Seminar looking at the use and impacts of a waste slags as fill material.

Tony Morrison (Macquarie Univeristy) to talk on “Morphology of Black Slags from the Pasminco Smelter and its impact on availability of toxic elements to the environment” while Craig Dalton (Hunter New England Health) will talk on “Soil lead, air lead, or ‘inadequate house cleaning’ – what was responsible for the elevated blood leads in North Lake Macquarie”.

Electronic copies of these presentations are available on request to HEI.

Tony Morrison is a Research Fellow in the Graduate School of the Environment at Macquarie University, following on from many years as a research metallurgist working for CSIRO Minerals . He was alerted around 2000 to the problems created in the North Lake Macquarie Community by lead from the Pasminco base metal smelter and has carried out a number of studies particularly focussed on the availability of toxic elements within the so-called Black Slags. This talk will examine the morphology of the material and how this allows these deleterious components to be released and implications for their containment.

Craig Dalton was Director of the Hunter Public Health Unit from 1997 to 2003 when the smelter closed after 100 years of operation.  His major challenge was integrating scientific research findings, media speculation, community rumours, political agendas and parental concerns into a workable strategy that caused the least suffering to the residents of North Lake Macquarie.