A legacy of lead
Children in the Coeur d'Alene Basin areat risk of chronic, low-level lead exposure. The question is, how much risk? And at what cost?

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer

Christopher Anderson - The Spokesman-Review Stacie Putz sits with her son, Jonathan, on the front steps of their Wallace home. After finding alarming levels of lead in her yard, she replaced the soil and became active in EPA issues.

Stacie Putz panicked when the children next door tested above the federal safety limit for lead in their blood.

Her son, Jonathan, was 18 months old and had problems with his fine motor skills. She had no idea there might be lead in the Wallace neighborhood where she bought a home in 1991.

"I raced to Kellogg to get him tested," Putz said.

The test in 1997 found he had more than twice the level of lead in his blood that's considered safe for children.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had kids like Jonathan in mind when it proposed a $92 million, five-year cleanup for up to 1,000 yards and public areas outside the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site at Kellogg. That total includes $4 million for contaminated beaches along the Spokane River.

The proposal is highly controversial in the mining towns east of Kellogg, where most of the yard work would occur.

It's the most urgent part of EPA's proposed $359 million Superfund expansion, which would include repairing ecological damage from mine wastes that have washed as far west as Spokane.

"We want to make the environment safe for children and not rely on the children to tell us if there's a problem," said EPA toxicologist Marc Stifelman.

Marti Calabretta is deeply skeptical of EPA's plans. She lives in Osburn, about four miles west of Stacie Putz's home.

"This is a mining district," said Calabretta, who thinks educating young mothers about lead hazards would be more effective than a multimillion-dollar government cleanup. "You are not going to get lead out of this environment. Our kids are not at high risk."

Calabretta and her husband, a miner, have raised seven children in the valley. Their children's accomplishments include a master's degree in public health from Harvard, a medical degree from the University of Washington and a doctorate from MIT.

"I don't see the effects on my own children," Calabretta said. "The question we should ask is, what is the possibility of small losses of IQ in the general population from lead, and what should we do about it?"

Chronic lead problem

EPA and Idaho officials agree there's no public health emergency in the portion of the Coeur d'Alene Basin that stretches from Mullan to Harrison and includes 10,500 people. But children, in particular, are at risk of chronic, low-level lead exposure, they say.

The question is, how much risk?

A study conducted in 2000 by Idaho and the EPA says as many as three in 10 young children in the area may have elevated blood-lead levels.

But the science is murky. The precise number of kids with elevated lead levels is unknown. There has never been a comprehensive lead study among Silver Valley children. Less than a third of the 9-month to 9-year-old kids have been tested -- and fewer than a quarter of preschoolers.

What is known is that lead is a potent neurological poison, said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, pediatric research director at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

He's the lead author of a recent study of 276 kids in Rochester, N.Y., that showed damage to their IQs at lead levels one-quarter of the current national standard.

In 1991, the U.S. Public Health Service said children shouldn't have more than 10 micrograms of lead in a deciliter of blood -- the equivalent of a microscopic speck of metal in less than a half-cup of blood. It recommends medical intervention at twice that level.

"In our study, all of the kids with blood-lead levels of 2.5 or higher had problems. There is no safe level of blood lead for children," Lanphear said.

The IQ loss is permanent. Lead exposure can also cause disrupted balance, hearing impairment, tooth decay and nervous system and kidney damage. It's especially dangerous in young children.

Tens of thousands of tons of lead from the Bunker Hill smelter and mine tailings have blown for decades up and down the valley, a 1999 Idaho technical report on the cleanup says.

The lead particles are dangerous because they are tiny, have been oxidized by air and water, and are therefore "more bioavailable to children," who can ingest them more easily than larger particles, the report says.

EPA has been removing contaminated soil from about 20 high-risk yards each year outside the original Superfund "box" at Kellogg. In 1999, EPA also dug up schoolyards in Wallace and Osburn where lead in soils was two to six times cleanup levels -- qualifying for emergency removal.

Putz isn't waiting for the EPA to protect her son.

As a toddler, Jonathan was slow to hop on one foot, catch a ball and cut with scissors, Putz said. He attended special education classes in preschool.

Working with her local doctor and a lead expert from New York, Putz fed Jonathan calcium and iron supplements. The minerals help prevent lead from being absorbed by the body.

Jonathan's blood lead dropped in half.

But in 1999, it nearly tripled after the boy, who was 3 at the time, spent part of his day playing in a lead-contaminated yard at the Huggie Bear Day Care Center in Silverton. The day-care grounds were cleaned in 2000, the Panhandle Health District said.

