The low-income neighborhood of older wood-frame homes in West Dallas is a far cry from the suburb of newly built brick houses in Frisco 30 miles to the north.
But the two North Texas communities share a bond: Both were contaminated by industrial lead for nearly half a century.
The 1984 closure of RSR Corp.’s smelter, where used car batteries were recycled, was just the beginning of West Dallas’ struggles with lead. Contamination from the smelter still exists there today, residents say. That raises questions about the road ahead for Frisco, where cleanup is just starting at the Exide Technologies smelter that shut down Nov. 30.
Overwhelming evidence points to the dangers of lead. And a strong link exists between the amount of lead in soil and the amount of lead exposure in children. They are the ones most susceptible to lead's harmful effects because of their developing brains. Even small amounts of lead in a child's blood can affect IQ scores, academic achievement and the ability to pay attention.
“It’s really critical to prevent these exposures in the first place,” said Bruce Lanphear, an international expert on lead toxicology. Lanphear is based at Simon Fraser University and BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The problem with lead is it gets stored in our bones and stays with us for the rest of our lives,” he said.
In an effort to determine what levels of lead contamination exist in West Dallas today, The Dallas Morning News commissioned a toxicologist to test soils from more than 30 residential yards. The results show lead levels that can cause harm to children — though, in all but two cases, they fall below today's federal cleanup standards for residential areas.
But those standards are getting a closer look. A landmark report released earlier this year by the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention noted that the federal standards for lead in residential soil, as well as in dust and water, are not sufficient to protect health. Much lower levels of lead exposure can cause harm.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is examining whether its lead policies need to change in light of the latest science. It is also trying to ensure sites already cleaned remain safe for residents.
The continuing lead problems in West Dallas should serve as a warning for Frisco, said Jim Schermbeck, an environmental advocate. Schermbeck has spent years fighting for more stringent standards for lead smelters and the subsequent cleanups, first in West Dallas and most recently in Frisco.
“If I was living in Frisco,” he said, “I’d want the best cleanup based on the best science.”
Smelter fallout
Both communities are dealing with the fallout from years of toxic emissions during the smelting process at what are known as secondary lead smelters. These smelters extract lead from used vehicle batteries and other scrap metal.
RSR and Exide came under scrutiny because of their too-high lead emissions, though the air-quality standard prior to the West Dallas smelter’s closure was less stringent than it is today.
All of that lead in the air eventually settled on the ground, where it bound to dirt in people’s yards and dust in their homes.
Another danger came from smelter wastes, such as crushed battery pieces, that were spread throughout neighborhoods where residents had little knowledge about the hazards. In West Dallas, the pieces were used in hundreds of yards and muddy driveways. In Frisco, they were used as a base in road and parking lot construction.
These battery chips often — but not always — signal lead contamination. No records exist on where or when they were dumped. But after all these years, they are still turning up. In the past 18 months, they’ve been found in Frisco on city property and along a creek, as well as in a few West Dallas yards.
Cleanups in West Dallas in the 1980s and ’90s, along with the help of a Superfund designation, removed tons of tainted soil.
But it doesn’t take much lead to contaminate soil. The amounts being measured are too small to be visible. Consider the contents of a packet of artificial sweetener, which equal 1 gram. One-millionth of a gram equals 1 part per million. Lead in soil is measured in parts per million.
Lead occurs naturally in the soil at about 15 to 30 parts per million. The EPA standard for cleanup in soil where children play is 400 parts per million.
The state of Minnesota considers lead contamination in soil to start at 100 parts per million, the level at which health effects may appear in children. California uses a screening standard of 80 parts per million in residential soil. Those standards aren’t meant to trigger cleanups but to suggest possible risks that may warrant further study.
Texas follows the EPA standard of 400 parts per million. Frisco uses a more stringent cleanup level of 250 parts per million. That level, which the city started using in the ’90s, was incorporated into the agreement for cleanup of property that Frisco will buy from Exide.
At a meeting last year in Frisco, Howard Mielke, a research professor at Tulane University, explained that children’s exposure to lead starts building with soil levels as low as 20 parts per million. Rather than waiting until children get exposed, he said, communities need to remove the sources of lead.
Neighborhood testing
Dr. Trey Brown, a metals toxicologist commissioned to do the soil testing for The News, said the lead levels found during sampling were higher than what he typically sees in a community.
“There’s something going on here,” he said.
Brown has done extensive soil sampling in Lubbock, New Orleans and Memphis, Tenn., and previously held positions at Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Arlington. He currently teaches science at an Uplift Education charter school in West Dallas.
Brown took 66 samples from 36 properties; 35 of them were residential and one was from a lot along Singleton Boulevard between the former RSR site and the Dallas Independent School District’s Thomas A. Edison Middle Learning Center. His results showed:
Two properties had lead levels above EPA’s residential cleanup standard of 400 parts per million.
One-third of the properties had lead levels above 100 parts per million.
Three properties had lead levels between 80 and 99 parts per million.
All but five properties had lead levels above 20 parts per million.
The highest lead level found was 591 parts per million in a yard next to a church on Muncie Avenue.
The lowest level, 1.71 parts per million, was along Chinkapin Way, about a mile from the former smelter site.
The lead levels on a single property can vary greatly, depending on where the sample is collected.
Some properties that Brown tested had previously been cleaned by EPA contractors, according to homeowners’ recollections.
