Families living in the Orbiel valley, in Aude, where 38 children have high arsenic levels after flooding, gathered on Friday August 16 in Carcassonne to demonstrate and demand new screenings.
Families still worried and angry. While the Regional Health Agency (ARS) recently discovered that 38 children in the Orbiel Valley, in Aude, had high arsenic levels, their parents and relatives gathered on Friday August 16 in front of the Carcassonne hospital to demonstrate and ask for new screenings. They suspect the old gold mine of Salsigne, closed for fifteen years, to be the source of this contamination. Indeed, the exploitation left toxic residues in the valley. And when the L’Orbiel river overflowed on October 15, 2018, it shifted the risk geographically.
“I am angry because after the floods, no precautionary principle was taken”, testifies the mother of little Rio, 4 years old and concerned, to France Info. According to her, her child’s spasms and stomach aches began after the October floods, when he was playing in the playground at his school. “The children have been in the yard for six months, already they are exposed to the air because we are in the Orbiel valley… It’s an environmental disaster. Public services do nothing at all. It’s non-assistance to anyone in danger”, she protests.
Another parent is convinced that two of his children have been contaminated by arsenic particles in the air. “Today, we don’t know if with rates like that, in twenty years, my daughter will not develop a disease, cancer. No parent here wants to take the risk”, explains a father to FranceInfo.
“An anxiety-provoking climate”
Since the beginning of the summer, the ARS has been analyzing the children of the Orbiel valley. Of the 103 children tested, 38 have high arsenic levels, above the reference value of 10 micrograms per gram of creatinine, a normal metabolic waste product produced by the body. And according to the parents, despite these worrying figures, the agency minimizes the situation. If it recommended a second test within two months for overexposed children, to determine whether the established levels attest to recent or chronic exposure, it gives little information on the procedure to follow in the meantime.
“We follow the ARS protocol for children (which recommends avoiding contact with toxic residues, editor’s note). But as adults, we would also like to know at what rate we are also exposed” , comments with the AFP Emeline Févotte, delegate of the parents of Lastours pupils, whose children were checked at 27 and 36 µg/g of creatinine last June. “We are destabilized. It creates an anxiety-provoking climate because we don’t know how to avoid contact” with sources of pollution, she explains. Parents are demanding, among other things, that screening, reimbursed, should also be put in place for adults.
In July, a general practitioner had already accused the ARS of being “wait-and-see” in an interview with the newspaper The Independent. “Today, I tell people whose land has been flooded to avoid growing vegetables, to use wells. As soon as we have the recommendations of the HAS, I will be able to tell people what the we can do, if there is the possibility of reimbursing expensive analyses”, he denounced.
Arsenic, a regulated pollutant since 2005 in Europe
“We have been fighting for twenty-three years” to denounce the pollution of the Orbiel valley. “All of this could have been avoided”, laments today Guy Augé, president of the association of residents of Salsigne, also present at the demonstration on Friday.
Arsenic is a highly toxic element and a regulated pollutant since 2005 in Europe. Work published last May showed that the arsenic present in water from private wells could modify the structure of the heart and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Its toxicity is such that, according to another study published in 2007, more than 137 million people living in more than 70 countries are likely affected by chronic arsenic poisoning from drinking water.
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