In reality, it allows major companies to monitor their own emissions and negotiate pollution agreements with extended periods of grace and specifications tailored to meet their profit requirements. The EPA has given Pasminco until next month to submit a report outlining a plan and time frame to achieve lead levels of 0.5 parts per million. The toxic emissions at Cockle Creek and Port Pirie are part of a wider pattern of industrial pollution. A Workers Inquiry into the extraordinarily high incidences of leukaemia and cancer in the industrial city of Wollongong, south of Sydney, in 1998 produced considerable evidence of lead poisoning. Childhood mental problems, lack of brain development, still births and childbirth defects, including spina bifida, were linked to lead fallout from the Port Kembla copper smelter, steelworks and industrial complex.
Similar problems exist in other industrial areas.
The Workers Inquiry, convened by the Socialist Equality Party, also provided statistics showing elevated incidences of leukaemia and cancer around the Cockle Creek smelter. Data obtained from the Cancer Council and analysed by postcodes showed that for more than two decades, from 1972 to 1994, the leukaemia and cancer rates in Boolaroo and nearby Warners Bay were twice as high as in other suburbs of Newcastle, such as West Wallsend. These rates were only exceeded by those in neighbourhoods surrounding the BHP steelworks in Newcastle, which were up to twice as high again. The response to the Pasminco class action is another sign of growing opposition among working people to the way in which governments and their regulatory agencies have for decades permitted corporate giants to fill the air, water and soil with cocktails of poisonous chemicals, including lead, with severe and widespread health consequences. A record of the campaign and investigation conducted in the Australian city of Wollongong from November 1996 through to the January 1998.