Britain bans petrol lead to protect children, but N.Z. not following suit

Press, 7 May 1983, Page 19

Britain bans petrol lead to protect children, but N.Z. not following suit

By

GARRY ARTHUR

In a dramatically rapid response to a Royal Commission’s warnings, the British Government has announced that all new cars must run on lead-free petrol at least by the year 1990. It had previously decided to reduce lead in petrol to a relatively low level, but the commission’s warnings of the dangers to children’s health were so persuasive that the Government has decided on a complete ban. In spite of that, and although New Zealand’s heavily leaded petrol puts more lead into street dust in Christchurch and Wellington than in the biggest cities of Britain, the New Zealand Health Department is unmoved. We have the most heavily leaded petrol in the world — 0.84 grams of lead per litre, compared with 0.4 g/ 1 in Britain. Yet the Government’s plans are merely to bring the level down to the present British figure through changes to the Marsden Point oil refinery. Britain’s decision to ban lead from petrol stems from fears that it is affecting the brains of children who absorb lead in the air and from food contaminated by lead in exhaust fumes. The New Zealand Health Department is still not convinced that lead from exhaust fumes affects I.Q. and behaviour, or that levels in New Zealand are high enough to worry about. “We don’t regard lead in petrol in quite the same light — as such an important source of lead — as the United Kingdom,” says Dr Maxwell Collins, the Health Department’s director of public health. Dr Collins says the policy here is to ensure that lead is removed from all sources in order of priority, starting with paint and food,

and then start to make inroads into removing lead from petrol. He does not believe that the problem is so urgent in New Zealand, partly because of the lesser traffic density, and partly because it is believed that most lead ingested in New Zealand comes from other sources such as lead in old paint. Dr Collins does not think it practicable for New Zealand to follow Britain’s lead and phase out lead in petrol as soon as possible. “But our advice would be to continue to reduce lead in petrol as a third priority in New Zealand.” He describes concern about the harmful effects of lead in petrol as “a very emotional issue.” “I don’t think the evidence is so totally convincing and extensive as the (Royal Commission) report indicates.” He says it does produce a certain amount of evidence, which must be taken note of, but not so much that the Health Department feels that it should advise the Minister that all lead should be removed from petrol immediately. Changes to Marsden Point and

the increasing use of alternative fuels, Dr Collins says, will have a significant effect in reducing the amount of lead from motor vehicles. “But don’t get me wrong,” he adds. “I believe that every source of lead should be removed eventually.” The amount of lead in the blood of the general population in Britain is too close to a potentially dangerous level, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution warned. It recommended immediate action to phase out lead in petrol from an early date. Within an hour of the report’s publication, the Government announced that it accepted that recommendation. All new cars would have to run on 92 octane lead-free petrol no later than 1990. The commission noted that features of lead poisoning occasionally occur at blood-lead levels of about 50 micrograms per 100 millilitres of blood. At present, it said, the average blood-lead concentra-

tion of the United Kingdom population is about one quarter of that level. “We are not aware of any other toxin,” says the report, “which is so widely distributed in human and animal populations and which is also universally present at levels that exceed even one-tenth of that at which clinical signs and symptoms may occur.” The commission concluded that it would be prudent to take steps to increase the safety margin for the population as a whole. Mr Tom King, the Secretary of State for the Environment, told the House of Commons that typical lead levels in the United Kingdom

were low and dropping. “Substantial research efforts have so far shown no conclusive evidence that these typical levels have adverse effects on the health of children or adults,” he said. “But it is, and has been throughout, the Government’s policy to increase the safety margin wherever possible, and while lead in petrol is not the largest contributor to the average body burden it is the largest that is controllable on a national basis.” The question of cost was virtually dismissed by the Royal Commission, which said the extra cost would be offset by car efficiency improvements. ‘’The most practical means of eliminating lead would marginally increase over-all energy demand if other factors were assumed to remain constant,” says its report. “But by the time the changeover takes place, any such energy penalty, besides being small in absolute terms, would be completely swamped by continuing improvements in car efficiency and fuel economy. “On a national basis it is highly

improbable that removing lead would be reflected in any higher absolute expenditure and the impact on the individual motorist would be very small.” The commission estimated that a total ban on lead in petrol would cost as little as £lO per car (about $24) and increase Britain’s oil consumption by 670,000 tonnes a year. The British Government is to have urgent discussion with the oil and motor industries, and also with its fellow members of the E.E.C. The Community has ruled that petrol must have at least 0.15 grams per litre of lead — a move designed to facilitate vehicle sales throughout the E.E.C. with consequent benefits of scale and simplicity. A proposal for a complete ban on lead in petrol already has allparty support in the European Parliament, and it is expected to be on the agenda of the next meeting of the environment Ministers next month. If a complete ban on lead should be held up by the E.E.C.’s cumbersome procedures, it would still be possible for Britain to act alone. The Treaty of Rome which set up the E.E.C. allows member states to introduce legislation unilaterally to protect life and health. British petrol now has 0.4 grams per litre of lead as an octane booster, but the Government has already ruled that this must be reduced to 0.15 g/1 by the end of 1985. Existing cars will be able to run on this lower level of lead, but not on petrol that has no lead at all. Lead is a known neurotoxin. Previously, the official Government view in Britain was that lead from petrol was only a relatively minor contributor to the contamination of people. But members of a

scientific committee which reported on lead in 1981 have since said that they underestimated that risk. The Royal Commission’s conclusions that it was a significant cause of raised blood-lead levels were no doubt influenced, too, by two recent reports which it considered. " One was a United States Government study which concluded, after careful statistical analysis, that between 1976 and 1980, 46 per cent of the lead in the blood of the average American came from petrol. “There can be little doubt,” that report said, “that gasoline lead emissions are an important determinant, perhaps the most important single contributor, in the level of lead in blood.” The second report was a longawaited study from Italy, where scientists substituted lead from Australia in petrol sold in the state of Piedmont. The Australian lead has different isotopes from the lead

normally used in Italy, enabling the researchers to identify it easily in people. They discovered that about a quarter of the lead in people’s blood was the Australian lead from local petrol. And this was just the minimum contribution from petrol lead — their blood would also contain lead from petrol bought outside the area, which would not have shown up in the tests. The biggest worry about lead is the likelihood that even small quantities taken into the body have harmful effects on the intelligence and behaviour of children. Although scientific studies have demonstrated this tendency, there has been no positive proof of cause and effect. ‘Truly conclusive evidence may be unobtainable,” said the British Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Henry Yellowlees, in 1981, “and it is therefore doubtful whether there is anything to be gained by deferring a decision until the results of further research become available.” The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said on this subject: “In our view the accumulated evidence may indicate a causal association between the body burden of lead and psychometric indices, or the effects of confounding factors, or both. On present evidence we do not consider it possible to distinguish between these possibilities.” As “The Times” points out in a leading article, it is no more possible to prove conclusively that a thick urban environment does not expose children to such risks, than to prove conclusively that it does. “The children, not the lead, get the benefit of the doubt,” says “The Times,” “and when the matter is put like that, who would dare dispute it?”