peaked at 190 parts per billion which is nineteen times the ADWG.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control (USCDC) have said that there is no safe level of lead, and that drinking water should never have more than 10ppb of Lead.
Prof Mark Edwards*, a leading expert in Lead Contamination in Drinking Water in the US said that drinking water with Lead levels of 40 ppb are an ‘imminent and substantial danger to children’.
The Health Minister, Michelle O’Byrne and the Director of Health Dr Roscoe Taylor have failed in their duty of care to protect the health of Tasmanians especially those living in regional areas.
TPEHN have called on Premier Lara Giddings to stand down the Minister of Health and Director of Health and Greens Minster for Consumer Protection Nick McKim and to appoint people who really do understand their duty of care and will act accordingly.
* Professor Mark Edwards, Professor of Civil Engineering, Virginia Tech.
• Tonight, ABC Four Corners: ‘Critical information missing’ from LNG approvals
Four Corners
By Karen Michelmore and Connie Agius
Updated 30 minutes ago
PHOTO: A representation of the $18 billion Santos project.(Santos)
MAP: Gladstone 4680
The environmental assessment process for two of Australia’s biggest coal seam gas projects was a “farce”, a former Queensland bureaucrat has claimed.
Senior environmental specialist Simone Marsh was part of the Queensland Government team that approved Santos’s $18 billion and Queensland Gas Company’s (QCG) $20 billion LNG projects in 2010.
She has told tonight’s Four Corners program that the final stages of the three-year approval processes were rushed and the environmental impacts not properly assessed.
“All the scientific arguments in the world wouldn’t have changed things in that situation,” she said.
“They had decided they wanted to go ahead with the projects and there was nothing stopping it.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-01/key-information-missing-from-lng-approvals/4603026
• Isla MacGregor, Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network:
This is what the DHHS should have done for residents in Royal George and Rosebery …
From Science Alert here:
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20122203-23245.html
Exposure to arsenic in soil and mine waste may have contributed to a slight increase in past cancer risk in socio-economically disadvantaged areas in the Goldfields region of Victoria, according to new research published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.
Researchers from the University of Ballarat have released findings showing that the incidence of some cancers between 1984 and 2003 was slightly higher in areas with higher arsenic levels.
Dr Dora Pearce, now at the Melbourne School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, explored how soil arsenic levels and cancer rates varied across central Victoria.
By using 20 years of data from the Victorian Cancer Registry and a measure of soil arsenic derived from geochemical data provided by the University of Ballarat and GeoScience Victoria, Dr Pearce has concluded that ongoing recorded monitoring of environmental sources of arsenic is needed.
“Arsenic is naturally occurring around gold mineralisation and is even used as an indicator in gold exploration, so it can be concentrated in soil and mine waste dumps that are still scattered across our landscape,” Dr Dora Pearce said.
In the Goldfields region, many residential communities have grown up around historical gold mining areas.
“Our previous research detected small traces of arsenic in toenail clippings from children living in this region, showing that exposure to arsenic in soil could be an ongoing problem and that we should not be too complacent.
“We hope that by raising community awareness of this issue, childhood exposures to arsenic in soil, and future cancer risk, will be reduced in the Goldfields region of Victoria,” Dr Pearce said.
• And, Isla MacGregor:
At a meeting in Royal George on the 29th of August, 2010 Dr Chrissie Pickin, Deputy Director of Tasmania’s Department of Health and Human Services, advised local residents that levels of Arsenic in the drinking water taken from the St Pauls River were two hundred (200) times higher than the guidelines (drinking water), and for Lead, the levels were fifty (50) times higher than the guidelines. The known association between increased risk of cancer to exposure of high levels of metals makes the implications of this data extremely serious.
Dr Chrissie Pickin sent a letter to doctors in Campbelltown, St Marys, Bicheno and St Helens, advising about testing procedures for residents with health concerns from Royal George, Dr Pickin stated:
“Measuring arsenic in hair and nails is not useful, as interpretation will be confounded by external contamination i.e.; if they showered in the contaminated water”. www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/peh/current_public_health_issues/royal_george
Considering Dr Pickin was aware of the research conducted in Bendigo by Dr Dora Pearce it is quite staggering that she gave this advice to doctors not to conduct the only diagnostic tests that can be used to establish effects from long term low level exposure to toxic metals especially arsenic and lead found in such high levels in raw drinking water.
Dr Pickin spoke to a meeting of residents in Avoca one week later to advise them about blood lead testing even though residents had not been consuming the contaminated water for some weeks.
At Ringarooma also, residents were no longer drinking the water by the time the DHHS notified them six weeks after the water supply was switched from the bore to dam water that the water was contaminated with lead. According to residents interviewed from Ringarooma in the Background Briefing program, the DHHS at no time advised them to have blood lead tests and it is not known if anyone has done so to date.
Arsenic levels in urine can only generally be detected for up to 3-5 days after acute exposure. Blood arsenic levels are only elevated for between one and two days After approximately 30 days, Lead will reduce by approximately 50% in blood if all sources of exposure have been removed. As blood and urine testing was not undertaken prior to provision of clean treated tank water to Royal George residents, routine follow-up testing would be required to ascertain any decrease in any blood metal levels over time.
The DHHS continues to fail to address the health needs of people who may have been affected by exposure to toxic metal contaminants in dust, soil and raw drinking water from current and legacy mining activities in numerous parts of Tasmania including Hobart.
The Clarence municipality has the highest incidence of cancer in Tasmania and coincidentally has several suburbs that have some high levels of soil contamination from legacy emissions of cadmium and lead from the zinc works at Lutana on the Derwent River..
Is it any wonder why Tasmania has the highest incidence of cancer in Australia?
• And, Isla MacGregor:
The list of main metals and metalloids contaminating waterways in Tasmania:
Aluminium
Arsenic
Cadmium
Copper
Chromium
Iron
Lead
Manganese
Nickel
Tin
Zinc
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Contaminated_Waterways,_Areas_and_Sites_in_Tasmania_-_A_to_Z