As the spire of Notre-Dame begins to rise again in the Paris sky, a senator would like to stop the reconstruction project. Reason: the lead which will cover this part of the monument and its roof, while this material is according to her “notoriously toxic, without threshold effect, that is to say toxic even at very low doses”, writes Anne Souyris on Twitter.
“In the event that no serious assessment has been carried out to date, I ask that the construction site of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral be urgently interrupted until a health authority issues a detailed opinion, so as to prevent a major attack on the preservation of the environment and human health,” wrote the environmentalist senator on the social network, following a written question that she tabled in the Senate.
Lead affects children’s intelligence, even at low doses
“The lead runs off with the water, you walk on it, little ones can trudge and do hand-to-mouth play, there is a square, schools, nurseries around Notre-Dame. Tourists sit, children take things from the ground, and for children under 6 years old in small doses every day it is extremely toxic,” explains Anne Souyris at 20 minutes.
Acute or chronic exposure at high levels results in digestive disorders, kidney disruption, nervous system damage, or reproductive abnormalities. But low blood levels “can affect a child’s intelligence and lead to behavioral problems and learning difficulties,” according to the WHO. The alert threshold for lead is 25 micrograms per liter of blood.
The government “sat on the Labor Code”
Problem: there is no regulatory threshold for the presence of lead in the streets. And there is lead in Paris in the gutters, on the balconies, and in many other places than around Notre-Dame. “We are not going to raze Paris, there is a lot of lead, but we could not repeat the mistakes of the past”, estimates Anne Souyris, former health deputy for the City of Paris, who had been accused of having “knowingly lied about the lead concentration levels recorded in daycare centers, kindergartens and schools” after the fire.
Contacted by 20 minutes, the Henri Pézerat Association, which filed a complaint in 2022 with the CGT-Paris Departmental Union and two parents of students for “endangering others” in the management of the aftermath of the fire, believes that the government “sat on the Labor Code”. The texts affirm in fact that “the risk presented by a dangerous chemical agent for the health and safety of workers must be eliminated” and recommend the substitution “whenever possible”.
Prohibited in new construction
The associations are concerned about seeing the cathedral restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc rebuilt identically and with the same materials, therefore lead. “This decision was taken, despite a union and citizen struggle which has lasted for four years leading to the filing of a complaint with the constitution of civil parties for endangering the lives of others, in defiance of the unanimous opinion of the Paris Council and the numerous citizen protests”, denounces the Henri Pézerat association, which fights for the health of people linked to work and the environment, in a communicated.
In a January 2021 reviewthe High Council of Public Health “recommends prohibiting the use of rolled lead in new constructions and identifying, in a regularly updated positive list, the remaining authorized uses of rolled lead for repair or rehabilitation of old buildings”.
Contacted, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Health had not yet responded at the time of publication of this article. The reopening of Notre-Dame is scheduled for December 8, 2024, after the Paris Olympics in the summer, a date confirmed by Emmanuel Macron at the end of August.