Putz and her husband, John, a laid-off Sunshine Mine worker, had very little money, but they tried to fix their yard themselves.

They hauled in compost to amend soil that contained lead up to twice the recommended level for cleanup. They ripped out their vegetable garden.

They also painted over peeling lead paint on the outside of their old home and cleaned the inside using a vacuum cleaner with special filters to trap lead dust.

Last winter, Jonathan's blood-lead level fell below the safety threshold for the first time. He's in regular kindergarten and doing well in math and letters. But Putz is afraid his lead levels will increase again when he plays outside.

"They always rise in the summer," she said.

Blood-lead down 60 percent

The basin's low-level exposure problem is in sharp contrast to the crisis 30 years ago after Gulf Resources poisoned most of the children living within a mile of its lead smelter at Kellogg.

Blood tests then found the highest lead levels ever measured among children in the United States.

"The highest blood-lead levels we are seeing now were not even the lowest then," said Ian von Lindern, a Yale Ph.D. and consultant to the Superfund project.

As a young state regulator, von Lindern went to Kellogg to deal with the Gulf emergency. He and his wife, Margrit von Braun, a University of Idaho professor and the daughter of noted rocket scientist Werner von Braun, now own a consulting company called TerraGraphics that's a leading Bunker Hill Superfund contractor.

Much of what EPA is proposing for its expanded cleanup is based on von Lindern's studies conducted during the cleanup of Bunker Hill.

Within the Superfund site, blood-lead levels for kids up to age 9 have fallen nearly 60 percent since the 1980s. A Panhandle Health District survey of 322 children last year found that blood-lead levels averaged well below the federal safety limit. Only 10 children tested over that limit.

A similar study the same year of 117 kids outside the Superfund box found blood-lead levels averaged slightly higher -- but still below the safety limit. Seven kids tested over the limit.

The EPA's plan to protect children in the wider basin is more stringent than at the original Superfund site. The goal at Bunker Hill is to have 95 percent of all kids testing below the 10 micrograms per deciliter federal standard, and no more than 1 percent above 15 micrograms.

In 1994, EPA changed its national risk criteria to a 95 percent probability that people in any one home will test below the federal standard. That's a tougher goal because it no longer averages affluent, lead-free communities in with poorer, lead-exposed areas.

To reach that goal, EPA plans to address lead paint in old homes like the one Stacie Putz owns. It also proposes more stringent cleanup standards for yards than those within the Superfund site.

Although EPA's plan is being denounced as overkill, it's actually far laxer than at many other Superfund sites.

"The cleanup proposed here is really one of the least stringent in the U.S.," von Lindern said. "Many national critics think it's way too lenient, while pro-mining people think it's too strict."

`We can raise questions'

Ron Roizen seems an unlikely fit in Wallace. He's never worked in a mine; he thinks they're scary. He's a PhD expert on alcoholism, not lead. He's a Democrat from eco-friendly Berkeley in a conservative mining town.

Roizen lives with his wife and teenage daughter in an elegant 1890 house built by Amasa Campbell, a turn-of-the century operator of the Gem, Standard, Frisco, Hecla and Tiger-Poorman mines and namesake of Spokane's Campbell House in Browne's Addition.

Since moving to Wallace four years ago, he's become one of EPA's most vocal critics.

He says there's a connection between his evolving lead research and his contentious experience chasing federal grants to study alcoholism. In both instances, he says he's seen a tendency among researchers to exaggerate problems to get funding.

Roizen got into the lead issue after he saw a sign at the Wallace grocery store advertising blood-lead tests for local kids.

"I have a daughter, so I got worried," he said. He contacted Lynette Stokes, a former U.S. Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist who did a 20-year followup of kids poisoned by Gulf Resources in the 1970s.

Her 1997 study found the Kellogg-area children, now adults, had neurological and reproductive problems long after their lead exposure.

"I asked her, would you raise a child here? She said, `This place is fine,"' Roizen said.

Stokes, now with the Washington, D.C., Department of Health, doesn't remember Roizen. She says she'd be reluctant to make any conclusion about the safety of Wallace and other mining towns because she hasn't studied them.

However, lead exposure through soil is likely a less serious problem than in the Kellogg children she studied, who inhaled smelter emissions and had extremely high blood-lead levels, she says.

Roizen wrote a local newspaper story, quoting Stokes. Mining advocates applauded, and brought him into their circle, the 50-member Shoshone Natural Resources Coalition.

Roizen has become their lead researcher. He helped organize a "science summit" last summer to critique EPA's plans. He also took a $2,000 check from Holly Houston, a former consultant for area mining companies, to support his work.

