Notre-Dame de Paris
Press release no. 13
During mass on Sunday 31 May 2020, the holy trinity made up of the City Hall, the Archbishop’s Palace and the Ministry of Culture preached to the press about the relics on the damaged square in front of Notre-Dame de Paris.
The occasion was as moving as a balloon release. A Monsignor said that the Covid-19 and lead had been removed thanks to the breath of the Holy Spirit, and the Mayor expressed her delight that people could once again enjoy the beauty of the site, which had been fenced off by construction fences and covered by a chemical resin.
The officiants, failing to make an act of contrition for the shared negligence that led to the disaster of 15 April 2019, turned the page and displayed a disguised serenity.
A few minutes later, the first arrivals had the exceptional privilege of sitting down in shorts and skirts on benches of whiter-than-white stone already covered in films of 300 to 1995 µg/m2 of lead. Before resting, they walked on asphalt, granite slabs and cobblestones polluted beyond the threshold tolerated in living and recreational areas after the clean-up work, and some polluted beyond the 5,000 µg/m2 limit set by the Agence Régionale de Santé (Regional Health Agency) at the height of the campaign by Robin des Bois and the Association des Familles Victimes du Saturnisme (Association of Families Victims of Lead Poisoning).
On the Maurice Carême Promenade side (off-limits to the general public) and on the Seine side, the loose soil that was a preferential accumulation area for lead oxide particles and other pollutants during the fire in 2019 was not sampled during May 2020. There is a total lack of information on how to clean up this land, which in the rush to return to normal is communicating without barriers with copses, trees and vegetation saturated with lead dust. Beware of hand-to-mouth contact with children!
On the Hôtel Dieu side, where the roofs and walls were polluted by soot from the fire, the lead situation is hardly any better. The corridor in the Rue du Parvis Notre-Dame collects storm water and cleaning water from the forecourt, and its cracks, porosities and gutters are akin to an urban lead depository.
In the end, on 29 May 2020, the ARS issued a restrictive, measured health warning, subject to numerous conditions, without having the authority to give an opinion on the durability of the chemical resin and its resistance to abrasion from shoes, scooters, bicycles and other assaults.
Robin des Bois deplores the reopening of this polluted site to the general public, in particular children and women of childbearing age.
Robin des Bois deplores the fact that this polluted site is accessible to the public without any information on the health risks and on the clothing and behavioural precautions required.
Instructions on a dynamic visit encouraging visitors to avoid slacking off and prolonged contact with this risky environment would have been good charity.
TheARS’s opinion of 29 May 2020, which the members of the Etablissement public chargé de la conservation et de la restauration de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris very quickly relied on to reopen the off-work site part of the forecourt, sows confusion on a crucial point from the point of view of endangering others. Reading the ARS, one deduces that this area under the responsibility of Paris City Council and the diocese has been closed to the public since the night of 15 to 16 April 2019. This is not true; it was partly open to the public and without any preventive information, and was frequented and trampled by tens of thousands of tourists and curious onlookers from mid-May to mid-August 2019, while lead levels exceeded all regulatory thresholds.
Link to Robin des Bois publications on the Notre-Dame de Paris fire.
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