Sunday, June 18, 2017

The Philadelphia Inquirer

In Booming Philadelphia Neighborhoods, Lead-poisoned

Soil is Resurfacing
Breakneck construction has unearthed a toxic legacy, coating playgrounds and
backyards with dangerous levels of lead dust

By Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker, and Dylan Purcell / Staff Writers

Photos and video by Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

Her Kensington neighborhood is full of charm. Swank cafes with rustic wood and vintage
lighting. Stoops and decks with skyline views. Young parents who bond at parks while their
children play.

Jana Curtis, a mother of three, finds excitement in this urban renaissance.

But with it comes a sad reality.

Her daughter was poisoned by lead. The culprit wasn’t paint. Or tap water. But soil — in her
own backyard.

“The yard was poisoning my daughter,” Curtis said. “It’s just so horrifying.”

Curtis and her family live in the heart of what was once Philadelphia’s industrial hub. For most
of the last century, the “river ward” neighborhoods of Fishtown, Kensington, and Port
Richmond, which snake along the Delaware, were blanketed with hulking factories and lead
smelters. It was a time when manufacturers used lead in everything from paints to plastics.
Lunch-pail laborers walked to work from tightly packed row homes as lead dust spewed from
smokestacks, coating sidewalks, stoops, and yards.

JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer

Jana Curtis and two of her children walk past one of many construction sites in their river ward neighborhood.
Three-year-old Nolyn Pace, center, was poisoned by lead in the soil in their backyard.

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Once in the soil, the heavy metal stays indefinitely. Even minuscule amounts can permanently
lower a child’s IQ and cause behavioral problems.

At one time, Philadelphia had 36 lead smelters — more than any other city in America. Fourteen
alone operated in these river wards.

The lead plants are long gone, either razed or shuttered. But their toxic legacy remains.

Today a development boom is disturbing lead that has sat dormant for decades. Construction
crews — unchecked by government — churn up poisonous soil that can spread toxic dust across
these gentrifying neighborhoods. This renaissance puts a new generation of children at risk.

In the area’s most sweeping environmental investigation to date, the Inquirer and Daily News
tested exposed soil in 114 locations in the river wards — parks, playgrounds, yards. Nearly three
out of four had hazardous levels of lead contamination — a problem of previously unknown
severity.

JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer

Melissa Billingsley, a state-licensed risk assessor for Criterion Laboratories, takes a soil sample in a yard located on
the 2600 block of East Thompson street. The yard tested high for lead.

In addition, reporters discovered high levels of lead dust on rowhouse stoops and sidewalks near
construction sites. In tests taken from a popular neighborhood playground — both before and
after digging began at a vacant lot across the street — a once-safe play area was shown to
contain lead dust.

Developers are not required to test soil for lead as a routine precaution before disturbing land.
Further, no single governmental agency is responsible for making certain a yard’s soil is safe.

Federal, state, and city officials, who have known about lead in the soil here for decades, quibble
over who, if anyone, should regulate development within a former industrial area. State and
federal officials say they only oversee development and cleanup within the boundaries of known
contaminated sites. City officials say they don’t regulate soil.

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The city’s Department of Public Health is supposed to enforce a regulation that requires
construction crews to contain noxious dust. Reporters spent five months in these neighborhoods,
testing soil, interviewing residents, and keeping tabs on at least two dozen ongoing construction
sites. Not once did they see workers take dust-control measures, even something as simple as
spraying water to hold down dust.

Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city enforces dust regulations “to the
extent that we can.”

Farley pointed out that lead paint — not soil — is the primary source of childhood lead
poisoning. “Lead levels correlate to poverty and they correlate with older housing,” he said.
“They don’t light up where there were smelters.”

Farley said that while parents should try to prevent their children from playing in dirt in these
neighborhoods, he doesn’t consider soil a major risk. “Risk from soil and dust is — it’s certainly
a theoretical risk.”

Experts such as Mary Jean Brown, former chief of lead-poisoning prevention at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, strongly disagree.

