Council group urges lower lead levels

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 5

Council group urges lower lead levels

The petrol blend which uses fuel produced at Motunui should have at least reduced lead content, said the Christchurch City Council’s clean air and health committee yesterday. Petrol produced by the New Zealand Synthetic Fuels Corporation will be lead-free, but then taken to the Marsden Point refinery so that lead can be added to it before blending, and the octane level can be improved.

Councillors said that the lead content of petrol sold in New Zealand should be reduced from 0.80 mg/ml to 0.15 mg/ml, the standard now accepted by most European Economic Community countries.

“It is impossible to state

a safe level for lead generated in this manner,” said the Chief City Health Inspector, Mr A. P. Millthorpe. It had been claimed by those reluctant to reduce petrol lead levels that specific evidence of New Zealand lead conditions was lacking, he said, but in Riccarton Road, lead levels were equivalent to those in places such as Birmingham. Cr C. E. Manning, the committee’s chairman, said that recent tests showed surprising lead levels even in Amberley.

Cr H. A. Clark said that no community should deliberately put poison in the atmosphere when there was evidence of its bad effects, especially on children. He thought the quality of

life was more important than the millions it would cost to make petrol leadfree.

The City Council seeks comparable costs of transporting the Motunui petrol to Marsden Point and establishment of a separate distribution point at the production site. The committee said that it would be preferable, if such a distribution scheme was economically unsound, to use the lead-free petrol to reduce lead levels below the .45 mg/ml proposed by the Government for petrol from the new plant. Recent research on the effects of lead absorbed from the atmosphere has shown that it can cause retardation among young children.