Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Notable case, Port Pirie, South Australia, Australia

Port Pirie lead smelter

Lead has been smelted at Port Pirie since 1889, originally to treat ore from Broken Hill. More than a century of emissions has left lead, zinc, cadmium and arsenic in the city's dust and in the sediment of Spencer Gulf, and children's blood lead has been monitored for decades.

Status
Not addressed
Activity
since 1889
Media
soil, air, sediment, living organisms
Kind of site
smelter, port
  1. Area. No delimited contaminated area in the sources consulted. In sediment and mangroves contamination was measured from 0.3 to 43 km from the smelter (Kastury et al. 2023).

Contaminants

Metals

Metalloids

Status

Not addressed

The smelter is operating, run by Nyrstar since 2007. After the upgrade begun in 2014, airborne lead did not fall significantly between 2017 and 2020 (Alankarage and Juhasz 2022). According to Wikipedia, citing a South Australian health department report, average blood lead in young children was 7.3 µg/dL in 2021, against 5.3 in 2014.

Story

The smelter was built in 1889 by the British Blocks company, after the railway from Broken Hill arrived. In 1915 it passed to Broken Hill Associated Smelters, by 1934 the largest lead smelter in the world; it later belonged to Pasminco and Zinifex, and since 2007 to Nyrstar (Wikipedia). Besides lead it produces zinc, silver, copper and acid.

Air emissions and effluent have built up lead, zinc, arsenic, cadmium and copper in the surrounding marine environment. Grey mangroves (Avicennia marina) grow right up to the plant boundary and tolerate the contamination, holding a smaller but still high share of it in their tissues (Kastury et al. 2023). Mussels collected near the smelter contained 158 mg/kg of lead (wet weight), and in fish, crabs and bivalves lead rises with proximity to the plant (Bain et al. 2024).

A programme run by the state and the company, called "tenby10", aimed to bring at least 95% of children aged 0–4 below 10 µg/dL of blood lead by 2010. In 2014 an upgrade costing 650 million Australian dollars began, 291 million of it underwritten by the state government (Wikipedia). A comparison of air filters from 2017 and 2020, however, shows no significant fall in lead.

Timeline

  1. 1889The first lead smelter is built for Broken Hill ore.
  2. 1915The smelter passes to Broken Hill Associated Smelters (Wikipedia).
  3. 2007Nyrstar becomes the operator.
  4. 2010Deadline of the 'tenby10' target for children's blood lead (Wikipedia).
  5. 2014The A$650 million plant upgrade begins (Wikipedia).
  6. 2021Average blood lead in young children at 7.3 µg/dL (SA Health, as cited by Wikipedia).

Health

Taylor and colleagues (2019), using SA Health and South Australian EPA data for 2003–2017, conclude that current emissions still expose children: to keep geometric mean blood lead at or below 5 µg/dL in 24-month-olds, lead in air should not exceed 0.082 µg/m³, about 80% below the national standard of 0.5 µg/m³. The same study links rises in SO2 to more emergency department visits for respiratory causes.

Remediation

  1. 2014emission controlReplacement of part of the old plant to cut airborne lead emissions (Wikipedia).

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Sources

  1. Taylor M.P., Isley C.F., Glover J. Prevalence of childhood lead poisoning and respiratory disease associated with lead smelter emissions, Environment International, 2019
  2. Alankarage D., Juhasz A.L. Impact of smelter re-development on spatial and temporal airborne Pb concentrations, Environmental Pollution, 2022
  3. Kastury F. et al. Metallic mangroves: sediments and in situ diffusive gradients in thin films (DGTs) reveal Avicennia marina lives with high contamination near a lead-zinc smelter in South Australia, Science of the Total Environment, 2023
  4. Bain P.A. et al. Metal concentrations in fish, crabs, and bivalve molluscs from marine waters adjacent to a multi-metals smelter and refinery, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2024
  5. Port Pirie, Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.