Brown has long studied the health impacts of lead-laced soil on young children and pregnant
women in these postindustrial neighborhoods. There are dangerous levels of lead in the soil here,
so we must do something, she said.

The wave of new construction only adds to the peril, Brown said.

“When they’re digging it up and it’s fine enough to be inhaled, then it’s a big issue,” she said.
“We can’t ignore this.”

‘Inhalation is worse’

Jenni Drozdek and Dan Morgan knew all about the neighborhood’s toxic legacy when they
moved into their home on Cumberland Street in Kensington in 2011.

They even had their soil tested before planting a garden where they wanted to grow kale,
tomatoes, beets, and carrots.

Federal guidance says not to grow root vegetables or allow children in gardens where soil tests
above 150 parts per million (ppm).

An EPA-funded experiment of vegetables grown in Kensington soil with lead at roughly 1,000
ppm found carrots and beets with lead at five to 40 times the safe level for human consumption.

The result of the couple's soil test came back at 662 parts per million, considerably higher than
the federal threshold. The EPA considers hazardous any lead concentration above 400 ppm in
soil where children play.

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The couple installed raised beds filled with new topsoil. They also spread a thick, protective
layer of mulch over the rest of the yard.

JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer

Mina plays with dirt in the raised garden beds in her backyard. Mina's mother, Jenni Drozdek, is an avid gardener
and installed raised beds with fresh soil in their Kensington backyard to avoid contaminants in the ground soil.
Despite that precaution, Mina developed lead poisoning.

When their daughter, Mina, was born three years later, they thought she would be safe.

Then construction fever heated up.

All around them, demolition crews worked at a frenzied pace. The buzz of saws and the beep-
beep of excavators backing up could be heard on almost every block. In their 19125 zip code, the
number of demolitions doubled between 2015 and 2016. Construction projects increased fivefold
since 2010.

The mammoth reconstruction of I-95 nearby also added to the dust bowl.

The grit made residents’ eyes water. And there were days when Drozdek found her gray Nissan
blanketed in dust.

“I had to clean it off because I couldn’t see out the windows,” she said.

Last August, the city’s health department adopted more stringent dust-control regulations. But
some 30 Fishtown and Kensington residents interviewed in the last few months said they never
witnessed a construction project with dust controls.

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“There’s no effort to contain it whatsoever,” Drozdek said.

The couple often take Mina to one of the busiest parks in Fishtown, Shissler Recreation Center
on Blair Street. It was once the site of a major railroad hub and train yard.

Earlier this year, a reporter took a dust-wipe sample from the playground and found no
detectable levels of lead.

About three months later, in early May, a reporter took another sample from the same spot. At
the time, construction workers were using backhoes to dig foundations for new homes going up
across the street. Dust and dirt were swirling around as children were busy at play.

This sample shot up to 127.4 micrograms of lead in dust per square foot. While there is no
federal hazard level for outdoor surfaces, the limit for entryways and indoor floors is 10 and 40
for porches.

Whether the lead came from a construction site across the street is uncertain.

When construction manager Justin Kaplan was told that tests revealed high lead levels on
playground surfaces, including where children had scrawled chalk drawings, he said he felt sick.

“I have kids,” Kaplan said, his voice anguished. “I don’t want my kids rolling around in lead dust
while they are chalk-drawing — believe me.”

After his crews unearthed old storage tanks during excavation, they had to stop and have the soil
tested, he said. It came back high for lead, he said.

Montgomery County developer Nicholas Sylvestro, of the La Capretto company, is building six
single-family homes on the Blair Street site. He did not return three calls seeking comment.

Exposure to contaminated soil and demolition debris containing lead paint can significantly
increase blood lead levels in children, studies show.

A child who inhales lead dust faces more danger than one who swallows dirt because dust has a
more direct path to the brain, experts say.

How you can reduce exposure to lead hazards in soil:

 Cover bare soil with grass or mulch, or cover with a layer of clean topsoil.
 Create safe play areas for children with clean ground covers. Consider sand boxes for
children who like to dig.
 Monitor young children to prevent intentional dirt eating.
 Use raised beds with clean topsoil for gardening. Rinse produce well to remove garden
soil.
 Use gloves when working in old soil.

