Public Health Mapua Report Released

Public Health Mapua Report Released

Expert advice to the Ministry of Health is that it is unlikely there are adverse long-term health effects for local residents from the Mapua clean-up process.

The advice was released today along with a health impact report to the local Mapua community. The public health impact report is available on the Ministry of Health website: http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/assessment-of-publichealth-risk-mapua-mar2010

Today’s public health impact report is the latest in a series of Government reports into the site clean-up, which began with a Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment investigation just before the clean-up was completed in 2007.

A further report on health impacts for workers on the site is being completed by the Department of Labour and is expected to be released in mid-April.

The public health impact report was held up by delays in obtaining expert advice including the unfortunate death of a key scientist.

The key finding of the health report is that it is unlikely there are adverse long-term health effects for local residents from the clean-up process although the report sets out some of the limitations of the comprehensiveness of the monitoring.

Those limitations in monitoring are addressed in the recommendations in this report, which aim to further reduce any remaining uncertainty.

The expert advice from the independent Organochlorines Technical Advisory Group is that it is unlikely that local residents would have experienced a significantly elevated level of exposure to chemicals of concern for a sufficient period to result in any chronic health effects from that exposure.

At the release of the report, the Ministry of Health is offering time over the next six weeks for local people to discuss this report and give their views on what steps they think are now needed to address the report’s recommendations.

Ministry Deputy Director of Public Health Dr Fran McGrath says: “Many local people will be pleased with this result showing that adverse health effects for local residents are unlikely from the clean-up process.”

“We recognise that there is still some uncertainty about the precise levels of a small number of chemicals. We have some sympathy with the local community who would have hoped all these questions to be answered.”

“We have sought expert advice from the independent Organochlorines Technical Advisory Group. That advice confirmed that the existing evidence as part of the clean-up does give us reassurance that any exposure is unlikely to have resulted in long-term health effects."

The expert advice is also that blood testing will not result in either the community or the individual being much wiser.

“We know that we are all exposed to some level of the chemicals of concern largely through our diet. Unfortunately, knowing the level of a contaminant such as dioxins in our bodies does not predict the health consequences, which are affected by other lifestyle factors such as smoking and exercise.”

The Ministry of Health will begin a process of community engagement over the next month to six weeks to gauge community concerns and preferences for next steps for the Ministry.

ENDS