The EPA Doesn’t Typically Retest Homes in the Country’s Largest Residential Lead Superfund Site. So We Did.
The post The EPA Doesn’t Typically Retest Homes in the Country’s Largest Residential Lead Superfund Site. So We Did. appeared first on ProPublica .
For over two years, a team of reporters from Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica, along with Cassandra Garibay, collected soil samples from 620 homes in and around Omaha, Nebraska's largest residential lead Superfund site. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated this 27-square-mile area as a Superfund site after the American Smelting and Refining Company ceased operations in the 1990s.
The smelting plant had released lead-laden dust into the soil, which residents had been exposed to for decades. Despite the EPA's remediation efforts, the team found that many homes still contained lead concentrations that posed a threat to public health. They tested 150 homes that had previously been cleaned up by the EPA and found that 1 in 10 of those yards still had lead levels exceeding 400 parts per million, the threshold for further remediation.
The team collected single soil samples from each yard to keep costs low and reach more residents, although some experts noted that this method could underestimate contamination levels.
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