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  Keep children’s hands clean by washing periodically, particularly when coming in from
outdoors and before eating.
 Change and launder any dirty clothes after playing outside.
 Remove shoes before going in the house.
 Frequently bathe pets and clean their feet. They can track in contaminated soil.
 Regularly wet mop floors, stairs and entryways. Damp dust surfaces. Dry sweeping and
dusting could increase the amount of lead dust in the air.
 Hose down front and back steps, especially on dry, windy days and if construction is
ongoing nearby.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Expand ‍

“Ingestion is bad,” said Richard Pepino, an environmental toxicology expert at the University of
Pennsylvania. “Inhalation is worse.”

Simple dust-control measures can prevent people from being harmed, but the health Department
has only four air management inspectors and two supervisors to oversee a city that last year
alone had about 2,500 demolition and construction jobs.

When Drozdek and Morgan took Mina to her routine one-year checkup, her bloodwork came
back with a poisonous level of lead: 9 micrograms per deciliter.

The CDC says public health and pediatricians should intervene when children have a blood lead
level of 5. At that level, children lose six IQ points on average. Even with lower lead levels,
children exhibit increased impulsivity, aggression, and hyperactivity, and have diminished
academic abilities, research shows. In adults, experts say, low-level exposure over time can
cause memory loss and depression, and harm the heart, kidneys, brain, and reproductive
functions.

For now, the Health Department investigates only when a child hits a level of 10. Drozdek’s
daughter is among roughly 2,000 city children every year who spike a blood lead level between 5
and 10 and whose families are left to fend for themselves.

“I was terrified because you hear how lead poisoning and any kind of lead levels can be
dangerous,” Drozdek said.

Drozdek bought kits to detect lead on painted surfaces and tested all over her house. That wasn’t
the source. The couple had their water tested. They ruled that out, too.

“It was definitely coming from the outside,” Morgan concluded. But where exactly?

Drozdek and Morgan invited reporters to retest their yard. At the time, a giant excavator clawed
into a large vacant lot on Letterly Street directly behind their house. Digging had gone on for
days, creating a hole roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

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Construction crews had dumped excess soil on an adjacent city-owned lot. Reporters sampled the
soil and found high lead – 1,647 ppm.

Developer Steven Kravets, of Bucks County, said he did not test the soil for lead beforehand. He
said it wasn’t required. The city does require developers to do a geological soil survey to make
sure the land is firm enough to support a large structure.

JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer

Jenni Drozdek and her daughter, Mina, in the backyard at their Kensington home in Philadelphia, where new homes
are being built directly behind theirs.

“For that area, a quick study by the soil engineer. There was not much to it,” Kravets said.

When told about the lead in the dirt pile, Kravets asked if reporters had tested soil not just in
Kensington, but in neighboring Fishtown. Told yes, he offered no further response.

There are tall piles of dirt at construction sites all over both neighborhoods.

Down the street from Drozdek’s house, a work crew heaped dirt and rubble into 8-foot-high
piles.

“There are mounds of it and children climb on it and play on it,” Drozdek said. “Then of course
when it’s windy, the top layer gets blown all over the streets.”

Two soil samples from her backyard tested high for lead — 635 and 726 ppm.

Reporters also swipe-tested for lead dust on their front steps. It came back at 1,760 micrograms,
44 times higher than the residential limit for porches.

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JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
Melissa Billingsley, a state-licensed risk assessor for Criterion Laboratories, takes a dust wipe sample to test for lead
on the front steps of the home of Jenni Drozdek and Dan Morgan. The test came back at 1,760 micrograms per
square foot, 44 times higher than the residential limit for indoor porches.

When told the result, Drozdek was speechless, realizing that Mina had spent hours on the stoop.

“She would grab the steps and pivot herself to the next one,” Drozdek said. “Of course, she’s a
little kid, so she’s putting her hands in her mouth.”

