May 13, 2025 • 17 mins
For six days Page 94 is covering the extraordinary stories of the investigative journalists shortlisted for this year’s Paul Foot Award, before the winner’s announcement next week.
First up is Laura Hughes (The Financial Times) for her deep-dive about the abandoned mines leaching toxic lead into British soil, livestock and food, and why nobody is taking responsibility.
First up is Laura Hughes (The Financial Times) for her deep-dive about the abandoned mines leaching toxic lead into British soil, livestock and food, and why nobody is taking responsibility.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, andthis is a rather unusual episode.
This is the start of a miniseries that we do every year to
showcase the journalists who areshortlisted for the Paul Foot Award.
For those of you who dunno, maybethose of you who are new to the
podcast, Paul Foot was an extraordinarycampaigning and investigative journalist.
(00:25):
He worked at the eye for many years.
And he died much too young.
in 2004.
For some years now, the Eye has runthe Paul Foot Award in his memory and
to celebrate the amazing campaigningand investigative journalism that is
still happening across the Britishmedia ecosystem in spite of all
the headwinds against journalism,these brilliant stories are still
(00:46):
coming out and they're being writtenby some brilliant journalists.
So for the next six days, we are goingto be speaking once per day to one of
the journalists or teams of journalistsshortlisted for this year's award.
Then, a week from now, we're gonnabe having the winners announcement,
which is gonna be live from the awardceremony, and we'll be speaking to
last year's winner and of course toIan, about the awards themselves.
(01:07):
So let's dive straight in and find outwho is up for the award on day one.
Laura Hughes (01:12):
I am Laura Hughes and I'm a public policy correspondent
at the Financial Times.
And
Andy (01:16):
And what's the story that's brought you to the pool foot walls this year?
Laura Hughes (01:19):
it's about the legacy of lead in multiple forms and how everywhere
I looked, I found the governmentwasn't looking for it, testing for
it, and uncovering the consequencesof that, whether that's lead in our
food chain, which is incredibly.
Toxic and poisonous, or inour children, in our houses.
Andy (01:39):
I'm vaguely aware that lead is toxic.
Don't be around it for too long.
Don't be around it atall if you can avoid it.
But I don't really knowhow I would encounter lead.
And what you found is that there aresites all over the uk, which contain
large amounts of lead, which might begetting into water supplies and food.
Laura Hughes (01:55):
Yeah.
So this reporting journey began ayear and a half ago with the tip
off about the Welsh government'spoor remediation efforts of these
thousands of old lead mines in Wales.
And these were abandonedyears and years ago.
And at the time there was no legislationthat required the companies to
remediate them, so they were just left.
(02:15):
And every year they continue to leach.
This toxic poisonous metal, whichis harmful to almost every organ in
the human body into our environmentwhere it seeps into waterways and soil
and where it can then be ingested byanimals, which of course humans then eat.
And I had this tip off and I startedGoogling around and I found a PhD study.
(02:38):
And as I was reading it, the hairson my arms honestly stood on end.
This academic was brought in toinvestigate whether or not horses
had died from lead poisoning as aconsequence of being reared downstream
from abandoned lead mines in Wales.
And while she was there, she testedthe vegetables and the eggs and the
soil and the water on these farms.
(03:00):
And she found concentrations of lead inthe eggs that were so high, if a child was
to regularly eat one or two, they wouldbecome severely cognitively impaired.
And I'm reading this, I didn't readall of it, but I got near the end
and she, thanks Natural ResourceWales, which is the Welsh Environment
Agency for helping to fund the work.
So then I'm thinking, oh my God, theWelsh government knows about this.
(03:25):
and that's what got me onto it.
and it's, the way that it's gettinginto the food chain and... could be
impacting humans that are living inthose areas, eating those things, that
is so extraordinary and to my knowledge,those eggs are still being sold...
Because no one quite wants totake responsibility for telling
the farmer or clearing up.
And then I found there is nosafe lead threshold for eggs.
(03:47):
In the UK anyway, so even if someonewas out there looking and testing,
there was nothing to test against.
Andy (03:52):
So that's terrible.
It clearly needs to be sortedout... but at least this is a
geographically limited problem.
Laura Hughes (03:57):
You would think so.
