Politics and shallow Media

[nomadpete]

I have previously griped about journalists seemingly failing to dig deep enough into a story. Maybe there is a political bias, but more likely it is simple laziness.

 

Case in point. Recent article about lead levels in children and pregnant women living at Port Pirie.

Tests show a recent doubling of lead shown up by blood tests.

 

 

"The executive director of Health, Protection and Regulation at SA Health, Chris Lease, said this could be a result of historical factors and climatic conditions."

 

Another comment reported says...

"We've got 132 years of smelter operations, we've got emissions over a long period of time, there's a lot of lead in the environment, it'll take us quite a while to resolve that issue," Mr Dolan said.

 

A little websearch gives some background......

Port Pirie boasts one of the world's largest smelters. It is owned by  Nyrstar, a Dutch  international producer of minerals and metals. It was founded in August 2007. But that may have just been  a recent 'amalgamation'.

 

Anyway,

Nyrstar was acquired by Trafigura (Singapore based), in 2019. They also own Puma oil/fuel.

 

Google them and there is a list of interesting business behaviours.

Environmental scandals, Russian oil exports that avoided recent sanctions, etc. In my opinion a business that, personally, I would not welcome to my country as a beneficial investor.

 

So, we are all supposed to stop worrying about the wellbeing of all those families whose body's are permanently carrying twice the WHO internationally recommended maximum  lead levels.

Nothing to see here.

 

I'm not even sure if the parent companies concerned even pay much tax to Australia. To me, it reads like a story I'd expect to be about the Ivory Coast.

Edited July 13 by nomadpete

[facthunter]

I wouldn't want to live in that Town. Water in the Gulf is affected also. Profit is way ahead of concern for people.  Nev

[pmccarthy]

Smelters were established by the Broken Hill mining companies in 1915. They previously exported metal concentrates to Belgium and Germany for smelting, but of course could not do that once the war started.  It became the biggest lead smelter in the world, a great source of pride for Australia. The environmental management in those days was not as it is today. Lead poisoning was worse in the mines themselves. I was paid a "lead bonus" as compensation for working in that environment, I think that bonus had been negotiated by the unions in 1923. 

[nomadpete]

But in THIS day, I  thought ethical owners of a business might feel it important to house their employees and families a safe distance from the toxic environment that their business is responsible for.

 

Risk management 101 - the best way to control a risk is to eliminate it. Since the historic bad environmental practices have contaminated the town, it should be declared uninhabitable and safe habitation should be provided. The pollution was part of the existing business. When they took ownership of the smelter, they should also inherit the responsibility for remediation, along with the potential profits.

[nomadpete]

Aside from the ethics of using a change of ownership to avoid responsibility for lingering expensive baggage,

My beef was about media not bothering to note that this story is about a foreign owned industry failing to do anything meaningful about the present health hazard posed by their business. And "The executive director of Health, Protection and Regulation at SA Health, said this could be a result of historical factors and climatic conditions." As if to say "too bad, they just have to put up with it". I guess the executive director of Health doesn't happen to live near the smelter, so has little interest in the problem.

 

 

 

[facthunter]

OUR Media looks after the rich as they show their appreciation with .... You guessed it MONEY. Nev