As an Australian resident of one of the cities mentioned in the article who has three chooks we keep for eggs, my take would be a little different. I had trouble squaring these statements in the article:
> The average level of lead in eggs from the backyard chickens in our study was 301µg/kg. .... Some 51% of the eggs we analysed exceeded the 100µg/kg “food safety” threshold. To keep egg lead below 100μg/kg, our modelling of the relationship between lead in soil, chickens and eggs showed soil lead needs to be under 117mg/kg.
with the maps. How did they get an average of 301ug/kg when most of the area covered by the maps were below the safe level?
Naturally I looked very closely at the maps to see if my suburb was in a high lead area. It wasn't included by the maps at all, so I looked for a pattern I could extrapolate from. Only the inner suburbs were above the 117mg/kg level. My house is a long way away from an inner suburb.
Why the inner suburbs? The article hints at one reason - houses painted with lead paint. Another one sprang to mind - areas with high vehicle density when lead petrol was a thing, but the areas are so small the paint explanation seems a better fit. In Australia, most lead paint ceased to be sold in 1970.
In comparison, Wikipedia says the USA dropped lead paint in 1997, EU formally banned lead paint 2003 (but phase outs happened much earlier in most places, eg UK in 1980), India in 2016.
It's probably obvious to most Australian's, but those maps are misleading for another reason. Australian cities are huge and those maps only cover a small faction of where people live. If indeed it is only the very inner suburbs that are effected, it really is a small portion. Add to that backyards aren't a thing in the CBD, let alone backyard egg laying chooks, and I doubt too many people are effected. That said, I suspect the article has put all egg laying chooks in Mount Isa in mortal danger.
Presumably outliers with much higher concentration.
Fortunately, plants don't seem to generally absorb lead.[2] It may be in the soil, though, which means you should carefully wash your plants before eating them.
It does seem to be a big deal, though, that chickens absorb lead and that the lead ends up in their eggs. There are many people who have backyard chickens who likely aren't aware of this.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poison...
[2] https://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/soil-compost/sho...
While there's no known safe level of lead, they do set action limits because effects under that level are not known or are negligible. It's also not practical to set a level of zero in many cases, such as soil levels for crops.
So again, why would it be unsafe to simply live there? Where else would they live? Is there anywhere that is lead free (since the argument is that any level is unacceptable)? What level do you consider safe to live around?
This is a very interesting news to me. I wonder if there is a cheap and easy way to test the eggs to see if they are absorbing lead from the soil?
The way you turned that around seems similar to "Free speech zones".
So now we need official "Health Zones" where children can play safely and ordinary people can grow food as they've done for 12,000 years?
Urban soil is poisoned in Australia. Let's not make excuses or try to hide behind fancy interpretations.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/02/michelle-obama...
I think it is news to most people that they should have to care about "zones" just to safely grow a garden. Almost seems like you're saying it's their fault.
Is it?
Just living there you’re not ingesting the soil.
It sounds like accumulation from lead based paint and leaded car gas is the issue in the article. Which makes sense since you generally can't fly low over cities anyways (disperses) and small planes are not huge emitters (low in numbers).
The neighbouring City of Casey to the east is shown as unsafe, but this contains a "noxious industries area". Planes usually take off and land on a roughly north–south alignment because of the prevailing winds.
JetA, which is basically kerosene (still terrible, don't drink it - but at least it doesn't have lead in it) is used by all the jet engines. That includes lots of things a casual observer wouldn't think of that way. A King Air, or a C-130, they've got propellers, but that's a turboprop engine, the propeller is spinning because there's a turbine behind it, and instead of kicking hot fast air out the back (like an A320) it's using that energy for turning the propeller really fast.
Also, 'leaded petrol still in London air 22 years after ban': https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57564953
You don't have kids, do you?
Young kids will put anything in their mouths. Eating dirt is not an uncommon behavior.
And...? Do you think there's no exposure anywhere? This line, at least the way it's being used in arguments here, might as well be religion - used as a one line ideology that doesn't add anything to the discussion and ignores the realities.
How is 1/4 pound of dirt not that much? And remember, they would have to eat multiple times that much to actually absorb 100% of lead in that amount. If you're really that concerned, then you shouldn't be letting them eat any dirt due to other health concerns, like toxoplasmosis.
I'm clearly not that concerned, as I don't keep my child in a bubble, but environmental lead is detrimental to society at large and something that we should make every reasonable effort to reduce.
"make every reasonable effort to reduce."
I agree. It's the reasonable part that comes up for debate. To me, it seems reasonable to live in an area that has elevated lead in the soil while not growing crops or raising chickens. It's more reasonable to replace the "lead free" plumbing components with truly lead free components, carefully select toys (eg no Chinese), and stay away from certain foods (carrots are a big one if I remember correctly).