The results presented by the Regional Health Agency and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais prefecture “confirm our investigation and even go beyond”welcomes on franceinfo Martin Boudot, journalist and documentary filmmaker, author of the investigation The children of leadwhich denounces the heavy lead pollution of the soils of several municipalities around the Metaleurop factory, which has been closed for twenty years.
The Hauts-de-France Regional Health Agency and the prefecture revealed on Tuesday, September 27 that they had detected seven cases of lead poisoning and found lead above the limit in five new schools. At the time of his investigation, six months ago, “it was not at all the same speech”, reacted the journalist with irony, who had never had an answer from the authorities and whose results had been called into question. The documentary filmmaker behind this “kick in the anthill” said he was “delighted to finally see things moving”.
franceinfo: How do you analyze the reaction of the authorities?
Martin Boudot: It is good news that the authorities are moving and doing something. When we presented our results, at the time, they had been called into question. We were told that they weren’t necessarily good at ground level, that what we found in the hair was not necessarily symbolic of what was going on and in general. Neither the prefecture, nor the Regional Health Agency, nor even the rectorate agreed to meet with us. So it was not at all the same speech.
Six months later, things have changed, the prefecture and the ARS have arrived with new results which confirm our investigation and go even further. We had found lead in only one school, there are in five schools of the city… In these schools, the thresholds in lead exceed the thresholds of evacuation. It’s huge.
How did residents react to your survey?
There was a mixture of resignation and combat. This is a particularly precarious region. Everyone remembers this social drama that was Métaleurop, the beginning of rogue bosses. It was even then that the expression was coined.
“We said to ourselves that pollution was something old, it was no longer relevant. There was no longer any screening for lead poisoning, nor recurring checks in schools!”
Martin Boudot, author of the “Children of Lead” surveyat franceinfo
There, children must imperatively wash their hands when they return from the playground. To get rid of lead. The bins, so as not to cultivate the soil, had somehow become part of the customs, as if pollution was inevitable.
So when I presented the results there was great surprise and great solidarity. They have formed an association, they are suing the State to demand depollution. We kicked in the anthill which still made it possible to get things moving and so much the better.
One wonders if one should speak of the blindness of the authorities or of abandonment… Do you think that one did not want to see?
Often, on the spot, I was repeated this sentence which still haunts me: “If we were in Neuilly-sur-Seine, it would have been a long time since all this had been cleaned up.” These sentences say a lot about the state of mind on the spot. We felt this feeling of abandonment. This idea that “maybe we’re not shouting loud enough”, “maybe we’re not rich enough”. Our investigation may have remotivated some of them. I’m glad to finally see things moving. Lead poisoning has an impact on your whole life, it’s the reduction of your intellectual capacity, it’s your future that is doomed so it’s really not trivial.