I did all these stories in Wales, dida freedom of information requests,
which ran at how many tons of lead,the Government actually expected, to
be leached every year and we made someimpact, but I was getting frustrated that
people weren't listening to the line inthe piece that said, academics behind
this report of warning, there could be'hotspots' like this all over the uk.
(04:19):
So I asked other academics could theyhelp me break breakdown, lead mine by
Parliamentary constituency and couldn'tbelieve it when they gave me the results
and the Member of Parliament who had themost lead mines, two and a half thousand,
was Rishi Sunak; then Prime Minister.
So I got in my car at theweekends, driving around
Richmond, I found old lead mines.
(04:40):
I followed the rivers down from the minesand 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, thatwithin two knocks I found a farmer
who told me how all his lambs had diedafter a flood, which is extraordinary
Andy (04:56):
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 ofmiscarriage, depression, kidney
disease, heart attacks, and as you'vesaid, children's IQs being, being
damaged by really small amounts.
problems
Laura Hughes (05:10):
in children is a massive thing,
Andy (05:11):
right?
So these mines are everywhere.
the livestock slash eggs are stillbeing sold, which may contain these.
who's in charge of this?
What's happening next?
Laura Hughes (05:22):
Defra would say to me: this is a matter for local authorities
to make sure that they are monitoringland and that it's not contaminated in
a way that poses a risk to human health.
Andy (05:33):
Local authorities are meant to be in charge of that, okay.
Laura Hughes (05:34):
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 wasreally shocking is I went through.
All you know, 40 years worth nationalarchives, government veterinary
reports where they detail incidentsof cows frothing at the mouth,
(05:58):
seizing Blind dying of lead poisoning.
Why?
Because of their proximityto old lead mines.
so someone in a position of authority hasknown about this for a very long time.
I've spoken to academics who wrote reportsfor government over the last 20, 30 years.
I spoke to one who did a report for theFood Standards Agency and feels it was
(06:19):
slightly misrepresented what he had found.
it's a can of worms that nodepartment really wants to open.
Or take accountability for.
And honestly it's been farcical theway I have been passed between, I just
keep getting past around departments
effectively.
Andy (06:35):
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 (06:42):
Yes.
So this is something I find in morecase studies like this of people
living in really rural parts of the uk.
They move somewhere to becomeself-sustainable, live this
sort of idyllic life, and theyhave a private water source.
And if you are living like the characterI have in the, one of the stories...
yes.
...near old lead mines, it is.
(07:02):
Potentially possible that yourdrinking water could be contaminated.
So this particular man with a chanceconversation 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, butif he'd been there with a pregnant
wife or small children, drinking thatlead concentration every day... that
(07:23):
is potentially incredibly dangerous.
And
Andy (07:25):
And there's no warning.
The estate agent doesn'tlist that as a feature of
Laura Hughes (07:30):
the
property.
No, No, and I spoke to a lot of peoplewho did not want me to tell their story
publicly, but I can generalize andsay I spoke to individuals who moved
somewhere, had a dream of growing alltheir own vegetables, but then couldn't.
And they couldn't because the lead in thesoil, our concentrations were so high.
The vegetables wouldn't growand that is not declared.
(07:54):
And those people can find this outand they can sell their house onto
somebody else, and it will, never bepicked up and no one will know about it.
And this is the, scary thing about leadas well is the symptoms aren't always
obvious and the effects can be cumulative.
Yeah.
So a child eating those eggs atgranny's house, for example, later
in life have behavioral problemsnot perform very well at school.
(08:16):
But at no point Would thatchild have ever been tested and
that link ever have been made?
Andy (08:22):
Can these mines actually be treated?
Laura Hughes (08:25):
They can be remediated and that is the plan.
But we're talking, a handfulhave been across the uk and is
that six and a half thousand?
There's a lot.
Andy (08:33):
Are you a lead journalist by profession or is this, are you
a chemical element journalist?
Laura Hughes (08:38):
Absolutely not.
Honestly, if you'd asked me about anyelement on the periodic table a year and
a half ago, I wouldn't be able to tellyou Anything, but The story has just
grown and grown in terms of the exposurethat we all might be susceptible to
Andy (08:52):
let's move on to that now then.
