Keep the Canary Singing: A Safe Life, A Strong Voice

For decades, Lucinda has been a quiet force for justice. Now, as the Canary, she keeps speaking out when others can’t.

Help Luci rebuild a safe life for herself and her family and keep speaking out for her community.

For over two years, Lucinda has been raising concerns about health effects linked to the redevelopment of an old gasworks site in her neighbourhood.

Back in 2012, when land across the road from her home was first opened for development, old gasworks waste buried for decades was disturbed. Soon after, Lucinda became sick. She and her husband, Bruce, voiced their concerns — but were left feeling isolated.

She became so unwell that she had to abandon her home for more than six months until she was well enough to return.

In 2024, at Easter, Lucinda again became seriously unwell after strong odours associated with the old gasworks remediation spread blocks away as far as her home. She had to leave after her body and brain reacted violently.

Lucinda was so badly affected that this time, she hasn’t been able to return to the home she loves.

The odours were not just her experience — they were acknowledged at the time, and many residents reported them to the EPA. Some residents also lodged health complaints during this period.

Yet the community was later told there was “no risk to human health.”

For Lucinda, this felt like a denial of reality — not only of her own collapse, but of the wider concerns being raised around her.

Who She Is

Lucinda Turton has been a quiet force for decades — working at both grassroots and government levels to improve health, justice, and public safety.

She’s advocated in mental health, environmental harm, toxic injury, and trauma-informed care. She’s worked across systems and with strangers — not for recognition, but because she’s lived what can go wrong, and made it her mission to help others avoid the same fate.

Even while sick, even while losing everything, Lucinda kept showing up — educating, warning, and guiding people to the best care she could find, and away from the harm she knows too well.

Her fight is for her community — and for her family’s safety before her own.

“If I’ve had to go through all this, then some good has to come out of it.”

Her Current Situation

Since Easter 2024, Lucinda has effectively been without a safe home.

She now has a Housing Trust property, but the new building materials are still off-gassing, leaving her unable to live inside.

Instead, she sleeps outside in the carport — on a camping chair — with borrowed bedding that isn’t suitable for her condition. The carport is not fully enclosed, leaving her exposed to weather and further risks.

It could be weeks or even months before she can move inside safely — if she ever can. But, it's never been just about Luci,

"My goal isn’t only survival for me. I’m setting up the house so my husband, Bruce, and my son, Axel, can come live there once they’ve detoxed and left everything they own behind. Even if the house never ends up safe enough for me, at least they will finally have safety — and that matters more to me than life itself ."

That’s why she urgently needs support.

How You Can Help

Lucinda has already done the hardest part — she has spoken up, and formally reported her experiences.

What she cannot do alone is survive this next chapter.

Your contribution — whether large or small — will help provide:

Every donation is more than financial support. It is a shield that helps Lucinda continue — not just for herself, but for her family and for every neighbour still living near potential contamination.

Please give if you can, and share her story so Lucinda does not have to carry this fight alone.

When Her Brain Is Inflamed, Everything Changes

Lucinda doesn’t just lose her health when she’s exposed to unsafe environments — she loses her will to live. Neurotoxic inflammation hijacks her brain so profoundly that it can shut down memory, speech, mobility — and hope. During these episodes, she isn’t herself.

“When I’m inflamed, I can’t think clearly, speak up, or protect myself. I become vulnerable in every way. Survival mode takes over. But when the inflammation subsides — when I’m safe — I return. With sharp focus. With purpose. With fire. That’s when I can build legal cases, write timelines, hold the government to account.”

That’s the paradox: her body is fragile, but her mind is still fierce. Even with permanent brain injury, she keeps building complex cases — not just for herself, but for her community and for future developments on contaminated “Brownfield sites.”

Lucinda’s Health and Ongoing Fight

Lucinda has been medically diagnosed with toxic encephalopathy and brain injury by both a leading immunologist and a leading neurologist. fMRI brain imaging confirms the damage.

She has also been diagnosed with Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance (TILT) by a leading immunologist.

These conditions mean even tiny chemical exposures can make her severely unwell.

They have already changed Lucinda’s life dramatically — causing physical and cognitive collapse, loss of home, and years of struggle.

Yet through it all, she has still found ways to keep speaking up.

A Life More Canary

By Lucinda Turton, June 2025

I am the canary.

Not a metaphor. Not a myth. Not an exaggeration.

I was the one whose body broke first.

I was the one who reacted when others didn’t.

I was the one who sounded the alarm — and the system still hasn’t admitted there’s danger, even though they know there has been, and still is.

I lived near the Brompton Gasworks site — land they claimed would be safe to build on, live on, raise families on.

But the soil is toxic. The dust is contaminated. The risk is real.

It was then, and it still is now.

No one warned me.

No one protected me.

And when I got sick, everybody looked away.

It started in 2012.

They dug up gasworks waste buried decades earlier — just across the road.

It needed to be removed. But not like that.

Not rushed. Not exposed. Not without controls.

Not like dirt.

Not like it didn’t matter who breathed it in.

I got sick.

Badly.

And still, they said nothing.

Then came 2024.

This time, three blocks away from the site itself.

The contamination travelled. The risk expanded.

It didn’t stay buried.

It came back in the air, in the dust — breathed in by people who never even knew they were near it.

And now, it’s not just me.

Now the danger doesn’t ask who’s vulnerable.

Now everybody is.

— Lucinda

Disclaimer:

This fundraiser shares Lucinda’s personal lived experience and medical diagnoses. It is not a substitute for legal or regulatory findings.

All funds raised go directly to Lucinda to support her immediate safety and daily needs.

Lucinda has submitted formal complaints to the relevant authorities in line with the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2018 (SA).

Justice is a team sport