Damaged Hill is an Australian mining city steeped in historical past. The city’s legacy of union struggles for employees’ rights is chronicled by avenue plaques, protected heritage buildings, and murals paying homage to early-Twentieth-century Mexican muralism.
Underneath the expansive gray sky over Damaged Hill, monumental mining wealth has been created – stretching from Australia to northern Chile and additional. As with most types of wealth, it’s rooted in human hardship. In Damaged Hill, mining wealth has been accrued at the price of youngsters’s publicity to guide contamination.
Final July, Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state authorities, which incorporates Damaged Hill, introduced AU$37.3 million (roughly US$26.74 million) to deal with lead contamination. The funding, as said within the announcement, will result in a “twofold enhance within the variety of properties remediated yearly, together with the removing of lead-based paint to remove lead contamination, the set up of grass to lure mud, and enhanced monitoring of emissions from current mines and different localized mud sources.”
In Damaged Hill, emissions from mining and smelting are the first supply of publicity. Elevated blood lead ranges amongst native youngsters sign a public well being disaster. The announcement “underscored a dedication to guard youngsters and households from the long-term results of lead publicity.”
The funding announcement follows a January 2026 report on lowering the well being and environmental impacts of lead contamination in Damaged Hill. The NSW Workplace of the Chief Scientist & Engineer (OCSE) issued the report. “An extended historical past of lead mining in Damaged Hill has left a legacy of widespread contamination and human publicity,” mentioned Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, OCSE’s NSW Chief Scientist, within the report.
“Whereas some progress has been made in lowering environmental lead ranges and neighborhood publicity, enhancements have slowed in recent times,” he added. “Delays in efficient intervention threat irreversible impairment and potential lifelong problems throughout successive generations.”
NSW Minister for Well being Ryan Park described the AU$37.3 million as an “funding” to “assist scale back the danger of hurt, significantly for younger youngsters and infants.” He added, “To see blood lead ranges declining amongst younger youngsters screened in Damaged Hill may be very pleasing. Nonetheless, we all know extra must be finished.”
“Underground,” a each day reminder of what lies beneath and across the streets of Damaged Hill. {Photograph}: Antonio Castillo.
Damaged Hill is 1,100 kilometers west of Sydney, roughly a two-hour flight. Based on 2020 information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), it has a inhabitants of fewer than 20,000, of whom 6 % are aged 0-4 years. Damaged Hill is the birthplace of the mining big BHP and is constructed on the world’s largest deposit of lead, silver, and zinc.
Lead mining started in 1885. The primary inquiry by the NSW authorities into Damaged Hill’s poisoning dates to the early Nineties. “Lead is a steel that has been mined in Damaged Hill for a few years,” said Lead Good Damaged Hill, an NSW public well being initiative and neighborhood training marketing campaign.
“Lead mud is present in Damaged Hill’s mud, soil, filth, and rainwater tanks, amongst different locations,” based on the Damaged Hill Lead Surveillance Program 2023 Annual Report. “It’s dangerous to folks of all ages, however the threat is highest for unborn infants, infants, and younger youngsters.”
Cate Faehrmann, an Australian environmentalist and politician, has lengthy been a critic of the NSW authorities’s lead remediation measures. “Yearly we get one other report displaying Damaged Hill youngsters are being poisoned by lead, and yearly the federal government expresses concern,” she mentioned. “It’s a nationwide disgrace that Aboriginal youngsters in Damaged Hill are nonetheless twice as prone to have harmful ranges of lead of their blood.”
The World Well being Group (WHO) reported that “[l]ead publicity was attributed to greater than 3.5 million deaths globally in 2023, primarily as a result of cardiovascular results.” It additionally emphasised that “lead publicity can pose important well being dangers for kids. When youngsters are uncovered to very excessive ranges of lead, it could possibly trigger severe harm to their brains and central nervous system, resulting in signs equivalent to coma, convulsions, and, in excessive instances, demise.”
The first concern is childhood neurodevelopment. Lead impacts the central nervous system, kidneys, blood chemistry, and reproductive organs. It impacts youngsters’s cognitive growth, and the ensuing cognitive impairment can persist into maturity. The WHO mentioned that lead publicity can even trigger irreversible harm to youngsters’s mind growth, resulting in elevated delinquent tendencies and decrease academic achievement.
The 2023 Damaged Hill Lead Surveillance Program Annual Report discovered that roughly 35 % of non-Aboriginal youngsters and a staggering 68 % of Aboriginal youngsters examined had blood lead ranges exceeding the nationwide public well being guideline of 5 micrograms per deciliter.
“One in three Damaged Hill youngsters below 5 have blood lead ranges increased than the nationwide tips,” mentioned Faehrmann.
Aboriginal youngsters and households could face limitations to accessing remediation applications, healthcare, and dietary interventions, additional rising publicity dangers. “No youngster ought to should endure lifelong well being impacts as a result of governments gained’t stand as much as highly effective mining pursuits,” she mentioned.
Damaged Hill is an outback city constructed on its ore. {Photograph}: Antonio Castillo.
On the announcement final July of the AU$37.3 million to deal with lead contamination, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey mentioned: “An extended historical past of lead mining in Damaged Hill has left a legacy of contamination that we have to handle higher.”
Nonetheless, the contamination isn’t merely a matter of higher administration. It’s about neglect or “inaction,” as Richard Weston, chief govt of the Maari Ma Well being Aboriginal Company, put it. Maari Ma and the Damaged Hill Environmental Lead Program monitor lead ranges in Damaged Hill’s air and soil. Additionally they conduct blood lead exams on youngsters below 5.
“There’s nearly zero curiosity from the NSW authorities within the well being and well-being of Aboriginal youngsters in Damaged Hill,” Weston mentioned. “It’s a waste of time, actually.” He added that the funding didn’t handle the inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youngsters.
Maari Ma withdrew from the Damaged Hill Environmental Lead Response Group in November 2025 in protest towards “the federal government’s inaction” and questioned why the NSW authorities has not adopted a focused technique to deal with Aboriginal contamination and structural injustices.
Weston unhappy that “structural inequities persist and contribute to guide publicity amongst Aboriginal youngsters, and that focused motion is required as a result of Aboriginal households have restricted entry to social housing and rely extra on lower-quality personal rental housing.” He added, “There’s a robust hyperlink between blood lead ranges and the standard of housing in Damaged Hill.”
Damaged Hill faces an acute scarcity of inexpensive housing. This unaffordability forces Aboriginal households to dwell in uninhabitable, lead-contaminated rental properties. These properties are contaminated by mining actions, exposing youngsters to blood lead ranges twice these of the overall inhabitants.
Weston famous that though lead remediation in properties is ongoing, the housing state of affairs for Aboriginal folks stays precarious, citing substandard housing, overcrowding, and unstable tenancies.
He has known as for extra social housing for Aboriginal folks. He mentioned that until Aboriginal youngsters have safe housing, they’ll proceed to have elevated ranges of lead of their our bodies. “Aboriginal youngsters in Damaged Hill deserve clear properties, protected air, and a future free from the legacy of lead.”
The Damaged Hill Miners’ Memorial is a reminder that the city’s mining historical past has all the time carried a physique rely, official and unofficial. {Photograph}: Antonio Castillo.