Now, he's getting paid from a $36,500 EPA grant to Shoshone County to review EPA documents. He's also preparing a paper to present to the National Academy of Sciences, which decided in June to review the science behind EPA's expanded cleanup plan if Congress approves $820,000 to pay for it.

"A bunch of guys in the Silver Valley aren't going to be able to resolve this. We don't even have a good library here. But we can raise questions," Roizen said.

The basin, where hard-rock mining took place, is different from the Superfund site at Kellogg, where health officials struggled for years with a "real problem" from smelter emissions, Roizen says.

He says EPA doesn't make that distinction, overestimating health risks in its computer model.

"The smelter was an air problem. Lead oxide is bad stuff," Roizen said. But blood leads dropped off dramatically farther out from the smelter stack, he says.

EPA's Stifelman says the differences between the wider basin and the Bunker Hill area at Kellogg aren't that stark and have been accounted for in EPA's risk model.

"We've looked at the geographic center of the Valley where most of the people lived. It looks a lot like the land 20 to 30 miles east or west. There were smelter emissions in Wallace, and mine tailings were used in Smelterville and other towns. It's one valley," Stifelman said.

Roizen argues that EPA should have done more "bioavailability" tests like those conducted at Leadville, Colo., where mine dirt was fed to pregnant pigs to determine how much lead they absorbed.

On average, the lead sulfide at mine sites was less bioavailable than the lead oxide at smelter sites, the studies found.

But the Leadville studies also showed bioavailability from mine wastes was highly variable, Stifelman says. EPA decided it had enough data from Bunker Hill and didn't need pig experiments in the basin. EPA assumed 18 percent of the lead in the basin would be available for absorption by humans.

"Regardless of which way we went, the Shoshone Natural Resources Coalition would have been unhappy," Stifelman said. "They are in denial there's any problem at all."

Roizen says the blood-lead surveys only show a small number -- seven to 13 kids -- at risk outside the Superfund box. Why not address those kids instead of launching a massive $92 million cleanup program, he asks.

That argument is silly, Stifelman says.

"The kids we pick up each year on the lead surveys are only the ones we happen to see. We don't know about the kids who never enter the system," he said.

This week, a local group pushing for a community lead health clinic for the area is going door-to-door within the Superfund site at Kellogg to learn more about people's health problems.

Lois Gibbs, known nationally for her work at Love Canal, a New York toxic waste site, is helping the Silver Valley People's Action Coalition with the survey.

Jerry Cobb, who conducts the blood-lead surveys for the Panhandle Health District, agrees the health data is far from complete.

Within the Superfund box, health researchers knock on every door during the annual summer blood-lead surveys and about 75 percent of families participate, Cobb says.

But in the basin, where turnout for the voluntary program is poor, "we don't know the percentage of leaded kids," he said. "The political hubbub is a factor" in deterring families from participating.

Still, Cobb says his program has tested 4,000 kids for lead over the past decade.

"The academics can argue all they want. I deal with children, and once lead is in a kid, I don't care if it's a sulfide or an oxide -- I have to deal with it," he said. "We try to break the exposure scenario."

Community must decide

Roizen and other EPA critics question whether cleanup is largely responsible for declining blood-lead levels among children in the area.

They say the trend simply mirrors a national decline that followed the removal of lead from gasoline and paint.

Blood leads have come down significantly throughout the country since the 1970s, but the impact of local yard remediation can also be detected, von Lindern says.

The EPA has strong data from Bunker Hill to show the association between the town's soils and kids' declining blood-lead levels, Stifelman says.

"Ian's work has shown the blood-lead levels in an individual child come from the house, the yard and the town -- that's what we've learned from Bunker Hill. It's one of the few places where we've studied a whole town," Stifelman said.

The correlation between blood lead and contaminated soil also showed up after yards were recontaminated by floods in the 1990s. Blood leads in kids living in some of the houses shot back up, von Lindern says.

Other critics insist the basin had a zinc and lead problem even before mining exposed the rocks to the air and water.

Earl Bennett, Idaho's chief geologist, disagrees. Coring samples of sediments deposited downstream of the mining district found no heavy metals deposits before mining began in the 1880s, he says.

Despite the divisive politics, public health officials have an obligation to drive down blood-lead levels as low as possible, Cobb says.

"Nobody is backing away from this," he said.

But Lanphear, the Cincinnati lead expert, says local people, not outside health experts, should decide what level of risk they're willing to accept.

"It's really something the community has to struggle with," he said.