Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and this is a rather unusual episode.
This is the start of a mini series that we do every year to
showcase the journalists who are shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award.
For those of you who dunno, maybe those of you who are new to the
podcast, Paul Foot was an extraordinary campaigning and investigative journalist.
He worked at the eye for many years.
And he died much too young.
in 2004.
For some years now, the Eye has run the Paul Foot Award in his memory and
to celebrate the amazing campaigning and investigative journalism that is
still happening across the British media ecosystem in spite of all
the headwinds against journalism, these brilliant stories are still
coming out and they're being written by some brilliant journalists.
So for the next six days, we are going to be speaking once per day to one of
the journalists or teams of journalists shortlisted for this year's award.
Then, a week from now, we're gonna be having the winners announcement,
which is gonna be live from the award ceremony, and we'll be speaking to
last year's winner and of course to Ian, about the awards themselves.
So let's dive straight in and find out who is up for the award on day one.
Laura Hughes: I am Laura Hughes and I'm a public policy correspondent
at the Financial Times.
And
Andy: And what's the story that's brought you to the pool foot walls this year?
Laura Hughes: it's about the legacy of lead in multiple forms and how everywhere
I looked, I found the government wasn't looking for it, testing for
it, and uncovering the consequences of that, whether that's lead in our
food chain, which is incredibly.
Toxic and poisonous, or in our children, in our houses.
Andy: I'm vaguely aware that lead is toxic.
Don't be around it for too long.
Don't be around it at all if you can avoid it.
But I don't really know how I would encounter lead.
And what you found is that there are sites all over the uk, which contain
large amounts of lead, which might be getting into water supplies and food.
Laura Hughes: Yeah.
So this reporting journey began a year and a half ago with the tip
off about the Welsh government's poor remediation efforts of these
thousands of old lead mines in Wales.
And these were abandoned years and years ago.
And at the time there was no legislation that required the companies to
remediate them, so they were just left.
And every year they continue to leach.
This toxic poisonous metal, which is harmful to almost every organ in
the human body into our environment where it seeps into waterways and soil
and where it can then be ingested by animals, which of course humans then eat.
And I had this tip off and I started Googling around and I found a PhD study.
And as I was reading it, the hairs on my arms honestly stood on end.
This academic was brought in to investigate whether or not horses
had died from lead poisoning as a consequence of being reared downstream
from abandoned lead mines in Wales.
And while she was there, she tested the vegetables and the eggs and the
soil and the water on these farms.
And she found concentrations of lead in the eggs that were so high, if a child was
to regularly eat one or two, they would become severely cognitively impaired.
And I'm reading this, I didn't read all of it, but I got near the end
and she, thanks Natural Resource Wales, which is the Welsh Environment
Agency for helping to fund the work.
So then I'm thinking, oh my God, the Welsh government knows about this.
and that's what got me onto it.
and it's, the way that it's getting into the food chain and... could be
impacting humans that are living in those areas, eating those things, that
is so extraordinary and to my knowledge, those eggs are still being sold...
Because no one quite wants to take responsibility for telling
the farmer or clearing up.
And then I found there is no safe lead threshold for eggs.
In the UK anyway, so even if someone was out there looking and testing,
there was nothing to test against.
Andy: So that's terrible.
It clearly needs to be sorted out... but at least this is a
geographically limited problem.
Laura Hughes: You would think so.
I did all these stories in Wales, did a freedom of information requests,
which ran at how many tons of lead, the Government actually expected, to
be leached every year and we made some impact, but I was getting frustrated that
people weren't listening to the line in the piece that said, academics behind
this report of warning, there could be 'hotspots' like this all over the uk.
So I asked other academics could they help me break breakdown, lead mine by
Parliamentary constituency and couldn't believe it when they gave me the results
and the Member of Parliament who had the most lead mines, two and a half thousand,
was Rishi Sunak; then Prime Minister.
So I got in my car at the weekends, driving around
Richmond, I found old lead mines.
I followed the rivers down from the mines and I was knocking on farmers' doors to
see if what the academics had warned, which was, this is a problem everywhere.
Was true and couldn't believe it, that within two knocks I found a farmer
who told me how all his lambs had died after a flood, which is extraordinary
Andy: You've mentioned already some of the toxicity when it comes to children,
but we should just list a few of them.
Things like, greater chances of miscarriage, depression, kidney
disease, heart attacks, and as you've said, children's IQs being, being
damaged by really small amounts.
problems
Laura Hughes: in children is a massive thing,
Andy: right?
So these mines are everywhere.
the livestock slash eggs are still being sold, which may contain these.
who's in charge of this?
What's happening next?
Laura Hughes: Defra would say to me: this is a matter for local authorities
to make sure that they are monitoring land and that it's not contaminated in
a way that poses a risk to human health.
Andy: Local authorities are meant to be in charge of that, okay.
Laura Hughes: And as you will know, local authorities have no money.
