Paris lead(er) instead of Paris-Plage

Notre-Dame de Paris, press release n°3

The lead is spinning around the cathedral. The dust flew away from their stony nests and the 4000 scaffolding tubes that leaned against the collapsed spire. Lead is everywhere and it is not displayed anywhere. The surroundings of the cathedral have become cult places of insanity, such as the street Cloître-Notre-Dame. The cathedral strengthening yard is suspended but in the street, the business continues. Lead micro and nano particles that fall from bells, statues and pinnacles are said to be blocked by a palisade. In Paris, since the evening of 15 April, there is a Chernobyl smell in the air in terms of information.

The general doctrine promoted by the Law on the Modernisation of Civil Security signed in 2004 by 11 ministers, including the Minister of Culture, is to speed up disasters. After the Notre-Dame fire and the industrial-scale melting of lead, it was the on-the-spot or slow race and secrecy that were on the agenda. Meanwhile, herds of lead dust have been wandering on roofs, sidewalks, pavements, public and private gardens and in the Seine. Road and pedestrian traffic are vectors for the sowing of lead dust.

The public authorities and the Paris City Hall are putting forward “lapses in the racket of regulations” to exonerate themselves. In terms of lapses, they are memory lapses. As early as 1932, the British Medical Journal denounced “the slow, subtle and insidious saturation of the metabolism by infinitesimal doses of lead prolonged over a long period of time”. It is now accepted that from 12 µg lead/l blood, a child is likely to lose part of his or her ability to learn to read, remember and converse and that from 15 µg/l blood and 36 µg/l adults can suffer from kidney and cardiovascular diseases.

There are also vision and logic lapses in the Paris Police Prefect. “There is no danger to each other’s lives” “Walking on lead is strictly safe” according to him. However, he confirms that walking on lead dust leads to them being brought back into homes and that this importation poses a health risk to children. Nor does the Paris Police Prefect see tourists with young children leaning on railings and taking a food break on toxic sidewalks on the square in front of Notre-Dame square or on the Archevêché quay.

Under the direction of the Ministry of Culture and Philippe Villeneuve, chief architect of historical monuments, the organization of the yard is going in reverse. In addition to the insufficient training and protection of employees, the toxic waste removed from the cathedral has been piled up for the past 3 months in big bags stored on the square under some marquees, which over time, winds and airborne dust have also become waste. The elite of the Ministry of Culture has long wandered around the square and inside the cathedral in a suit and tie. The bad example comes from above.

The Diocese of Paris itself contributed to the inconsistency of the words and approaches by organizing a mass inside the cathedral in a miraculously dust-free chapel, without carrying any Personal Protection Equipment other than white operetta helmets.

Fortunately, the judiciary keeps a cool head. The first president of the Paris Court of Appeal has been conducting a lead sampling campaign since 26 July at the Palais de Justice on Ile de la Cité in the vicinity of Notre-Dame de Paris.