Among them was land belonging to Wesley and Velma Johnson. The couple recalls the hubbub of the cleanup and the crew that carted off two truckloads of contaminated soil in the yard next to the church where Velma Johnson presides as pastor.
They thought it was clean. But their yard showed the highest level in Brown’s testing.
“I guess they didn’t get it all,” Wesley Johnson, 86, said.
In the 1980s, the cleanup standard for lead in West Dallas was 1,000 parts per million. A decade later, during the Superfund cleanup, soils with lead levels greater than 500 parts per million were removed. The EPA’s most recent review of its West Dallas efforts, done in 2010, states that the cleanups remain protective of people’s health and the environment.
Brown’s soil testing didn’t distinguish where the lead came from, only how much was there.
Nationwide, the largest source of lead poisoning in the environment comes from lead paint, which was banned in 1978 but still exists in many older homes, including those in West Dallas. Urban environments also typically have lead from the days of leaded gasoline.
Easy exposure
If the leaded dirt is left undisturbed, it poses little hazard. But what if it’s in an area where a child plays? A lot of variables determine exposure, which is mainly through ingestion or inhalation.
Exposure to lead can occur as easily as a child putting his hands on the dirt and then in his mouth. Or grabbing a toy with dirt on it and then eating food with his fingers. Or tracking dust from the yard into the kitchen and eating a piece of food that has dropped on the floor.
Blood tests are the most common way to determine lead exposure, though with repeated exposure over a long period, lead will eventually settle in the bone, where it’s more difficult to measure.
When the RSR smelter was still operating in the early ’80s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed a level of 30 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood or greater as elevated. The levels were tightened to 25 micrograms in 1985 and to 10 in 1991.
Earlier this year, the CDC changed its standard again because of the mounting evidence on the dangers of low-level lead exposure. The agency now uses a level of 5 and above to identify children who have been exposed to lead so that action can be taken to reduce further exposure.
But scientists have found health effects at even the lowest measurable levels.
“We should intervene so that, in 20 years, no child has a blood lead level greater than 1, maybe even 0.5,” Lanphear said. “In the interim, that’s the big debate and the big controversy: Should we be screening kids, and at what point should we be doing something?”
Earlier this year, an advisory group to the CDC recommended more efforts to reduce sources of lead in the environment to protect children.
In January, a group of health experts, pediatricians and academics will convene to decide what changes to make to deal with Texas children who have blood lead levels between 5 and 9. The state still relies on the previous standard of blood lead levels of 10 and above being of concern.
Lower blood levels
“We’ve done a remarkable job of reducing blood lead levels,” said John Villanacci, director of the Environmental and Injury Epidemiology and Toxicology Unit of the state health department. But too many children across the state still have blood lead levels that are too high, he said.
In 1982, the average blood lead level of 227 children living near West Dallas’ RSR smelter was 20.1, according to a public health assessment. In 1993, the average blood lead level of 305 West Dallas children tested was 5.5.
Linda Bates lived across the street from the smelter in the public housing projects. She said when she was 11 or 12, an attorney told her that her lead levels were so high that she wouldn’t live to be 30. She turns 49 in March.
“Every day I wake up, I praise the Lord,” she said.
Figures from the Texas Department of State Health Services show that 31 children age 5 or younger in ZIP code 75212 in West Dallas had blood lead levels of 5 or above last year. And 234 children had levels between 2 and 4, where health effects have been known to occur. In Frisco, 284 children last year had a blood lead level between 2 and 4. Twelve children in Frisco had blood lead levels of 5 or above.
Many children never get tested for lead exposure.
Below the surface
The number of properties that Brown tested is too small to suggest what might be found in a broader sampling of the more than 5,000 residential yards originally surveyed as part of the ’90s cleanup.
The samples in the test commissioned by The News came from soil on the surface. The theory is that the surface is where children are most likely to come in contact with tainted soil.
Schermbeck, director of the environmental group Downwinders at Risk, said higher levels of lead contamination in West Dallas might be found deeper down.
Surface samples don’t take into account the contamination from battery chips and fill that were mixed into the dirt in yards. It also doesn’t take into account any shifting that might push lead contamination deeper.
“There’s still stuff out there that nobody will know about,” Schermbeck said. “It hasn’t been inventoried. It hasn’t been catalogued. It’s not on a list anywhere. It’s out there, waiting to be dug up by a dog in a backyard or be dug up by kids playing in a vacant lot.”
How the testing was conducted
Dallas Morning News staff writer Valerie Wigglesworth applied for and received a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism, which is offered through the nonprofit Society of Environmental Journalists, to pay for lead testing of soil in West Dallas.
The News commissioned metals toxicologist Trey Brown to collect and analyze the soil samples. Brown, who has done extensive soil sampling for lead in Lubbock, New Orleans and Memphis, Tenn., previously worked for Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Arlington. Brown, who is also is owner of Renovate Lead Smart Training LLC, currently teaches science at an Uplift Education charter school in West Dallas.
For each sample, Brown collected surface soil samples from residential yards. The samples were dried and milled into pellets. Their lead content was then measured with a Niton XRF analyzer, which uses radiation to measure the lead in the soil.
Special thanks to Dr. Neil Tabor, Dr. Scott Myers and Roy Beavers from Southern Methodist University’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences for their donation of time and equipment to help process the soil samples. Special thanks also goes to Dean Lovvorn, a certified lead inspector and risk assessor, for use of his XRF analyzer.