They have no people.
There is no one going round asking Mr. Boggins, can we please test your soil?
that isn't happening.
And actually something that was really shocking is I went through.
All you know, 40 years worth national archives, government veterinary
reports where they detail incidents of cows frothing at the mouth,
seizing Blind dying of lead poisoning.
Why?
Because of their proximity to old lead mines.
so someone in a position of authority has known about this for a very long time.
I've spoken to academics who wrote reports for government over the last 20, 30 years.
I spoke to one who did a report for the Food Standards Agency and feels it was
slightly misrepresented what he had found.
it's a can of worms that no department really wants to open.
Or take accountability for.
And honestly it's been farcical the way I have been passed between, I just
keep getting past around departments
effectively.
Andy: can we discuss the case of Luke, who you spoke to when he moved to an
area in rural Wales, which he was new to?
Laura Hughes: Yes.
So this is something I find in more case studies like this of people
living in really rural parts of the uk.
They move somewhere to become self-sustainable, live this
sort of idyllic life, and they have a private water source.
And if you are living like the character I have in the, one of the stories...
yes.
...near old lead mines, it is.
Potentially possible that your drinking water could be contaminated.
So this particular man with a chance conversation with a neighbor prompted
him to test his drinking water.
It was 10 times over the legal limit.
Luckily, he'd only just moved in, but if he'd been there with a pregnant
wife or small children, drinking that lead concentration every day... that
is potentially incredibly dangerous.
And
Andy: And there's no warning.
The estate agent doesn't list that as a feature of
Laura Hughes: the
property.
No, No, and I spoke to a lot of people who did not want me to tell their story
publicly, but I can generalize and say I spoke to individuals who moved
somewhere, had a dream of growing all their own vegetables, but then couldn't.
And they couldn't because the lead in the soil, our concentrations were so high.
The vegetables wouldn't grow and that is not declared.
And those people can find this out and they can sell their house onto
somebody else, and it will, never be picked up and no one will know about it.
And this is the, scary thing about lead as well is the symptoms aren't always
obvious and the effects can be cumulative.
Yeah.
So a child eating those eggs at granny's house, for example, later
in life have behavioral problems not perform very well at school.
But at no point Would that child have ever been tested and
that link ever have been made?
Andy: Can these mines actually be treated?
Laura Hughes: They can be remediated and that is the plan.
But we're talking, a handful have been across the uk and is
that six and a half thousand?
There's a lot.
Andy: Are you a lead journalist by profession or is this, are you
a chemical element journalist?
Laura Hughes: Absolutely not.
Honestly, if you'd asked me about any element on the periodic table a year and
a half ago, I wouldn't be able to tell you Anything, but The story has just
grown and grown in terms of the exposure that we all might be susceptible to
Andy: let's move on to that now then.
So it's not simply a matter of waterways, old mines and soil.
lead was used in lots of other different ways, including in
paint before 1992 as you reported.
paint could be up to 50% lead by weight and lots of places which had lead paint
won't have been repainted since then.
So it's in our homes.
Laura Hughes: Exactly.
So there will be a very substantially large number of houses in the
UK that will have lead paint in them that isn't reason to panic.
But if you start dry sanding your walls, you can release a toxic dust
and you can contaminate your house effectively, and it's invisible.
And it's odorless, but it is there.
And in other countries like America for example, if you buy a house,
you get this enormous pamphlet.
And I couldn't believe it honestly, when I found this pamphlet.
And it lists all the dangers.
It tells you how to decorate safely.
It references the routine screening of children they do in America, and it
just acts as a kind of preventative.
Warning system that protects people, and America still has a lead poisoning
problem, so I can't even begin to think.
What ours is here, given we have some of the oldest housing stock in the world,
we didn't ban lead paint till 1992 and obviously lead pipes as well as an issue.
And I've been doing more work recently on the use of lead sold.
So even if you live in a modern house A plumber that uses the
wrong shoulder, which is cheaper, can contaminate drinking water.
And I've got case studies of children poisoned in that way.
it's a huge, issue.
It is classified as a hazard in a house.
Yeah.
The government knows that.
No, no one would deny it, but it's not a mandatory part of a home survey.
My feeling is people dunno how to protect themselves.
And I have spoken to more and more parents with children who they poisoned
by renovating their houses or who were living in old houses with, window
sills, that with flaky leather paint and
they
were putting the paint flakes in their mouth in the way that children do.
Just put things in their mouth to learn and explore the world and.
America screen the majority of their children at the age
of one and two, and we don't.
Test children in this country.
So a lot of the case studies I have, the parents had to fight to get a test.
They had to go private.
I have one case study, a man, it took 12 doctors to receive
a lead poisoning diagnosis.
And again, the cause was his old house and a renovation of it.
If we were sat here in America right now, we would be laughed out
of this room because what I would be saying was so totally obvious.
Andy: Mm-hmm.
