The results of new surveys measuring lead contamination around the Notre-Dame cathedral will be made public Tuesday, said Monday the mayor of Paris, which will intensify the cleanup. These results will be "immediately made public", said Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy, on Franceinfo: "we will transmit them to the Regional Health Agency immediately, and they will be posted on the website of the City of Paris".
"If the new records that must fall on Tuesday reveal that other adjacent streets are polluted, then I will also ask for their closure," said Anne Souyris, assistant health, in an interview with the Parisian. The yard of Notre-Dame de Paris, suspended at the end of July, should resume gradually from the week of August 12 with the arrival of new protection measures for employees potentially exposed to lead, had we learned Friday from the prefecture Île-de-France.
During the fire that partially destroyed the cathedral on April 15, several hundred tonnes of lead contained in the boom frame and roof melted and volatilized as particles, raising fears of health risks. Since the fire, high levels of lead concentration, to which children are particularly exposed, have been noted around the building and a school group located on rue Saint-Benoît (6th arrondissement) has recently been closed for construction work. cleaning.
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Complicated depollution to implement
Regarding the cleanup of the site and its surroundings, "despite attempts to clean up, pollution (y) remains too important," says Annz Souyris. "Now we must clean up with much less conventional means.The forecourt must be the subject of a special depollution (...) The operation must begin this week." The assistant wants a depollution of the site "in the month", before the return to school.
According to Emmanuel Grégoire, "unless there is new information (...) there is no reason to think that schools will not reopen in a normal way" on that date. "All the schools tested in the 500-meter (around Notre-Dame) perimeter do not see any problem" of contamination, he assures, saying that it is "difficult to know" if the "atypies" found in three schools "beyond the perimeter" are "related or not" to the April 15 fire.
The Robin des Bois association has lodged a complaint against X, accusing the authorities of being slow to react and lacking transparency, and a collective of CGT unions and associations has called for "total containment of the site".