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Lead Poisoning Endangers Omaha Children
The yard in which Barb Brunton grew her vegetables and where her children spent most of their time playing had soil contaminated with very high levels of lead. The soil, tested by the EPA in 1999, registered 1,000 to 3,000 parts per million (ppm) of lead. The EPA uses 400 ppm as a base level of concern.(2) Brunton believes that two of her children have suffered developmentally and required special education because of lead poisoning. Her oldest son Ian could not speak a full sentence until he was five years old. He was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder (hyperactivity), for which he has been on medication since he was five. Ian's hands shake so badly that the school district has given him a computer for taking notes. He wears a special glove to weigh down his writing hand. Because of his weak forearms he'll never be able to participate in contact sports. Ian continues to be in occupational therapy to help with his motor skills.(3) In 1999, at the age of one, Brunton's middle son Jacob tested lead positive with a blood lead level of 13. Ten is considered to be the threshold of concern, although there is no "safe" level of lead. "It immediately threw me into a tailspin," Brunton said, "because I realized I was seeing the same problems in Jacob that we had already gone through with his older brother. It's like a light bulb went off in my head. I realized all the problems they were having were related to lead." Like Ian, Jacob wasn't learning to speak as quickly as he should, and his motor skills were deficient. He couldn't hold a cup or play with toys that required manipulation, he had difficulty with balance (for example, climbing on a tricycle) and he was unable to grasp simple cause-effect relationships.(4) Finally, the family decided to move to a new home, across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in an effort to eliminate Jacob's exposure to lead. Jacob has since shown marked improvement. Both the Omaha and Council Bluffs school districts have been very helpful in providing early educational intervention. Brunton did a lot of research on lead. And the more research she did, the more concerned she became. Exposure to even very low levels of lead can seriously harm children by significantly decreasing a child's intelligence and permanently impairing brain function. Low-level childhood exposure to lead can slow development and cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems such as aggression and attention deficit disorder. It is also known to cause speech and language problems, nervous system and kidney damage, impaired hearing, vision and motor skills, and decreased muscle and bone growth. Neurological damage caused by childhood lead exposure is permanent and irreversible. Lead can also pass through the placenta and harm a fetus.(5) How did the lead in Omaha's soil get into the systems of local children? Contaminated soil tracked indoors leaves lead dust in the house, which people then breathe. Lead dust can get on toys, pacifiers and dirty hands, and young children often put their hands and toys in their mouths. Children most often get lead in their system from playing outside, however, when they come into contact with contaminated dirt or sand (which, as most parents know, children sometimes put in their mouths as well).(6) In Barb Brunton's case, the vegetables that she grew for her baby food absorbed lead from the lead-contaminated soil. When her babies ate the vegetables, they ingested lead. The lead soil contamination that has ravaged the health of Barb Brunton's family and approximately 65,614 other residents of Omaha is the result of more than 100 years of industrial air pollution that has seriously contaminated 8,840 acres of soil in eastern Omaha.(7) At one time, Omaha had a thriving lead and battery processing industry, now the focus of an EPA investigation. For more than a century, until 1997, Asarco-originally established as the American Smelting and Refining Company-operated a lead refinery on a 23-acre site on the banks of the Missouri River in downtown Omaha.(8) In 1997, after spewing massive amounts of lead into the community and violating the Clean Air Act, Asarco closed its Omaha lead refinery.(9) Beginning in March 1999, the EPA started lead soil contamination testing at child care centers and homes of children with elevated blood lead levels that were in the path of prevailing winds from the Asarco facility. About 42 percent of the 1,700 yards tested had at least 400 parts per million of lead, considered the threshold for concern. Between 26 and 42 percent of children tested during a six-year period during the 1990s had elevated blood lead levels over 10 ppm.(10) The EPA has determined that about 16 percent of the 2000 yards tested by the EPA in Omaha had lead contents over 800 ppm and are in need of remediation.(11) As a result of these tests, the EPA proposed in February 2002 to put the Omaha Lead site on the Superfund priority cleanup list. A decision is expected by the end of 2002.(12) The EPA anticipates spending about $100 million dollars to remove soil from thousands of contaminated residential yards in east Omaha.(13) The Omaha lead site involves environmental justice issues because the areas nearest the Asarco industrial facility, where the highest percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels were found, are predominantly minority and low income neighborhoods. "It's so sad," Barb Brunton says. "The effects of lead are so insidious. Lead has definitely taken its toll on my family." But she believes it's important to tell her story because she doesn't want more children to suffer as her kids have. "I'm a pediatric nurse, and even so I wasn't able stop them from being exposed to lead. That's why this cleanup is so important to our community. We need to do it to give all children in Omaha a safe and healthy environment to grow up in."(14) Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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