Lead Poses Risk Across Cda Basin Tests Find Elevated Levels Outside Superfund Site

Yard soil, dust and paint pose a risk of lead poisoning throughout the Coeur d’Alene River basin outside the Superfund site, according to test results released Wednesday night.

The study shows that some of the most contaminated yards were found in Burke Canyon, Mullan, Osburn and Wallace.

By notifying the public of the widespread contamination in household dust and lawns, officials hope residents who didn’t have their children’s blood tested last year will bring their children in for blood tests scheduled next week.

Burke Canyon had the highest percentage of yards and household dust containing dangerous levels of lead. The average household there had about four times the amount of lead in dust that federal guidelines consider safe.

One home in Wallace had dust measuring 47,626 parts per million - 47 times higher than federal guidelines. A yard in Mullan had more than 20 times the amount considered safe.

While advising one resident that the results from his soil didn’t indicate a need to replace his yard, a state official acknowledged that no amount of lead is healthful.

“Clearly, the lower down you get, the better off you are,” said Dick Schultz, a state health administrator. “There’s not really a threshold above which everything goes to hell in a handbasket.”

The Coeur d’Alene basin health study was conducted by the state Department of Health and Welfare with a grant from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Earlier this year, the state released information from blood and urine tests taken last summer.

Now, analysts will look at all the results and see whether there’s a direct relationship between contaminated household environments and high lead or cadmium levels in residents.

A final report is several months away.

The survey was conducted in the basin from the Idaho/Montana border to Lake Coeur d’Alene. Although 815 households participated in soil sampling, researchers didn’t get a large number of blood samples from young children, the population most at risk from lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning in children can cause brain damage and other health problems.

“We had a real good solid environmental sampling, but some people said, ‘Show me the problem before I put my kids through this,”’ said Jerry Cobb of the Panhandle Health District.

State researchers counted 231 children under the age of 6 in the basin last summer, but only 47 had their blood tested. Of those, seven children, or 15 percent, had elevated blood lead levels.

Burke Canyon, the lower basin and Nine Mile Canyon had the highest proportion of children with elevated blood lead levels, but officials aren’t sure whether that’s representative of the entire basin.

Schultz said the concern was that the children tested were atypical: “That the parents who are most concerned, and have the cleanest kids, brought their kids in to be tested.”

Children could be exposed by breathing or eating lead-tainted dirt, or drinking contaminated water.

Very few homes had water that exceeded drinking water standards.

Other sources could be old paint that contains lead. The study found 44 percent of 748 homes tested with lead exterior paint and 30 percent with lead interior paint.

Elevated blood lead levels have been found for years inside the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund Site, where a now-defunct lead smelter released lead into the air at record levels in the ‘70s. Yards inside the Superfund site with more than 1,000 parts per million lead are being replaced with clean dirt.

The lead problem elsewhere in the basin is primarily from mine tailings, which have washed downstream over the decades and up into some yards during floods.

Mining industry experts contend that lead in tailings is not as easily absorbed as the lead from the smelter emissions.

Yet mining officials have approached the state and the Environmental Protection Agency to propose helping with the intervention and education of families with lead-poisoned children in an effort to reduce lead exposure.

“The mining companies want to get this resolved as much as everyone else,” said Holly Houston, spokeswoman for mining companies.

The 1996 survey was the first to examine whether the tailings pose a health risk in the basin.

“It’s the first time we actually have a good solid data base,” Cobb said. “Now we have to find the money to fix it.”

A second meeting to explain study results is scheduled for 7 p.m. today at the Silver Hills Middle School in Osburn.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LEAD SCREENING Residents who participated in last summer’s Coeur d’Alene basin health study and have children under 10 years old are invited to bring their children in for a lead screening next week. Testing will be at Canyon School near Cataldo and Silver Hills Middle School in Osburn. Call Panhandle Health District for details: 786-7474.