Video: Some U.S. neighborhoods dangerously contaminated by lead fallout

By Alison Young and Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
22 April 2012 Kathleen Marshall used to think the fenced backyard of her Philadelphia home was a safe place for her five children to play. Not anymore. Marshall was horrified to learn that a long-forgotten factory once melted lead just across the street and that soil tests by USA TODAY indicate her yard is contaminated with hazardous levels of the toxic metal. “You’re living here and you have no idea of what’s really in your ground, what’s in your backyard,” Marshall says now. “It’s just kind of scary to think that you’re sending your kids out to play in an area that’s hazardous.” Hundreds of soil tests by USA TODAY in neighborhoods near former lead factories show numerous areas where the dirt is so contaminated that children should not be playing in it. Yet they are.

Hazardous levels of lead were found in the dirt under a tricycle in Minneapolis; in the dusty doorway of a little girl’s playhouse in Hammond, Ind.; near a dropped baseball bat in a suburban Milwaukee yard; in the outfield of a baseball diamond in New York City. The soil tests, part of an ongoing USA TODAY investigation, revealed potentially dangerous lead levels in parts of all 21 neighborhoods examined across 13 states. Although results varied house to house, the majority of the yards tested in several neighborhoods had high lead levels — in some cases, five to 10 times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency considers hazardous to kids. In response to the newspaper’s soil test results, regulators in Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Wisconsin already are taking actions at five old factory sites. At the national level, EPA assistant administrator Mathy Stanislaus said in a statement the agency will “review USA Today’s information to determine what steps can be taken to ensure Americans are not being exposed to dangerous levels of lead.” The federal government had been warned a decade ago about the poison likely left behind by more than 400 companies. The factories, often referred to as “smelters,” had operated mainly from the 1930s to 1960s, but federal and state officials did little to find many of the sites, alert residents or test the soil nearby, USA TODAY reported Thursday. […]

Some U.S. neighborhoods dangerously contaminated by lead fallout