A top French labour union and environmental health groups have banded together to demand Notre-Dame Cathedral be covered and sealed after the fire that destroyed its roof, deeming it an ongoing source of lead pollution, reports FRANCE 24.
The April 15 blaze that destroyed the cathedral's spire and its roof also melted massive quantities of lead, toxic dust from which was dispersed into the air in the French capital and deposited on the ground.
“The 440 tonnes of lead that went up in smoke during the fire represent more than four times the annual lead emissions in the atmosphere for all of France,” Annie Thébaud-Mony, a researcher and spokeswoman for the environmental health group Association Henri Pézerat, told reporters Monday on the square in front of the heavily damaged cathedral.
Families of tourists could be seen, surreally, snapping souvenir photos on the square, apparently oblivious to the press conference under way that was discussing the toxic dust embedded in the pavement underfoot.
Thébaud-Mony’s association, alongside the CGT labour union and the Association for the Families of Victims of Lead Poisoning, wants to see the 850-year-old monument sealed off. The containment process would entail enveloping the building in its entirety – including its iconic twin towers – in airtight plastic sheeting draped over a giant metal scaffolding.
Slightly dropping the air pressure within the cathedral-sized tent would then work to keep lead particles from leaking outside while the site’s interior is fully decontaminated, the groups say. The same technique was used at a nearby Sorbonne campus, across the Seine in Paris’s fifth arrondissement (district), while the university was being cleansed of asbestos.