UK food safety watchdog to probe lead levels near abandoned mines

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The UK’s independent food safety watchdog will investigate lead levels in food produced near abandoned lead mines after the impact of the toxic metal on human health was highlighted by a Financial Times investigation.

The UK has 6,630 abandoned lead mines that continue to disperse the metal into the environment each year. Lead can accumulate in waterways and soil before being consumed by animals and entering the food chain. 

In a letter seen by the Financial Times, Professor Alan Boobis, chair of the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment, told Conservative MP Julian Smith that the Food Standards Agency would conduct a risk assessment.

The FSA’s review of “dietary lead as part of its risk analysis programme” would take “into account hotspots where exposure is likely to be higher, including the specific concern regarding old lead mines”, said Boobis, whose independent group advises the FSA and the Department of Health and Social Care.

Consumed by humans, lead has a devastating impact on almost every organ in the body, with any level of exposure capable of having a harmful effect, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate, an agency of the environment department, tests just between 400 and 450 samples of meat, milk, fish and honey for the presence of lead and other heavy metals each year. Experts say testing such a small number of food items offers an insufficient assessment.

This year Boobis said he “agreed with the conclusion” of an FT investigation that found the scale of lead toxicity present in farm animals reared for human consumption was unknown, and said ministers should assess the scale of lead contamination “from farm to plate” in the food chain.

Scientists and farmers rearing animals for human consumption have previously said the FSA should be concerned about people living near old lead mine sites, and who might be growing their own vegetables and eating locally produced eggs. 

Last year a study funded by the Welsh government identified potentially harmful levels of lead in eggs produced on two small farms downstream from abandoned lead mines in west Wales.

A young child eating one or two of the eggs per day “could become cognitively impaired”, according to the research. Small-scale studies of vegetables grown on the farms indicated they too contained “elevated, and potentially toxic, concentrations” of lead, according to the full study.

Boobis added in his letter to Smith: “Lead is an issue that cuts across a number of government departments, so it will be important to ensure an integrated assessment.”

Smith, whose constituency of Skipton and Ripon in North Yorkshire has an estimated 412 old lead mines, said: “Lead risk needs a root-and-branch assessment and the FSA should deliver nothing less.”

Mark Willis, head of chemical contaminants at the FSA, said the agency kept “all contaminants in food under review as part of its rolling programme of risk analysis work”.

“The outcome of a future review of lead will inform any advice to ministers on whether changes to legislation are recommended,” he added.