Vegetables and lead

The Annual Marie Antoinette Award should go to Umar Fahmi Achmadi for his "Let them eat vegetables only once a week" statement in response to the very disturbing news that lead is showing up in vegetables (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 3, 1994). Most of the poor have only enough money to eat rice, noodles and vegetables. So what are they going to have now as another source of nutrition -- duck, prime rib? I hope he survives the laughter from his colleagues at the Faculty of Nutrition.

There is an alarming trend among the bureaucrats to bury their heads in sand, and to not point fingers at offending agencies (in this case Pertamina), who have resolutely refused to get their act together on the issue of lead free petrol. If anything, people should be encouraged to eat vegetables, just like those green leafy ones that are happily sucking up all that lead. In view of the alarming statistics on female anemia and maternal mortality rates in Indonesia, it is even more imperative that Pertamina stops its obfuscation and brings itself into line with the international practices of other petroleum corporations.

The other award for Fudging The Truth goes to R. J Larbey who was attributed in the same article with writing that lead in petrol contributes little to body burdens compared to lead in food, and paint. I can only think that he studied ornithology as the environmental health data on lead are very clear. Few people, no matter how poor, are fond of munching on red lead these days even if they can get their hands on it, and lead in food comes from where? Methinks this is a spurious argument. 80 percent of lead in petrol is exhausted into the atmosphere while the remainder stays in the oil and engine filtering system. The exhausted lead is in the form of halides, oxyhalides and salts. While most of it tends to fall within a short distance of the road (particularly into kampongs that lie below the toll roads or overpasses) a considerable amount remains airborne for longer periods. It is this that is both inhaled by people and absorbed by plants.

Lead intoxication is not to be dealt with lightly. It effects both the neurological system and the blood forming portions of the bones and the kidneys. Thus it results in adult anemia, and in extreme cases, kidney disfunction. Thus, lead poisoning compounds nutritional anemia already in existence in Indonesia.

But then I forget that Indonesia is the country that has no hazardous chlorine gas leaks and no cancer causing asbestos and forests of trees that are only visible to the chosen few...so who knows!

I have further information that Pertamina does indeed produce and sell unleaded petrol to Singapore. You may be interested in finding out why it's OK to poison Indonesians but not Singaporeans, (but I guess we got them back with the smoke haze). Is it because Indonesia doesn't have a well informed populace (most of the technical data is only available in English) or because of the learned passivity/fear of the people...again who knows.

MELODY KEMP

Jakarta