Mina’s blood lead level is lower now. Every day, the couple give her iron drops to prevent lead
from binding to her bones. They clean religiously, even wiping down stroller wheels.

Still, as the construction boom continues, they wonder if it’s enough.

She spoke only two words

It has almost become routine. Jana Curtis finds herself pushing her baby stroller through her
Kensington neighborhood, her three kids in tow, when suddenly she freezes. The minute she sees
construction machinery digging up dirt, sending plumes of potentially hazardous dust into the
air, Curtis abruptly zooms across the street to avoid any danger.

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JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
Jana Curtis hugs her 3-year-old daughter, Nolyn Pace, in their neighborhood park on a recent spring day. Nolyn's
blood tested high for lead in December 2014. Curtis had her daughter tested after learning that the soil in the
backyard of their Kensington home was contaminated with lead.

“It’s always on my mind,” she said.

She sweeps the front steps of her York Street home regularly. There are no shoes allowed in the
house, so sneakers and sandals are neatly lined up at the front door. She vacuums twice a day and
mops once.

She misses her two dogs who passed away, but won’t adopt another. A dog would track toxic
dirt into the house. “It’s not worth it with them going outside and coming back in,” she said. “It’s
their paws. I can’t take their shoes off.”

If one of her kids drops a piece of food on the ground, there’s no “five-second rule.”

Jana Curtis.

“I scream, ‘No! You can’t touch it!’ We look like crazy people,” she said.

She has good reason to be hypervigilant. Three years ago, the CDC tested her tap water and
backyard soil as part of a lead study in the neighborhood.

She was stunned by the results. Her house and water were safe. But she said her yard tested at
1,100 ppm — nearly three times the federal limit.

Curtis rushed her daughter, Nolyn, 11 months old at the time, to her pediatrician for a blood test.
She had a lead level of 14 micrograms per deciliter, almost three times higher than the amount
that the CDC considers troubling.

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“It was heartbreaking,” Curtis said.

At 18 months, Nolyn spoke only two words. Curtis’ oldest child at the same age had a
vocabulary of 70.

Curtis, and her husband, William Pace, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases,
enrolled Nolyn in speech therapy and played educational games with her. Now 3, Nolyn took big
leaps in speech but “still has pretty significant behavioral challenges,” Curtis said.

JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer

Nolyn plays in the remediated backyard of her Kensington home.

Her daughter struggles to make simple decisions, which can trigger temper tantrums.

So Curtis eliminates choices. “There’s only one sippy cup for her because every morning there
was this big battle. She can’t even make a choice between two so we only have one kind. There’s
no choice. There’s only one pair of shoes. One coat. One cup.”

At times, guilt still plagues Curtis. “Maybe if I’d cleaned more, she wouldn’t have gotten this.
Maybe if I had mopped every day, she’d be fine,” she said, her voice cracking.

Still, there’s only so much that brooms and sanitizers can do, she said.

“We’re not going to clean our way out of this problem,” Curtis said. “I can clean up enough to
protect, Graham, my littlest. But you can’t clean your way out of this toxic-ness that’s coming
from all these different places. There’s got to be a bigger solution than what I can do in my four
walls. It just can’t be about mopping.”

Stay off the Hill

Longtime residents like Gregory Antczak thought they had found something of a solution to their
neighborhood’s toxic legacy more than a generation ago. Now they know differently.

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Antczak grew up in the shadow of the area’s most notorious lead factory, an eight-acre complex
of 52 buildings and nine smokestacks sprawled along both sides of Aramingo Avenue. Over
nearly 150 years, workers ground lead into a powder used in bathtub enamel, paint, soaps, car
batteries, and plastics. Residents knew the behemoth by different names. John T. Lewis Brothers.
Dutch Boy Paint. National Lead. And finally, Anzon.

“They always did the same thing,” said Antczak, 68, of the companies. “They processed millions
and millions of pounds of lead in the middle of a highly populated residential neighborhood.”

