On the window of the Cyrano, the only café still in operation in the northern French town of Evin-Malmaison, as well as on the storefronts of the pharmacy and the town hall, posters invite pregnant residents and those with children to get tested to check the level of lead in their blood. The town of 4,600 inhabitants is next to the former site of Metaleurop, which was the largest lead and zinc smelting plant in Europe.
Nineteen years after its closure, the plant continues to poison the area (which is permanently downwind of the site), just like the areas of Noyelles-Godault and Courcelles-lès-Lens, in the heart of the former mining basin. Here people have long turned a blind eye to soil and air pollution. When the foundry was running, even the unions of this Seveso-II-classified site (a European directive aiming to reduce the risk of technical and chemical accidents and protect the environment) avoided the subject.
The French journalist Martin Boudot made a documentary about the foundry for TV channel France 5, which aired at the end of the April. The results of tests on samples taken from vegetables and the hair of 29 children and 21 adults in Evin-Malmaison caused a shock. A biomedical laboratory in the Paris hospital Lariboisière found that thyme leaves from vegetable gardens in the town have a lead level more than 91 times higher than the norm, while leeks were found to contain 80 times the normal amount.
Tests on hair, conducted with a Canadian environmental toxicology lab, confirmed the presence of lead in hair follicles and in the first centimeter of hair after the root. On the site itself of the former foundry – now operated by French utility company Suez Environnement, which has built a waste recycling center on the site – analyses show that lead concentration is 774 times higher than the threshold, requiring the removal of land to a depth of 50 centimeters (300 mg/kg).
When residents watched or heard about the documentary on April 29 and the regional press covered it, it was a wake-up call for the Pas-de-Calais prefecture and the regional health agency (ARS, Agence Régionale de Santé). The last screening program had taken place more than 10 years ago. The mayors of the municipalities bordering the Metaleurop site went to the prefecture on May 24, and on June 20, authorities released a press release entitled "Update on the Metaleurop Case". After drawing up an assessment of previous lead poisoning screening campaigns, the prefecture announced the launch of a new operation and announced that soil samples were going to be taken for analysis.
You have 69.41% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.