So it's not simply a matter ofwaterways, old mines and soil.
lead was used in lots of otherdifferent ways, including in
paint before 1992 as you reported.
paint could be up to 50% lead by weightand lots of places which had lead paint
won't have been repainted since then.
So it's in our homes.
Laura Hughes (09:11):
Exactly.
So there will be a very substantiallylarge number of houses in the
UK that will have lead paint inthem that isn't reason to panic.
But if you start dry sanding yourwalls, you can release a toxic dust
and you can contaminate your houseeffectively, and it's invisible.
And it's odorless, but it is there.
(09:33):
And in other countries like Americafor 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 screeningof children they do in America, and it
just acts as a kind of preventative.
(09:54):
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 ofthe oldest housing stock in the world,
we didn't ban lead paint till 1992 andobviously lead pipes as well as an issue.
And I've been doing more workrecently on the use of lead sold.
(10:16):
So even if you live in a modernhouse A plumber that uses the
wrong shoulder, which is cheaper,can contaminate drinking water.
And I've got case studies ofchildren 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'snot a mandatory part of a home survey.
(10:38):
My feeling is people dunnohow to protect themselves.
And I have spoken to more and moreparents with children who they poisoned
by renovating their houses or whowere living in old houses with, window
sills, that with flaky leather paint and
they
were putting the paint flakes in theirmouth in the way that children do.
Just put things in their mouth tolearn and explore the world and.
(11:00):
America screen the majorityof 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 oldhouse and a renovation of it.
(11:23):
If we were sat here in Americaright now, we would be laughed out
of this room because what I wouldbe saying was so totally obvious.
Andy (11:30):
Mm-hmm.
Laura Hughes (11:31):
it wouldn't be a story, but here it feels incredibly niche.
So the people look atme like I'm a bit mad.
And yet in a For the Americans, it'sas routine as talking about asbestos
or declaring that in a, home surveyit's totally extraordinary how.
Effectively the, government'sapproach to lead is if you don't
test for it, you won't find it.
(11:53):
And if you don't find it, youdon't have to deal with it.
So they test 400 of food itemsa year for lead, which is the
equivalent of a supermarket shelf.
They're not testing houses.
I know people, if youask 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 wehave no idea in the UK what our
(12:13):
exposure is to a metal that weknow is so dangerous and so toxic.
And academics I've been talkingto all around the world can't
really believe that the uk, sucha scientifically advanced country.
Could be so outta step withother countries around the world.
And there's this huge globaleffort to tackle this problem in
lower to middle income countries.
(12:34):
And I'm sitting there screaming on pagethree of the ft. What about the uk?
We
Andy (12:38):
have
Laura Hughes (12:38):
problem too.
Andy (12:39):
Normally I, would ask what the legal challenges were in reporting this story.
It sounds like absolutely everyone isdenying any knowledge or culpability.
So there's no one to sue orthere's no one to run this past.
Is that
Laura Hughes (12:50):
fair?
The funny thing is I don't think anyof the government departments, if
they were sat here and able to speakfreely, would deny anything I'm saying.
But they don't really want tocomment, and I find that quite tricky.
So the UK Health Security Agency, thepublic body, tasked with protecting our
health hasn't commented on recordin any of these stories, and they
(13:14):
did put up this sort of informationpack on gov.uk last October as if any
normal person is looking at Gov UK
when they
renovate a house
Andy (13:24):
yeah,
Laura Hughes (13:25):
They identify themselves that we pick up on a very small
number of lead poisoning casesin the UK every year because most
doctors don't even think to test it.
And they themselves will citeinternational studies, which estimate
at least 200,000 children in theUK will have lead poisoning today.
So I think everybody knows.
And this is the beauty of the storyfrom a journalistic perspective.
(13:47):
I haven't come up against Yeah.
Lawyers or calmed down dear.
And I was waiting for it, and I'veasked for background briefings and on
record interviews, everything becausethe U-K-H-S-A saying that, their own
advisors write reports from the last 10years saying a major way that you prevent
something that is wholly preventable,such as lead poisoning from your house.
(14:09):
It's to educate the public, to talk aboutit regularly, to, give guidance on how to
renovate successfully and extraordinarily.
Earlier this year, I found out thatthere was a leaflet, but it was
removed, and they've said in a, inan answer to an MP who's been asking
some questions about lead, thatthey have no plans to update it.
