Artist: Yuna Marquez

Age: 8

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Cattails (reeds) act as bio-sorbents that absorb lead from contaminated wastewater and soil, with higher concentrations accumulating in the roots compared to leaves. This capacity makes them effective for phytoremediation in wetlands, though it means they can accumulate heavy metals, posing a potential environmental contamination source.

Description of Work: Colouring pencils on paper, collaged in Paint and Powerpoint. Lead-Safety Message from Google AI Assistant.

Artist: Kevina Malhotra

Age: 11

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Both Hummingbird feathers and Seahorses are good lead bioindicators because both live in limited moving ranges and bioaccumulate local lead pollution. Hummingbirds get lead from nectar and small insects, whereas Seahorses get lead from crustacea like shrimps. Microplastics in the ocean might also increase the bioaccumulation of heavy metals by Seahorses.

Description of Work: Colouring pencils on paper. Collaged in Paint and Powerpoint. Lead Safety Message from Bioaccumulation of contaminants in wild seahorses collected from coastal China, 17 October 2022; Toxic metals and associated sporulated bacteria on Andean hummingbird feathers, 31 August 2016.

Artist: Devrim Yasar

Age: 11

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Another global warming and lead connection: During droughts, shrinking water holes can concentrate heavy metals like lead. As water levels fall, elephants are forced to consume sediment, mud, and water with high concentrations of contaminants.

Description of Work: Coloured pencil drawing, side panels added in Paint and Powerpoint. Lead-Safety Message from Google AI Assistant.

Artist: Mavis Zhou

Age: 9

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Because Seahorses are generally poor swimmers and inhabit coastal areas, they are highly vulnerable to pollutants like lead which causes deformities and population decline. Don’t let lead enter stormwater, rivers or the ocean.

Description of Work: Coloured pencil drawing. mirrored in Paint and Powerpoint. Lead-Safety Message from Google AI Assistant.

Artist: David Suh

Age: 11

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Great White sharks have been found to have alarmingly high concentrations of lead, mercury, and arsenic – enough to kill other species – but researchers don’t yet know how they survive. “There’s a possibility that sharks have potentially important metal binding proteins, that … [move]… these metals …from the blood to the tissues.”

Description of Work: Lead Safety Message from Sharks cope with levels of heavy metals in their blood that would kill other animals, CBC Radio Canada (April 19, 2019). Coloured pencil drawing.

Artist: Khangai Davaasuren

Age: 9

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Kookaburras can ingest lead particles from soil contaminated by old paint, discarded ammunition, or fishing weights, often mistaking these materials for grit.

Description of Work: Coloured pencil drawing. Lead Safety Message from Google AI Assistant.

Artist: Kevina Malhotra

Age: 11

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Shading shapes to make them look 3-dimensional is challenging. Getting lead out of people to give them a better chance of a smart healthy future is even more challenging. Its possible everyone alive today could be deleaded by oral EDTA, but many obstacles must first be overcome.

Description of Work: Colouring pencils on paper. Lead Safety Message from www.leadtox.blog of Dr Ulrich Mack, BSc PhD (UQ Medicine).

Artist: Khangai Davaasuren

Age: 9

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: The most famous example of a cave system containing crystals associated with lead mining is the Cave of the Crystals (Cueva de los Cristales) in the active Naica Mine in Chihuahua, Mexico. While the massive crystals themselves are made of selenite (gypsum), the surrounding mine is a primary source of lead, zinc, and silver.

Description of Work: Coloured pencil drawing. Message from Google AI Overview.

Artist: Yuna Marquez

Age: 8

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: In the old days, the pigments in white, yellow, orange, red, green and brown pencil cores were lead pigments and only blue pencil cores were lead-free. With lead paint on the outside of pencils, people who chewed pencils were often lead poisoned. Now all coloured pencils in Australia are lead free inside and out.

Description of Work: Colouring pencils on paper

Artist: Leah Du

Age: 9

School Name: Creative Einstein

Lead-safety Message: Being the most common heavy metal, lead is most often associated today with the dark side of life… a cause of a lowering of population IQ and of early death from all causes. But in the past, people loved the bright yellow, orange, red and green lead pigments in paints that still lead poison unwary DIY renovators today.

Description of Work: Coloured pencil drawing. References for Message: Model National Lead Safety Policy by The LEAD Group Inc charity, and Use of Lead in Paint in NSW – When and Where it was Used by John Hartley.