12^th April 1997

By Melissa Sweet, Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) [not found online on 18^th November 2024]

After years of trying to convince local authorities that the dust blowing off uncovered rail wagons near her house was making her children sick, Ms Jenny Rowbotham bought a camera.

The pictures she took from her backyard provide dramatic evidence that large clouds of dust have blown across housing from the uncovered rail wagons that take lead and zinc concentrate out of Broken Hill to Port Pirie.

Ms Rowbotham says that 70 children under 12 live in the two blocks bordering the railway line near her home in Gaffney Street, and many suffer serious health problems.

She said yesterday that the company responsible, Pasminco Broken Hill Mine, had been promising for more than a year to cover the wagons but they were still open and a threat to children’s health.

A company spokeswoman, Ms Christine Ellis, said she understood concerns that the program to cover the wagons had taken so long but it had been a massive project, costing $3 million and requiring the design and manufacture of 250 large fiberglass covers and the modification of rail wagons. They would be covered by the end of May [1997], she said.

But this has come too late for Ms Rowbotham, who recently moved out of her home of 13 years into rented accommodation far from the railway. And she said it is too late for her sons, Travis, 7, Matthew, 10, and Jason, 12, who have grown up with high blood lead levels and suffering regular nose-bleeds, stomach pain and headaches.

Travis and Matthew are also being treated for behavioural problems and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which are associated with high lead levels. “The headmaster has said Travis would be the worst behaved child in the school,” Ms Rowbotham said.

Because the children are older than five, the family are not entitled to the free environmental assessment and decontamination program provided by the Broken Hill Environmental Lead Centre, and have spent thousands of dollars trying to seal their house from the dust.

The centre’s project manager, Mr Bill Balding, said there was no evidence that Gaffney Street had been more severely affected by lead poisoning than other areas of Broken Hill. There was a stronger association between blood levels and a house’s condition than with its location, he said.

A mines inspector with the Department of Mineral Resources, Mr Stan Goodman, declined to comment on the health implications of the railway dust but said Pasminco has probably incurred financial losses from material being blown off its trucks.

“Pasminco has been as big a loser as anybody for what they have lost off the trucks,” he said.