A and I, honestly
(14:32):
can't.
It must feel
Andy (14:33):
you're going mad reporting
Laura Hughes (14:34):
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 abit mad because it feels so niche.
And then all I have to do is.
Go and look at that US pamphlet ortheir lead poisoning prevention program,
which they've had for over 30 years.
I go back and read New York Timesarticles from 30, 40 years ago, and
(14:54):
they're saying what I'm saying now, buttheir job was a thousand times easier
as journalists because Path five ofthe story is routine screening showed
little Jimmy had elevated lead levelsof X. we don't have that screening.
Finding the case studies of thesechildren has been near and impossible.
And the FD, we have a very high bar.
I have to have the number of thechild's lead levels, but also the
(15:17):
ledge that was picked up in the house.
I mean it's, and it's really scarywhen you talk to the parents who have
children that were poisoned and havebeen given no support and nothing
because this is the, thing, and thisis why I think the government doesn't
really want to open the can of worms.
If you find out your child haslead poisoning, there isn't
a hell of a lot you can do.
(15:37):
The main thing that youdo is remove the source.
Which is why if you did screen or youwere to do a sort of survey of houses or
a representative sample of children, wecould get an idea of what we were looking
at.
Yeah.
Raise awareness and parents would know it.
The, guilt that parents are speakingto feel about poisoning their
(15:58):
children from doing something assimple as some DIY in their house.
it makes me very angrybecause no one told them.
No one told them that could be aproblem or a risk or hurt their health.
Andy (16:09):
Where does the story go next?
Laura Hughes (16:11):
I am still very much working on this.
The Food Standards Agency and EnvironmentAgency have launched two inquiries into
the presence of lead in the food chain.
So I feel a small win there.
The Welsh Affairs Select Committeehave launched an inquiry, but no
one has yet grasped the nettleof this legacy housing problem.
So I am working on something that I hopea sort of much bigger story that will
(16:33):
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 havesaid, we need that panorama moment.
We need this huge moment.
And I hope if I keep going, thiswill, become more mainstream.
It won't just be page two, page threeof the FT for the next five years.
Andy (16:52):
Right?
Other journalists.
There's your challenge.
congratulations again, Laura.
Laura Hughes (16:55):
Thank you very much.
Andy (16:57):
that's it.
do get yourself tested for lead,I guess is the message there.
an extraordinary story and, we'll beback again tomorrow with another one.
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, andthis is a rather unusual episode.
This is the start of a miniseries that we do every year to
showcase the journalists who areshortlisted for the Paul Foot Award.
For those of you who dunno, maybethose of you who are new to the
podcast, Paul Foot was an extraordinarycampaigning and investigative journalist.
(00:25):
He worked at the eye for many years.
And he died much too young.
in 2004.
For some years now, the Eye has runthe Paul Foot Award in his memory and
to celebrate the amazing campaigningand investigative journalism that is
still happening across the Britishmedia ecosystem in spite of all
the headwinds against journalism,these brilliant stories are still
(00:46):
coming out and they're being writtenby some brilliant journalists.
So for the next six days, we are goingto be speaking once per day to one of
the journalists or teams of journalistsshortlisted for this year's award.
Then, a week from now, we're gonnabe having the winners announcement,
which is gonna be live from the awardceremony, and we'll be speaking to
last year's winner and of course toIan, about the awards themselves.
(01:07):
So let's dive straight in and find outwho is up for the award on day one.
Laura Hughes (01:12):
I am Laura Hughes and I'm a public policy correspondent
at the Financial Times.
And
Andy (01:16):
And what's the story that's brought you to the pool foot walls this year?
Laura Hughes (01:19):
it's about the legacy of lead in multiple forms and how everywhere
I looked, I found the governmentwasn't looking for it, testing for
it, and uncovering the consequencesof that, whether that's lead in our
food chain, which is incredibly.
Toxic and poisonous, or inour children, in our houses.
Andy (01:39):
I'm vaguely aware that lead is toxic.
Don't be around it for too long.
Don't be around it atall if you can avoid it.
But I don't really knowhow I would encounter lead.
And what you found is that there aresites all over the uk, which contain
large amounts of lead, which might begetting into water supplies and food.
Laura Hughes (01:55):
Yeah.
