While I painted the Glencore people as the bad guys in the lead safety story, my criticisms were in part unfair.

I also hadn’t realised the complicated path they have to tread to be in compliance with current lead safety regulations. If you read the lead safety parts of he Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Regulation 2017, it is likely to fry your brain. It’s downloadable, read it and I suspect you’ll agree. Staying in compliance with these regulations would be a bit like wearing a strait jacket, which you’d need after you tried to read the legalese. I now appreciate what it would take to operate within the constraints of these guidelines, and if you wanted to have a quiet life you’d just follow the rules. There’s also a high degree of censorship between people outside Glencore and Glencore employees which must make life really difficult when it comes to interacting with the community. Then there’s the Glencore corporate culture which is at best not as good as it could be.

I absolutely think there are people inside Glencore that care, but I’m retired and I don’t have to worry about what speaking up would do for my job prospects. So I’m happy to cut the Glencore people some slack in this whole debacle even though we are talking about stuff that has serious health repercussions for workers. Glencore the company doesn’t deserve any consideration, and I’d better not say what I really think.

The Lead Pathways study, which was funded by Xstrata, was intended to provide a detailed analysis and assessment of the lead in the Mt Isa area, both environmental and due to mining and smelting activities. Professor Jack Ng, who took part in running the study, commented that after taking over in Mt Isa, Glencore immediately terminated the project, despite the fact that it was almost complete. Glencore’s web site now claims “they” carried out the study. Admittedly when you acquire a company you own all it’s assets but claiming credit for something you shut down?

One company was willing to spend money to clarify the extent of pollution and public danger in the Mt Isa area, the other company just wants to keep a lid on things. Glencore obviously has its priorities elsewhere, for example see (https://www.sfo.gov.uk/cases/glencore-group-of-companies/) .

Anyway, I suspect I’m expected to fight the battles so here goes. I was directed to the people in Resources Safety & Health Queensland (the mining equivalent of WorkSafe) to try and convince them that things needed to change. This is what I wrote:

———– letter to RSHQ ———-

Lead has no place in the human body as it alters, damages and disrupts a variety of biological processes in a workers body. The resulting damage will lead to neurological disorders, cardiovascular disease, disease of the kidneys and other organs, immunosuppression and potentially cancer.

Quite obviously exposure to lead has to be monitored and risk has to be managed which is of course the intent of the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Regulation 2017

I have been debating a major biological monitoring flaw in in the following processes:

Removal of worker from lead risk job (Division 3 section 24),
Return to lead risk job after removal (Division 3 section 26)

My simplified interpretation of these processes is that when a workers blood lead levels exceed 30 ug/dl, they are removed from work, and when biological monitoring shows a drop in the blood lead levels to less than 20ug/dl, they are deemed fit to return to work. My comment ignores the more constrained blood lead levels for females of child-bearing age.

In my opinion, this infers that two assumptions are made about blood lead levels (BLL):

1. BLL represents a reliable estimate of the amount of lead present in the workers body.
2. Falling BLL indicates a corresponding linear reduction in the amount of lead present in a workers body.

These assumptions have to be reviewed in the following context, which is derived from current medical and scientific literature:

1. Once in the body, some lead binds to red blood cells, and the rest travels in the blood to soft tissues such as the liver, kidneys, lungs, brain, spleen, muscles, and heart, and to hard tissues such as bone. The half-life of lead in these pools varies from about a month in blood, 1-1.5 months in soft tissue, 1-2 years in the brain and about 25-30 years in bone.
2. Eventually 95% of the lead in the body ends up in bone.
3. Lead continues to accumulate in the body when a worker is exposed to lead.

So we have the following amended scenario:

1. BLL represents a measurement of the lead circulating in the blood, largely bound to red blood cells.
2. As red blood cells containing lead are consumed by macrophages at the end of their life cycle the apparent BLL drops.
3. The drop in BLL that occurs when a worker is removed from lead exposure does NOT represent a significant reduction in total body lead levels, rather it indicates a redistribution of lead to other organs.

As I see it, removing a worker from exposure to lead is not a safety measure at all because it merely slows the accumulation of lead for a short time. Once lead exposure is resumed, accumulation of lead resumes, regardless of the BLL at that time.

This raises the question of the purpose of lead surveillance, removal of workers from lead exposure when BLL exceeds 30 ug/dl, leave and reinstatement on BLL falling below 20 ug/dl.

If BLL doesn’t indicate the amount of lead in the body, except indirectly, and doesn’t measure the accumulation of lead, it is worthless for ensuring the biological safety of workers.

BLL is an indicator in two very different scenarios:

1. As an indicator of acute lead exposure or,
2. In the absence of any significant continuing lead exposure, when an equilibrium state is reached where lead leaching out of the soft tissues, brain and bone reaches a steady-state, BLL is roughly indicative of total body lead, mainly in bone

As an example, if a worker were to leave a lead risk environment permanently (or at least 1-2 years) , their BLL would then reflect total body lead, or rather bone lead stores.

I will of course supply supporting scientific and clinical literature for these observations as required.

There is then an obvious problem with the existing biological monitoring because it measures the wrong thing in a lead risk scenario. If we retain BLL as an acute exposure alarm indicator, then what do we do about estimating and managing body lead?

This is the problem I set Glencore, since they have a mandatory requirement to comply with prevailing safety regulations, and a moral requirement to protect their workers.

I have proposed a way to solve this problem by using a different biological measurement technology which measures bone lead. However, in the face of continuing accumulation of lead stored in worker’s bodies, this is simply an indicator of an escalating problem.

The second, essential part of a possible solution is a technology to safely remove lead from a workers body.. If that were accomplished then body lead levels could be controlled, allowing biological monitoring which retained the context of maintaining worker safety.

I have made a fairly comprehensive proposal about this issue to Glencore to achieve these aims, but as I stated they are constrained by the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Regulation 2017.

——— end of letter to RSHQ ——–

If they accept there’s a problem in the regulations , then someone would have to take the initiative to properly monitor and treat lead worker safety, maybe even Glencore.

In the meantime, think about taking some oral calcium disodium EDTA. That will ensure any lead that gets in will quickly appear in your urine. It will take quite a while to remove all the bone lead the same way, but in the interim you won’t be storing any extra lead.

You can buy calcium disodium EDTA in bulk from BulkSupplemets.com, https://www.bulksupplements.com/en-au/products/edta-calcium-disodium-powder . 1 kg of this will fill 1600 size 0 capsules with about 600 mg of calcium disodium EDTA.

You get the capsules (enteric or gelatin, size 0) from https://www.buyemptycapsules.com.au/ and a size 0 capsule filling machine that lets you fill 24 capsules at a time from here will cost $40.

Enteric capsules would probably result in more EDTA being absorbed, but this hasn’t been tested.

You can also buy EDTA capsules online, but it’ll cost at least 4-5 times more when you take the quantity of EDTA into account.

Please be aware that EDTA removes other toxic metals like cobalt and cadmium and mercury etc, BUT it also binds zinc and magnesium. Take a zinc and magnesium supplent every now and then, but not at the same time as EDTA, and you’ll be fine.

As a bit of an added incentive, here’s a little story. North Queensland is covered in lead ore, and cattle eat the dirt because lead gives it a sweet taste. Cattle end up with quite a bit of lead on board, so much lead that they were rejected by the Indonesians for live export. Those cattle now get treated with a chelation agent in a feedlot for a month to remove the lead and they’re fit for export.

I sure hope they’re treating cattle for domestic consumption the same way. But if they’re not, take your EDTA and you can give people a smug look at the next barbecue.

I’ll let you know how things pan out with the authorities. You never know.