As a boy, he had to take part in routine family evacuations. “A siren would go off inside the
factory. It was like an air-raid siren, shrill and high,” he said. The sound signaled a fire, chemical
spill, or some other peril.

His dad would utter the same four words: “Get in the car.”

Antczak and his older brother would hop into the family’s two-tone 1950 Ford — white roof,
salmon-colored body — as black smoke and a noxious smell filled the air. His dad drove eight
miles north to the house of Antczak’s aunt.

“It was the same thing all the time,” Antczak said. “We get there, the coffeepot would go on the
stove, the cake would come out of the refrigerator, and then we’d wait it out.”

The family had a puppy, a black mutt named Eliza Jane. At only a year old, the dog had a
distended stomach and couldn’t stop vomiting. Their beloved pet died from what the vet called
“lead belly,” Antczak said.

In the early 1980s, Antczak got married and bought a house near his parents about a block from
the plant.

A few years later, a plant fire blasted out so much lead dust that Anzon evacuated the
surrounding blocks. It took Anzon three days to vacuum streets and sidewalks, and
decontaminate homes, inside and out.

By then, Antczak and other nearby residents had had enough. They sued Anzon in 1987 for
contaminating their homes and imperiling their children. Years later, they settled with the
company. Most families received a few thousand dollars. The largest payout was $16,000. Some
families used some of the money to pave over their backyards with concrete to encapsulate the
toxic soil.

Anzon began demolishing the plant in 1997, leaving behind a wasteland of rubble and a mound
of dirt near the intersection of Thompson and Huntingdon Streets.

A private company, Port Richmond Development, purchased the land. Under a program to
develop brownfields, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) gave the
developer liability protection in exchange for complete cleanup.

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JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
Gregory Antczak revisits the site of the old Anzon factory. To the right is a mound that residents call "Mount
Wawa," a pile of toxic dirt that was capped with clean soil and grass to prevent exposure to lead.

The former brownfield is now an asphalt-covered retail hub with an Applebee’s, Dunkin’
Donuts, Rite Aid, AutoZone, and Wawa. Rather than hauling away the toxic mound, the
developer was allowed to cap it with a foot or more of clean dirt and plant grass. Residents have
dubbed the mound “Mount Wawa.” Many cringe when they see children playing on it.

As part of its agreement with the DEP, the developer is required to have an environmental
company routinely inspect the hill and surrounding asphalt.

The task involves little more than looking at it.

An inspection log for the site from 2004 to 2012 shows that an inspector wrote the same two
sentences for the nine consecutive visits: “All asphalt perfect condition. All grass and
landscaping perfectly in place.”

The state does not require the developer to test the mound for lead.

Meanwhile, residents have had their doubts. In a 2012 investigation of former lead smelters
nationwide, USA Today found high lead levels in soil near Anzon. Some residents urged the
EPA to determine whether Mount Wawa was safe. The developer’s environmental firm gave an
answer:

“We are pleased to report, as expected, that the cap is being appropriately maintained, and
remains protective.”

Reporters recently tested a patch of bare soil at the apron of Mount Wawa. Its lead level came
back at 2,904 ppm, more than seven times the allowable limit for areas where children play.

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“We were told it was safe, that it was all encapsulated,” said Sandy Salzman, former executive
director of the New Kensington Community Development Corp. This news brought fresh worry.

“In the summertime, the kids play there and slide down the hill,” Saltzman said.

Told that Mount Wawa tested high for lead, DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said: “It’s
something I’d want to hop on.” The agency will check it out, he said.

Neal Rodin, president of Port Richmond Development, said people should stay off the hill —
period.

“Children are not supposed to play on it. It’s a commercial site,” Rodin said. “It’s good you’re
doing the story. Hopefully, parents will know then to keep their children away.”

Just across the street from the old Anzon site is Cione Playground, which decades ago had been
saturated with lead. In a one-time arrangement, the city received $500,000 from the company in
the late 1990s to abate the lead and, under EPA guidance, make the playground safe.

