The Regional Health Agency (ARS) Île-de-France sought to reassure Thursday on the risk of exposure of residents to lead dust from the fire of Notre-Dame, while announcing to have ordered a new cleaning the forecourt of the cathedral, closed to the public since the fire that ravaged the monument.
According to Mediapart, samples taken in early May in and around the cathedral showed lead levels 400 to 700 times higher than the authorized threshold. And the online newspaper added that the Paris police headquarters and the LRA would have chosen not to make these figures public so as not to alarm the population and agents working near Notre-Dame.
"These results do not call for any particular measure of protection at this stage"
However, in a statement released Thursday night, the ARS Ile-de-France was reassuring. If it recognizes that dozens of dust samples in the Paris public space carried out by the Paris police headquarters "show punctually high values", without confirming or denying the levels mentioned by Mediapart, she believes that "these results do not at this stage call for any special protection measure ". She says that measurements must continue to be made inside buildings to ensure that regulatory thresholds are not exceeded.
The ARS adds that there is no "sanitary standard" for "external dust", that these measures in the public space can be "very heterogeneous", and that it is not certain that the levels records are related to the burning of the cathedral.
The ARS boasts a "transparent" communication
On the other hand, the ARS specifies that for the parvis of Notre Dame, it "took note at the end of last week of the results of samplings carried out which show that the first measures of cleaning did not have the desired effectiveness", and said to have asked for a second cleaning, followed by new samples.
REPORTAGE - "It begins to worry me": the residents of Notre-Dame invited to be tested after lead detected in the blood of a child
And the ARS adds that the ban on access to the public (set up at the time of the fire) "will be maintained until the effectiveness of these measures of depollution will have been observed or the risk of exposure of public will not have been reduced. "
As for the fact that analyzes would be hidden from the public, the ARS says it has "ensured a transparent communication on the situation and the measures taken since April 15", with environmental samples that "started the day after the fire, continue and will continue to document as accurately as possible the dispersion of lead (...) and adapt if necessary the measures taken ".
The fire caused the melting of hundreds of tons of lead
Asked by AFP, the first deputy of the Mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, said for its part that the City had made measurements "in all equipment that fall under our jurisdiction, in this case schools and nurseries" , all of which "proved to be below tolerated standards". "These data are public" and posted on the institutions concerned, he said.
The fire of the 850-year-old Gothic cathedral on April 15 resulted in the melting of several hundred tons of lead found in the spire and roof framework. According to the prefecture, "acute intoxications (lead, Ed) are very rare and are in contexts (usually professional) different from those of the fire.None of these intoxications was reported in the days following the fire".