Laura Hughes: it wouldn't be a story, but here it feels incredibly niche.
So the people look at me like I'm a bit mad.
And yet in a For the Americans, it's as routine as talking about asbestos
or declaring that in a, home survey it's totally extraordinary how.
Effectively the, government's approach to lead is if you don't
test for it, you won't find it.
And if you don't find it, you don't have to deal with it.
So they test 400 of food items a year for lead, which is the
equivalent of a supermarket shelf.
They're not testing houses.
I know people, if you ask for, have a lead.
Paint test as part of a home survey, people might look at you a bit strange.
And we don't test children, so we have no idea in the UK what our
exposure is to a metal that we know is so dangerous and so toxic.
And academics I've been talking to all around the world can't
really believe that the uk, such a scientifically advanced country.
Could be so outta step with other countries around the world.
And there's this huge global effort to tackle this problem in
lower to middle income countries.
And I'm sitting there screaming on page three of the ft. What about the uk?
We
Andy: have
Laura Hughes: problem too.
Andy: Normally I, would ask what the legal challenges were in reporting this story.
It sounds like absolutely everyone is denying any knowledge or culpability.
So there's no one to sue or there's no one to run this past.
Is that
Laura Hughes: fair?
The funny thing is I don't think any of the government departments, if
they were sat here and able to speak freely, would deny anything I'm saying.
But they don't really want to comment, and I find that quite tricky.
So the UK Health Security Agency, the public body, tasked with protecting our
health hasn't commented on record in any of these stories, and they
did put up this sort of information pack on gov.uk last October as if any
normal person is looking at Gov UK
when they
renovate a house
Andy: yeah,
Laura Hughes: They identify themselves that we pick up on a very small
number of lead poisoning cases in the UK every year because most
doctors don't even think to test it.
And they themselves will cite international studies, which estimate
at least 200,000 children in the UK will have lead poisoning today.
So I think everybody knows.
And this is the beauty of the story from a journalistic perspective.
I haven't come up against Yeah.
Lawyers or calmed down dear.
And I was waiting for it, and I've asked for background briefings and on
record interviews, everything because the U-K-H-S-A saying that, their own
advisors write reports from the last 10 years saying a major way that you prevent
something that is wholly preventable, such as lead poisoning from your house.
It's to educate the public, to talk about it regularly, to, give guidance on how to
renovate successfully and extraordinarily.
Earlier this year, I found out that there was a leaflet, but it was
removed, and they've said in a, in an answer to an MP who's been asking
some questions about lead, that they have no plans to update it.
A and I, honestly
can't.
It must feel
Andy: you're going mad reporting
Laura Hughes: the story.
I do.
No, I completely do.
I think my colleagues, friends, families, sometimes on this journey have probably
thought, and I have myself felt a bit mad because it feels so niche.
And then all I have to do is.
Go and look at that US pamphlet or their lead poisoning prevention program,
which they've had for over 30 years.
I go back and read New York Times articles from 30, 40 years ago, and
they're saying what I'm saying now, but their job was a thousand times easier
as journalists because Path five of the story is routine screening showed
little Jimmy had elevated lead levels of X. we don't have that screening.
Finding the case studies of these children has been near and impossible.
And the FD, we have a very high bar.
I have to have the number of the child's lead levels, but also the
ledge that was picked up in the house.
I mean it's, and it's really scary when you talk to the parents who have
children that were poisoned and have been given no support and nothing
because this is the, thing, and this is why I think the government doesn't
really want to open the can of worms.
If you find out your child has lead poisoning, there isn't
a hell of a lot you can do.
The main thing that you do is remove the source.
Which is why if you did screen or you were to do a sort of survey of houses or
a representative sample of children, we could get an idea of what we were looking
at.
Yeah.
Raise awareness and parents would know it.
The, guilt that parents are speaking to feel about poisoning their
children from doing something as simple as some DIY in their house.
it makes me very angry because no one told them.
No one told them that could be a problem or a risk or hurt their health.
Andy: Where does the story go next?
Laura Hughes: I am still very much working on this.
The Food Standards Agency and Environment Agency have launched two inquiries into
the presence of lead in the food chain.
So I feel a small win there.
The Welsh Affairs Select Committee have launched an inquiry, but no
one has yet grasped the nettle of this legacy housing problem.
So I am working on something that I hope a sort of much bigger story that will
bring everything I've talked about here.
Interview into one place.
And this is the sort of crazy thing.
I've spoken to mps get it and have said, we need that panorama moment.
We need this huge moment.
And I hope if I keep going, this will, become more mainstream.
It won't just be page two, page three of the FT for the next five years.
Andy: Right?
Other journalists.
There's your challenge.
congratulations again, Laura.
Laura Hughes: Thank you very much.
Andy: that's it.
do get yourself tested for lead, I guess is the message there.
an extraordinary story and, we'll be back again tomorrow with another one.