Dr Michael North (Senior Environmental Geochemist) conducted an independent review of the North Queensland Conservation Council (NQCC) Report for the Port of Townsville Limited (POTL) which was released today. The POTL media statement can be viewed here. In summary Dr North’s review found that:
- The NQCC Report does not provide convincing scientific evidence of ongoing spread of metals in dust attributable to POTL operations.
- The NQCC Report does not provide convincing scientific evidence of additional risk to public health.
- Results in the NQCC Report for surface wipes were incorrectly derived by use of non-standard methods, incorrectly compared against the quoted standards or did not account for sources of bias.
- Conclusions in the NQCC Report are not scientifically supported.
- The NQCC Report makes a number of claims that are not supported by their own data collection.
Dr North has considerable experience in environmental chemistry, occupational hygiene and environmental health and has worked on the incident of lead contamination from the Magellan lead mine in Esperance (WA) 2008 where he was Senior Chemist (ChemCentre) for the Esperance Cleanup and Recovery Program.