For more than a year, Tullita Miller has been trying to get her daughter Remy's lead levels down.
She lives in Mount Isa — home to Australia's biggest lead mine — where the community is accustomed to living with the toxic material.
But despite her mum's best efforts, Remy's levels have shown no sign of decreasing.
The two-year-old is recording an average of 10 mcg/dL of lead in her blood — twice the maximum advised intake.
"I am mopping every night, I wash our little dog every day, I've reduced her outdoor hours, we clean, we wash, we eat well, we've had the house paint checked.
"I am following all the rules and nothing is changing," she said.
When new research came out this month revealing high lead levels in the eggs of backyard chickens raised in cities, Ms Miller immediately stopped her family from eating their own hens' eggs.
"There was no information about that from the Mount Isa Lead Alliance," she said of the community's lead authority, which provides information, programs, and blood tests.
"I've been told by GPs in the past that eggs weren't a problem."
As she exhausts her options and looks to move away from the community she has called home for the past six years, Ms Miller said better education and support were needed for parents whose children had above-average lead levels.
"I'm very passionate about Mount Isa. I don't want to leave, but I don't want this to have an impact on my daughter and her quality of life and her future," she said.
Gap in support for children with high lead levels
Ms Miller said that while preventative measures were a focus for advice from health authorities, when her daughter presented with above-average lead levels she had struggled to get support.
"They do a really great job of providing information and services to the community to help prevent lead intake," she said.
"But it would be really great to have a service that offers lead testing of the soil. Possibly even inside the home, just to give a more accurate picture of how much lead is in your home environment.
"There need to be more resources for parents whose children test between that 5 and 20 mark and more concrete procedures to follow when all the other precautions have been taken and your child's lead levels are still high."
Steven Donohue, director of the public health unit in Townsville and North West Queensland, said there were holes that needed to be filled in the advice given to residents as a result of the recent research.
"This new research about chickens is important. It is a warning that that could be a contribution to the lead level in your children or family," Dr Donohue said.
"We will be looking into making sure that it's incorporated into our standard messaging through the Lead Alliance."
How much of a concern are eggs?
Dr Donohue predicted the contribution of eggs to the lead intake of Mount Isa residents would be relatively low.
"What the research showed is that if a child was to eat one egg a day, then it would contribute maybe 1 or 2 micrograms per decilitre to their blood lead burden," he said.
"What we think is that this is probably only a minor contribution to the issue in Mount Isa where the main contribution to lead levels in children are from intake of dirt particles.
"But we do investigate where children have particularly high lead levels."
Beyond updating advice from the Lead Alliance, Dr Donohue said the organisation was looking into purchasing specialised equipment that would allow advanced soil testing.
As Ms Miller awaited test results from soil samples sent to Macquarie University, she said if something did not change soon, the family would be moving to the coast.
"There is a real gap in help out here for kids who have those lead levels where they're not yet at an emergency level but they're still well above the average," Ms Miller said.
"She's a very bright child, and I wouldn't ever want to stop her from fulfilling her life to the best that she can.
"If we can't bring down these lead levels, there is a danger for her development. And that's not something I'm going to risk."