So this reporting journey began ayear and a half ago with the tip
off about the Welsh government'spoor remediation efforts of these
thousands of old lead mines in Wales.
And these were abandonedyears and years ago.
And at the time there was no legislationthat required the companies to
remediate them, so they were just left.
(02:15):
And every year they continue to leach.
This toxic poisonous metal, whichis harmful to almost every organ in
the human body into our environmentwhere it seeps into waterways and soil
and where it can then be ingested byanimals, which of course humans then eat.
And I had this tip off and I startedGoogling around and I found a PhD study.
(02:38):
And as I was reading it, the hairson my arms honestly stood on end.
This academic was brought in toinvestigate whether or not horses
had died from lead poisoning as aconsequence of being reared downstream
from abandoned lead mines in Wales.
And while she was there, she testedthe vegetables and the eggs and the
soil and the water on these farms.
(03:00):
And she found concentrations of lead inthe eggs that were so high, if a child was
to regularly eat one or two, they wouldbecome severely cognitively impaired.
And I'm reading this, I didn't readall of it, but I got near the end
and she, thanks Natural ResourceWales, which is the Welsh Environment
Agency for helping to fund the work.
So then I'm thinking, oh my God, theWelsh government knows about this.
(03:25):
and that's what got me onto it.
and it's, the way that it's gettinginto the food chain and... could be
impacting humans that are living inthose areas, eating those things, that
is so extraordinary and to my knowledge,those eggs are still being sold...
Because no one quite wants totake responsibility for telling
the farmer or clearing up.
And then I found there is nosafe lead threshold for eggs.
(03:47):
In the UK anyway, so even if someonewas out there looking and testing,
there was nothing to test against.
Andy (03:52):
So that's terrible.
It clearly needs to be sortedout... but at least this is a
geographically limited problem.
Laura Hughes (03:57):
You would think so.
I did all these stories in Wales, dida freedom of information requests,
which ran at how many tons of lead,the Government actually expected, to
be leached every year and we made someimpact, but I was getting frustrated that
people weren't listening to the line inthe piece that said, academics behind
this report of warning, there could be'hotspots' like this all over the uk.
(04:19):
So I asked other academics could theyhelp me break breakdown, lead mine by
Parliamentary constituency and couldn'tbelieve it when they gave me the results
and the Member of Parliament who had themost lead mines, two and a half thousand,
was Rishi Sunak; then Prime Minister.
So I got in my car at theweekends, driving around
Richmond, I found old lead mines.
(04:40):
I followed the rivers down from the minesand 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, thatwithin two knocks I found a farmer
who told me how all his lambs had diedafter a flood, which is extraordinary
Andy (04:56):
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 ofmiscarriage, depression, kidney
disease, heart attacks, and as you'vesaid, children's IQs being, being
damaged by really small amounts.
problems
Laura Hughes (05:10):
in children is a massive thing,
Andy (05:11):
right?
So these mines are everywhere.
the livestock slash eggs are stillbeing sold, which may contain these.
who's in charge of this?
What's happening next?
Laura Hughes (05:22):
Defra would say to me: this is a matter for local authorities
to make sure that they are monitoringland and that it's not contaminated in
a way that poses a risk to human health.
Andy (05:33):
Local authorities are meant to be in charge of that, okay.
Laura Hughes (05:34):
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 wasreally shocking is I went through.
All you know, 40 years worth nationalarchives, government veterinary
reports where they detail incidentsof cows frothing at the mouth,
(05:58):
seizing Blind dying of lead poisoning.
Why?
Because of their proximityto old lead mines.
so someone in a position of authority hasknown about this for a very long time.
I've spoken to academics who wrote reportsfor government over the last 20, 30 years.
I spoke to one who did a report for theFood Standards Agency and feels it was
(06:19):
slightly misrepresented what he had found.
it's a can of worms that nodepartment really wants to open.
Or take accountability for.
And honestly it's been farcical theway I have been passed between, I just
keep getting past around departments
effectively.
Andy (06:35):
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 (06:42):
Yes.
So this is something I find in morecase studies like this of people
living in really rural parts of the uk.
They move somewhere to becomeself-sustainable, live this
sort of idyllic life, and theyhave a private water source.
And if you are living like the characterI have in the, one of the stories...
yes.
