When the North West Star caught up with Professor Mark Taylor, he was driving to Newcastle as part of the Lead Expert Working Group for the New South Wales government.
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“That work relates to the clean-up around Boolaroo (lead) smelter which closed around 2003 and the emissions from the smelter were fairly significant and contaminated people’s gardens,” Prof Taylor said.
Legacy problems from lead contamination across Australia are all in a day’s work for the professor of Environmental Science at Macquarie University in New South Wales who has published hundreds of research papers and reports, which have received significant coverage in the media.
Much of that coverage relates to Mount Isa Mines and Professor Taylor has sometimes been considered antagonistic to the development of the town and the mine it depends on, a view he himself strongly rejects.
“Since we started our work Mount Isa Mines had spent over half a billion dollars on environmental improvement. The blood lead levels appear to be coming down and they have invested $600 million in environment improvement,” Prof Taylor said.
“Those costs, and the staff associated with those costs, are investments in improving local health in the community. Now that can’t be a bad thing.”
Prof Taylor said his career in lead research was “a wonderful accident” which Mount Isa played a major role.
“In 1999 I flew to Mount Isa, I was going to Riversleigh, because at that time I was working on the evolution of river systems,” he said.
“Anyway someone said to me, ‘Look at that mine there, it’s upstream of the drinking water source’.
“I said ‘oh really, what is the mine?’ ‘Oh, it’s a lead-zinc-copper mine’.”
That inspired Prof Taylor to move from the UK and start looking at the research to understand the footprint of impact from Mount Isa Mines mine.
He contacted the mine to do a study of the soil and sediment in the river, and was told they had done lots of research but they refused to share it with him.
“That’s when the penny dropped, there’s no published work, they’ve done all this stuff, that’s interesting,” he said.
“That essentially led me to do all the work I’ve done on lead at Mount Isa, Broken Hill and Port Pirie. I’m still on that journey.”
Prof Taylor said the research from that journey has clearly established there was no safe level from the toxicity of lead.
“That generates uncertainty about what threshold you should use about what is acceptable in the environment,” he said.
“Prevention is extremely important. There’s no treatment of low levels of exposure.”
Prof Taylor said he was not against Mount Isa Mines extracting ore.
“I use copper, I use phones, I’ve got internet at home, I drive a car, I drive a motorbike, I’ve got lead acid batteries, I understand the need for these products,” he said.
But he said his point was until his team began their research they had a licence to pollute.
“The company has responded in a practical sense to this issue and that’s a good outcome,” he said.
Prof Taylor said elevated levels among Indigenous children were common in all towns which had lead smelters.
“Overlaid on the environmental sources, there is a socio-economic footprint,” he said.
“We don’t really know the reason why in Australia, it may be due to different lifestyles or diet if children have a diet low in calcium and iron.”
Prof Taylor’s journey continues as he tries to unravel those answers.
“The bottom line is if you strip away the lead, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he said.