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Local authorities in England are to be probed on whether they are meeting their legal obligations to identify land contaminated by lead in the wake of a Financial Times investigation into the risks of abandoned metals mines.
The Environment Agency has been ordered to find out whether local councils are identifying contaminated land downstream of historic lead workings as part of a review commissioned by the UK government.
The review into affected areas in England is the first since 2016. The new “State of Contaminated Land” report will include a survey on the extent to which local authorities are monitoring historic mine sites, officials said.
The UK has 6,630 abandoned industrial lead mines — of which more than 3,600 are in England — that continue to disperse the metal into the environment each year. Lead can accumulate in waterways and soil before being consumed by animals and entering the food chain.
If ingested by humans, lead has a devastating impact on almost every organ in the body, with any level of exposure capable of having a harmful effect, according to the World Health Organization.
Officials have previously told the FT that regulatory standards are not strong enough to monitor this industrial legacy and its impact on human health.
While the Environment Agency is responsible for remediating abandoned sites, local authorities, which are facing severe budget pressures, have to identify contaminated land that could pose a risk to human health and test food produce to ensure it is safe to eat.
It is not clear whose duty it is to inform the public of the possible risks to homegrown food production.
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs minister Emma Hardy told the House of Commons that the department “recently commissioned the Environment Agency to produce another State of Contaminated Land report”.
“The EA will seek to include additional questions in this desk-based survey to find out if local councils are assessing contaminated land risks downstream of historical lead mines,” she added, in response last week to a written question from Conservative MP Julian Smith on the government’s assessment of the risk.
In response to the FT’s reporting, the UK Food Standards Agency has also said it will investigate lead levels in food produced near abandoned sites.
The UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate, an agency of the environment department, each year tests just 400-450 samples of meat, milk, fish and honey for the presence of lead and other heavy metals. Experts say testing such a small number of food items offers an insufficient assessment.
Last year a study funded by the Welsh government identified potentially harmful levels of lead in eggs produced on two small farms downstream of abandoned lead mines in west Wales.
A young child eating one or two of the eggs per day “could become cognitively impaired”, according to the research. Small-scale studies of vegetables grown on the farms indicated they too contained “elevated, and potentially toxic, concentrations” of lead.
Defra declined to comment.