...near old lead mines, it is.
(07:02):
Potentially possible that yourdrinking water could be contaminated.
So this particular man with a chanceconversation 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, butif he'd been there with a pregnant
wife or small children, drinking thatlead concentration every day... that
(07:23):
is potentially incredibly dangerous.
And
Andy (07:25):
And there's no warning.
The estate agent doesn'tlist that as a feature of
Laura Hughes (07:30):
the
property.
No, No, and I spoke to a lot of peoplewho did not want me to tell their story
publicly, but I can generalize andsay I spoke to individuals who moved
somewhere, had a dream of growing alltheir own vegetables, but then couldn't.
And they couldn't because the lead in thesoil, our concentrations were so high.
The vegetables wouldn't growand that is not declared.
(07:54):
And those people can find this outand they can sell their house onto
somebody else, and it will, never bepicked up and no one will know about it.
And this is the, scary thing about leadas well is the symptoms aren't always
obvious and the effects can be cumulative.
Yeah.
So a child eating those eggs atgranny's house, for example, later
in life have behavioral problemsnot perform very well at school.
(08:16):
But at no point Would thatchild have ever been tested and
that link ever have been made?
Andy (08:22):
Can these mines actually be treated?
Laura Hughes (08:25):
They can be remediated and that is the plan.
But we're talking, a handfulhave been across the uk and is
that six and a half thousand?
There's a lot.
Andy (08:33):
Are you a lead journalist by profession or is this, are you
a chemical element journalist?
Laura Hughes (08:38):
Absolutely not.
Honestly, if you'd asked me about anyelement on the periodic table a year and
a half ago, I wouldn't be able to tellyou Anything, but The story has just
grown and grown in terms of the exposurethat we all might be susceptible to
Andy (08:52):
let's move on to that now then.
So it's not simply a matter ofwaterways, old mines and soil.
lead was used in lots of otherdifferent ways, including in
paint before 1992 as you reported.
paint could be up to 50% lead by weightand lots of places which had lead paint
won't have been repainted since then.
So it's in our homes.
Laura Hughes (09:11):
Exactly.
So there will be a very substantiallylarge number of houses in the
UK that will have lead paint inthem that isn't reason to panic.
But if you start dry sanding yourwalls, you can release a toxic dust
and you can contaminate your houseeffectively, and it's invisible.
And it's odorless, but it is there.
(09:33):
And in other countries like Americafor 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 screeningof children they do in America, and it
just acts as a kind of preventative.
(09:54):
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 ofthe oldest housing stock in the world,
we didn't ban lead paint till 1992 andobviously lead pipes as well as an issue.
And I've been doing more workrecently on the use of lead sold.
(10:16):
So even if you live in a modernhouse A plumber that uses the
wrong shoulder, which is cheaper,can contaminate drinking water.
And I've got case studies ofchildren 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'snot a mandatory part of a home survey.
(10:38):
My feeling is people dunnohow to protect themselves.
And I have spoken to more and moreparents with children who they poisoned
by renovating their houses or whowere living in old houses with, window
sills, that with flaky leather paint and
they
were putting the paint flakes in theirmouth in the way that children do.
Just put things in their mouth tolearn and explore the world and.
(11:00):
America screen the majorityof 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 oldhouse and a renovation of it.
(11:23):
If we were sat here in Americaright now, we would be laughed out
of this room because what I wouldbe saying was so totally obvious.
Andy (11:30):
Mm-hmm.
Laura Hughes (11:31):
it wouldn't be a story, but here it feels incredibly niche.
So the people look atme like I'm a bit mad.
And yet in a For the Americans, it'sas routine as talking about asbestos
or declaring that in a, home surveyit's totally extraordinary how.
Effectively the, government'sapproach to lead is if you don't
test for it, you won't find it.
(11:53):
And if you don't find it, youdon't have to deal with it.
So they test 400 of food itemsa year for lead, which is the
equivalent of a supermarket shelf.
They're not testing houses.
I know people, if youask 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 wehave no idea in the UK what our
(12:13):
exposure is to a metal that weknow is so dangerous and so toxic.
And academics I've been talkingto all around the world can't
really believe that the uk, sucha scientifically advanced country.
Could be so outta step withother countries around the world.
And there's this huge globaleffort to tackle this problem in
lower to middle income countries.
