The housing crisis leaving children crawling in poison
Health workers and community leaders have urged Premier Chris Minns to invest in stable social housing for Indigenous families and a revamped program to reduce lead contamination in existing homes, after new statistics revealed two-thirds of Aboriginal children aged between one and five have blood lead levels higher than the national guideline.
'This is a public health crisis,' said Richard Weston, chief executive of the Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation, in a letter to Minns and four other NSW ministers last month. 'Aboriginal children in Broken Hill deserve clean homes, safe air and a future free from the legacy of lead.'
Most of the lead in the town's air and soil comes from vast mines running through and underneath Broken Hill – a city built on the world's largest deposit of lead, silver and zinc.
The problem of environmental lead exposure was identified as early as the 1890s, but efforts to tackle the problem didn't occur until the establishment of the Broken Hill lead monitoring program a century later.
The program is considered a public health success story, helping to drive down blood lead levels in newborns and children throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But progress has plateaued, and the gap between lead levels in Indigenous and non-Indigenous children has remained.
The latest figures, released by Far West Local Health District last month, show the average blood lead level for Aboriginal children was 1½ times higher than for non-Aboriginal children.
Six per cent of Aboriginal children tested had dangerously high readings above 20 micrograms per decilitre (μg/dL) – six times the rate of their non-Indigenous peers.
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An acute shortage of affordable housing in the regional city of Broken Hill is forcing Indigenous families into unlivable rentals riddled with mining contamination, exposing children to blood lead levels double the rate of the general population. Health workers and community leaders have urged Premier Chris Minns to invest in stable social housing for Indigenous families and a revamped program to reduce lead contamination in existing homes, after new statistics revealed two-thirds of Aboriginal children aged between one and five have blood lead levels higher than the national guideline. 'This is a public health crisis,' said Richard Weston, chief executive of the Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation, in a letter to Minns and four other NSW ministers last month. 'Aboriginal children in Broken Hill deserve clean homes, safe air and a future free from the legacy of lead.' Most of the lead in the town's air and soil comes from vast mines running through and underneath Broken Hill – a city built on the world's largest deposit of lead, silver and zinc. The problem of environmental lead exposure was identified as early as the 1890s, but efforts to tackle the problem didn't occur until the establishment of the Broken Hill lead monitoring program a century later. The program is considered a public health success story, helping to drive down blood lead levels in newborns and children throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But progress has plateaued, and the gap between lead levels in Indigenous and non-Indigenous children has remained. The latest figures, released by Far West Local Health District last month, show the average blood lead level for Aboriginal children was 1½ times higher than for non-Aboriginal children. Six per cent of Aboriginal children tested had dangerously high readings above 20 micrograms per decilitre (μg/dL) – six times the rate of their non-Indigenous peers.
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