Reporters recently tested soil at Cione’s ball fields, and it came back low. But soil tested in four
locations near the community swimming pool returned unsafe levels, between 613 and 955 ppm.

Told of the test results, city spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said the city was not responsible for
regulating soil. “If we become aware of a toxic soil situation, we notify EPA and/or DEP,” she
replied in an email. “If there is an immediate health threat, we will, of course, also try to use our
general police powers” to protect the public.

The ‘silo problem’

Brown, the former CDC lead expert who now teaches at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of
Public Health, put it in blunt terms: “Everybody’s problem is nobody’s problem,” she told a
group of peers at an EPA workshop last year in Philadelphia on lead hazards in urban soil.

All neighborhoods near former lead smelters are likely to have unsafe levels of lead in the soil,
the experts noted. Most everyone in the room agreed that tackling the problem requires urgency.
But not everyone could agree on a solution — or which agency should take charge.

Brown has grown weary of the hand-wringing and often fruitless quests to find the responsible
culprit from years past.

“How did it get in the soil? That train has already left the station,” Brown said in a recent
interview. “We know it’s there. We know how to fix it. Now let’s fix it.”

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Government should not use little kids as walking test tubes, tackling lead hot spots only after
little kids suffer neurological damage, she said. The best way to protect them is to remove all the
toxic soil, she said.

It sounds so simple. But is it?

Reporters shared their test results with the state DEP, including one for a Fishtown backyard that
came back at 9,883 ppm. Patrick McDonnell, the agency’s secretary, replied: “Any time we see
sample results like this, it’s definitely cause for concern,” McDonnell said last week.

The state has laws to hold polluters accountable. But as it stands now, the DEP has no regulatory
power to remedy what McDonnell calls widespread “historic pollution or contamination.”
McDonnell, who was confirmed by the Senate last month, said he is still trying to determine
whether the state has any authority to require developers to test soil for lead before disturbing
land adjacent to known brownfield parcels.

As for the 82 of 114 properties that tested above 400 ppm for lead, he said: “We’d need to look
at specific sites and where our regulatory authorities are. Can we figure out the source of the
contamination? Are there still viable responsible parties?

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“We absolutely want to engage and understand the extent of” the problem, McDonnell said.

So does Jack Kelly, an EPA official based here. Kelly has been alerting higher-ups for years
about the lead problems in Fishtown, Kensington, and Port Richmond. In a perfect world,
residents all over the area would allow him to test their soil and he could map the boundaries of
the contamination and make a case to his bosses that backyards in this area should qualify for
federal cleanup money.

In the meantime, Kelly has persuaded the EPA, as a public service, to take the unusual step of
contracting with a phlebotomist to test the blood lead levels in children, ages 6 and under, who
live in the river wards.

The EPA is still working out the details but hopes to begin testing this summer. During a
community meeting earlier this year, residents like Jana Curtis, whose child was poisoned by
soil, broached the elephant in the room: “Is there any danger of this money disappearing, given
the current political climate?”

Kelly struggled to answer the question, knowing that the Trump administration has proposed
slashing the EPA’s budget by nearly one-third, more than any other agency.

“This is not, compared to a lot of work we do, a big-ticket item,” Kelly told Curtis. “I don’t think
we’re going to lose the money for this.”

David C. Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is tired of inertia. He

and fellow clinicians and scientists recently formed Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental
Neurodevelopment Risks). Last month, the group, in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics,
called for “remediation of lead-contaminated soils from former industrial sites in residential
areas” and for “federal, state and local governments to provide a dedicated funding steam to
identify and eliminate sources of lead exposure.”

Bellinger said the findings by reporters that high levels of lead lurk in the soil in these
neighborhoods, coupled with the lack of government oversight and controls, illustrate what he
calls “the silo problem” — each agency focuses on “a narrow aspect of the problem without any
integrated effort to stitch all the pieces together.”

Bellinger’s coalition is calling for swift national action. “Further delay,” it warns, “will result in
more children experiencing lifelong health problems.”

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JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
A child plays in Shissler Playground in April of this year. Across the street, in the background, is a construction site.

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