(12:34):
And I'm sitting there screaming on pagethree of the ft. What about the uk?
We
Andy (12:38):
have
Laura Hughes (12:38):
problem too.
Andy (12:39):
Normally I, would ask what the legal challenges were in reporting this story.
It sounds like absolutely everyone isdenying any knowledge or culpability.
So there's no one to sue orthere's no one to run this past.
Is that
Laura Hughes (12:50):
fair?
The funny thing is I don't think anyof the government departments, if
they were sat here and able to speakfreely, would deny anything I'm saying.
But they don't really want tocomment, and I find that quite tricky.
So the UK Health Security Agency, thepublic body, tasked with protecting our
health hasn't commented on recordin any of these stories, and they
(13:14):
did put up this sort of informationpack on gov.uk last October as if any
normal person is looking at Gov UK
when they
renovate a house
Andy (13:24):
yeah,
Laura Hughes (13:25):
They identify themselves that we pick up on a very small
number of lead poisoning casesin the UK every year because most
doctors don't even think to test it.
And they themselves will citeinternational studies, which estimate
at least 200,000 children in theUK will have lead poisoning today.
So I think everybody knows.
And this is the beauty of the storyfrom a journalistic perspective.
(13:47):
I haven't come up against Yeah.
Lawyers or calmed down dear.
And I was waiting for it, and I'veasked for background briefings and on
record interviews, everything becausethe U-K-H-S-A saying that, their own
advisors write reports from the last 10years saying a major way that you prevent
something that is wholly preventable,such as lead poisoning from your house.
(14:09):
It's to educate the public, to talk aboutit regularly, to, give guidance on how to
renovate successfully and extraordinarily.
Earlier this year, I found out thatthere was a leaflet, but it was
removed, and they've said in a, inan answer to an MP who's been asking
some questions about lead, thatthey have no plans to update it.
A and I, honestly
(14:32):
can't.
It must feel
Andy (14:33):
you're going mad reporting
Laura Hughes (14:34):
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 abit mad because it feels so niche.
And then all I have to do is.
Go and look at that US pamphlet ortheir lead poisoning prevention program,
which they've had for over 30 years.
I go back and read New York Timesarticles from 30, 40 years ago, and
(14:54):
they're saying what I'm saying now, buttheir job was a thousand times easier
as journalists because Path five ofthe story is routine screening showed
little Jimmy had elevated lead levelsof X. we don't have that screening.
Finding the case studies of thesechildren has been near and impossible.
And the FD, we have a very high bar.
I have to have the number of thechild's lead levels, but also the
(15:17):
ledge that was picked up in the house.
I mean it's, and it's really scarywhen you talk to the parents who have
children that were poisoned and havebeen given no support and nothing
because this is the, thing, and thisis why I think the government doesn't
really want to open the can of worms.
If you find out your child haslead poisoning, there isn't
a hell of a lot you can do.
(15:37):
The main thing that youdo is remove the source.
Which is why if you did screen or youwere to do a sort of survey of houses or
a representative sample of children, wecould get an idea of what we were looking
at.
Yeah.
Raise awareness and parents would know it.
The, guilt that parents are speakingto feel about poisoning their
(15:58):
children from doing something assimple as some DIY in their house.
it makes me very angrybecause no one told them.
No one told them that could be aproblem or a risk or hurt their health.
Andy (16:09):
Where does the story go next?
Laura Hughes (16:11):
I am still very much working on this.
The Food Standards Agency and EnvironmentAgency have launched two inquiries into
the presence of lead in the food chain.
So I feel a small win there.
The Welsh Affairs Select Committeehave launched an inquiry, but no
one has yet grasped the nettleof this legacy housing problem.
So I am working on something that I hopea sort of much bigger story that will
(16:33):
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 havesaid, we need that panorama moment.
We need this huge moment.
And I hope if I keep going, thiswill, become more mainstream.
It won't just be page two, page threeof the FT for the next five years.
Andy (16:52):
Right?
Other journalists.
There's your challenge.
congratulations again, Laura.
Laura Hughes (16:55):
Thank you very much.
Andy (16:57):
that's it.
do get yourself tested for lead,I guess is the message there.
an extraordinary story and, we'll beback again tomorrow with another one.
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