United Council firm on lead levels

Press, 15 June 1983, Page 4

United Council firm on lead levels

The Canterbury United Council’s pollution committee will continue to press to have the lead content of petrol in New Zealand lowered in spite of a discouraging reply from the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, to an earlier effort.

New Zealand petrol at present has a lead content of 0.84 g per litre, one of the highest levels in the world. When the Marsden Point expansion is completed in 1985 the lead content will be halved to 0.45 g a litre. The Canterbury United Council has urged the Government to cut this still further to a level adopted by ' Jfqur. Common Market countries —0.15 g a litre. Japan; , the . United States, and Canada, market petrol that is entirely lead free, and Britain and Australia will; do so within a few years. ■' Lead in petrol is believed by some researchers to produce abnormal behaviour and brain damage in children. Cr Geoff Stone said at the pollution committee’s meeting yesterday, that lead-free petrol would be. prpduced at the synthetic fuels plant at

Motunui, but it would be transported to the Marsden Point refinery where it would be mixed with leaded petrol to make the product with a lead level of 0.45 g a litre.

Dr N. J. Peet, a University of Canterbury chemical engineer who advises the United Council, said that the decision to produce petrol with that particular lead content was purely an economic one.

Marsden Point could produce lower leaded petrol, but it required further refining. and was more expensive, he said. “This is why the Minister says, in effect, that you have to prove that there is a danger to health before the Government will consider lead-free petrol,” said Dr Peet.

The problem was that the danger could not be proved to the standard the authorities wanted, although the circumstantial evidence overseas continued to build up, he said. The Minister of Energy, in his letter to the United Council, said that although there was no data yet that could give an accurate de-

termination of New Zealand blood lead levels, officials predict that when the new lower level was introduced the levels would “almost certainly” meet the criteria set by major health and environmental organisations abroad.

The danger to health was not the main reason for other countries cutting their lead in petrol, the Minister said. It was a desire to curb smog. “Only Australia took into

account the health argument at the time of the decision. No country has eliminated lead on the basis of health alone,” the Minister said. (Since the Minister wrote, the British Government has decided that all new cars must be able to run on lead-free petrol from 1990. The decision was taken after a Royal Commission warned of the health dangers.) “The major petrol/lead reduction that will take

place in 1985-86 and further reductions in lead emissions due to the promotion of lead-free alternative fuels (C.N.G. and L.P.G.) over the next few years, are positive steps to remove any overt health threat from lead. “In these circumstances I see no justification for the enormous and continuing cost in overseas funds involved in totally removing lead or opting for a lead level'. 0.45 g a litre,” Mr Birch said.