Child poisoned every 9 days in mine town Mount Isa

A CHILD develops lead poisoning every nine days in the northwest Queensland mining town of Mount Isa, claims a new study.

A CHILD develops lead poisoning every nine days in the northwest Queensland mining town of Mount Isa, claims a new study.

Two years after Queensland Health testing found 11 per cent of the town's children had lead poisoning, researchers have accused Xstrata and the Bligh government of doing nothing.

The study, published yesterday in the Medical Journal of Australia, suggested that one child every nine days was exposed to dangerously high lead levels.

Macquarie University associate professor Mark Taylor, the report's co-author, said that mining giant Xstrata and the Queensland government had continually denied that mining activity was the cause of high lead levels in blood in the town.

"This study finally puts that theory to rest -- we've looked at the evidence, that includes . . . things like soil and geology, and they all point in the same direction -- that it's the processing of the soil, not what's in the soil, which is the cause of the problem.

"Cleaning up the river is good, but that's the easy part. It's cleaning up what comes out in the air which is the hard part, and that's still not being addressed," he said.

Xstrata is co-ordinating the Lead Pathways Study, which deals with a survey of land pollution in Mt Isa, and the second and third parts, which deal with water and air pollution, are both due to be released next year.

Last year, a study found lead contamination in the soil around Mount Isa was worse than that near similar mines in China.

The report by one of the world's leading lead toxicology experts, American Russell Flegal, debunked Xstrata's claims that the lead poisoning in children was due to naturally high levels of the heavy metal in the region.

Instead, Professor Flegal, an adviser to the US Environmental Protection Agency on mining operations, concluded that historic and continuing emissions from the mine and smelting operations caused the lead poisoning. The report was commissioned by lawyers Slater and Gordon, representing several children with dangerously high lead blood levels, in a negligence case.

Solicitor Damian Scattini yesterday said the latest study by Dr Taylor -- who has completed paid work for the negligence case -- was further evidence that children were at risk in the town.

"You only have to go to the top of the hill in Mount Isa and watch those trucks going up to the slag heaps and see how the winds blow the dust off the top and across the town," he said.

In a written statement, Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Kate Jones said the government last year installed an air monitoring device at Mount Isa to monitor lead levels.

"Since this technology was installed, there have been no breaches of national standards in regards to lead in the air," she said.

Mount Isa mayor John Molony said: "We're a working town and a great town. The bloke who wrote that is working in hospital-like conditions in a big city -- he wouldn't understand life out here."