After schools, it is the housing of Parisians in the area of Notre-Dame where samples taken in an apartment revealed a very high concentration of lead dust that worried the environmentalists.
"Extremely important levels of lead"
Samples were taken on "an apartment located two kilometers from the cathedral, on the top floor of a building, with a terrace and a balcony, which was under the plume of fire on the night of April 15 to 16 and reveal extremely high levels of lead, "was alarmed Jacky Bonnemains, president of the Robin des Bois association Friday at a press point in Paris. This is a couple's home with a child where 117,000 micrograms per square meter of lead were raised while the reference threshold set by the Regional Health Agency is 5,000. A content of 69,938 micrograms was found on the terrace while the thresholds inside the apartment are less important, according to the NGO.
"These rates are extremely important and worrying, the child has not yet been tested for blood lead because it was absent from Paris in July and August," he said. Environmental advocates recommend to parents, "even if their children have spent their holidays outside Paris, to do a blood lead that will serve as a zero point and then redo one in two to three months to see if the threshold has evolved in one way or another ".
NGO wants further investigation
This "test apartment" should "push the authorities to investigate other similar apartments located on the top floor for them to be diagnosed and if necessary decontaminated," says the NGO that "now recommends to families concerned not to allow access from their balcony to their children ". Jacky Bonnemains particularly expressed his deep concern about a possible contamination of the fauna and flora of the Seine. "Lead does not disappear, it migrates and becomes encrusted with sediment," he says.
The association will write shortly to Port-de-Paris and Waterway of France "so that in case of pollution, the most contaminated sediments are treated in channels adapted to toxic waste".