EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A new health report on lead and arsenic contaminated soil in Evansville says Vanderburgh County children have higher blood lead levels compared to statewide numbers.
A public health assessment by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a federal public health agency, said Vanderburgh’s high blood lead levels in children indicate there is a higher exposure to lead and that it is a health hazard.
It casts the high blood lead levels as an environmental justice issue, linking risk of exposure in some of the city’s most affected areas to aging housing, poverty and race.
The report warns lead and arsenic contaminated soil in the city’s Jacobsville Neighborhood Soil Contamination Site pose a health risk but it also delves into other contributing factors.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been working to remove contaminated soil in the area since 2007.
According to the report:
- More than 64 percent of residents in the Jacobsville contamination site live in older housing where there can be lead in paint and plumbing.
- Nearly 21 percent of the population there lives in poverty.
- About 27 percent of people there are black, compared with 11 percent black in all of Evansville.
Nearly 7 percent of children in all of Vanderburgh County were found to have high blood lead levels compared to 4 percent statewide in 2014-2015, according to the report.
Vanderburgh County has the eighth largest population in Indiana. In the 10 most populated counties in the state, only St. Joseph County had a higher rate of blood lead levels, the report notes.
The area has been slowly undergoing cleanup through the EPA’s Superfund program as funding becomes available. Twelve years and $60 million dollars after the cleanup began, the project is still several years away from completion.
Named for the Jacobsville neighborhood between the Lloyd Expressway, First Avenue, Diamond Avenue and Garvin Street where contamination was first found, the site has grown to include a 4.5-square-mile area surrounding Downtown.
Jena Sleboda Braun, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the cleanup, said the worst properties in the heart of the Jacobsville neighborhood have already been addressed.
“We have been working outward from there. We are finding the contamination is less intensive the further out we go,” she said.
EPA testing found residential soils in the area are contaminated with lead and arsenic partly due to air pollution from former foundries and factories operating in the area from the late 1800s up to 1990.
More than 5,000 properties have been tested so far and about 2,450 have been cleaned up, the EPA said. This includes homes, parks and daycare facilities. An estimated 300 will be tested and 400 cleaned up in 2019. Workers remove and replace the first two feet of soil where properties have tested unsafe.
Sleboda Braun said cleanup work is expected to take another five years.
It is unknown how many people may have been affected specifically by the contaminated soil, but the ATDSR considers the exposure risk high. Lead poisoning affects the brain, nervous system and kidneys.
The ATSDR says children in Jacobsville area yards who swallow soil and dust containing lead could experience slower growth and development, hearing damage and attention and learning problems. The problem extends to pregnant women who may ingest lead-contaminated soil, creating similar effects in unborn children.
There is no known safe level of lead in children’s blood, the ATSDR report said.
People exposed to arsenic in soil over long periods of time might be at a slightly increased risk of skin, liver, bladder and lung cancer, according to the report.
Vanderburgh County’s participation rate in childhood blood screenings for lead has decreased, similar to Indiana as a whole, according to the report.
However, the federal health agency noted the Vanderburgh County Health Department offers lead screening for free, along with public education programming.
The health department also received a $675,000 grant to remediate homes with lead-based paint in 2018.
In 2017, Evansville passed an ordinance bringing its powers and procedures for reporting, monitoring and preventing lead poisoning in line with the state’s, including authority to issue citations with fines.
Health Department Administrator Joe Gries did not return Courier & Press phone calls to discuss the report.
