Vegetables and lead

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