EPA investigation into Atlanta lead smelter

The smelter property, now home to a concrete plant, is in a pocket of industrial and commercial buildings next to I-85 and a few blocks across Cheshire Bridge Road from some houses in the Morningside neighborhood. Several schools and day care centers are within a three-mile radius.

Exposure to lead, whether in old paint chips, drinking water or contaminated soil, is considered a serious health threat, especially for young children. Lead is a powerful toxin that if ingested can reduce IQ and cause behavioral and wide-ranging health problems. Exposure from soil happens when children play in the dirt and put their hands or dusty toys in their mouths.

How much lead dust rained down over the years and how far the winds blew is not currently known. But experts say that, despite the passage of decades, the lead would remain relatively near the surface unless the soil has been removed or buried under clean fill dirt.

“The fallout from [smelters] is a valid concern,” said Jane Perry, director of the Georgia Division of Public Health’s chemical hazards program. “You’re right on target with all your background and your questions and such. It’s an issue of fallout and dust particles in the soil in the surrounding communities.”

Tests conducted privately in 2003 show large swaths of the smelter property contained potentially dangerous levels of lead, above 400 parts per million (ppm), according to site plans and a soil removal permit issued by the city of Atlanta to contractors for the property’s owner at that time, Metalico of Georgia Inc. The testing was within the boundaries of the smelter property at 740 Lambert Drive NE.

Georgia environmental regulations require property owners to notify the state within 30 days of becoming aware of lead levels in soil above 400 ppm. But none of the tests were reported to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said Mark Smith, chief of the division’s hazardous waste management branch.

Michael Drury, Metalico Inc. executive vice president, did not respond to repeated requests for interviews since August. Metalico, based in New Jersey, specializes in scrap metal recycling and fabricating lead-based products.

Metalico sold the property in 2005 to Thomas Concrete. “We bought it cleaned up,” said Bo Nilsson, chief financial officer of Thomas Concrete. “They did a lot of remediation work, took down all the buildings, all the equipment and removed a lot of soil from the site that was contaminated.”

Nilsson said the concrete firm used its own environmental consultants to ensure the property it purchased had been cleaned up by Metalico, but he doesn’t know the status of lead contamination in the surrounding area.

Neither state environmental regulators nor local health officials were aware of the old smelter site until contacted by the AJC. The EPA had no records on the plant’s history as a smelter, just a site report saying it was not currently a generator of hazardous waste. The Georgia EPD found an old file folder containing just 37 pages of records, many yellowed by age, plus a few other records.

The Evans smelter is likely among hundreds of forgotten lead smelters across the country that did the bulk of their polluting long before the advent of state and federal environmental regulations.

The EPA was created in 1970, Georgia’s EPD in 1972.

In 2001, researchers from George Mason University in Virginia published a report in the American Journal of Public Health saying they had identified about 430 former smelter sites nationwide that “were unknown to the federal authorities” by examining historical records, such as old metal industry directories and fire insurance maps.

The AJC used similar records to identify the Evans Metal smelter. Although the Atlanta smelter wasn’t named in the published report, it was among those identified in the study, according to documents provided to the AJC by one of the study’s authors.

When the researchers sampled soil at eight unrecognized smelter sites in the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas, all but one had lead levels above 400 ppm, with some samples ranging from 1,490 ppm to 2,550 ppm.

The authors concluded in the report: “This should create some sense of urgency for the investigation of other sites.”

Evans Metal began operating as a lead casting plant in 1934, according to a 1973 application for a state air pollution permit. It had two pot furnaces. One annually processed 4,000 tons of lead ingot into cast lead; the other processed 1,000 tons of ingot into extruded lead.

The plant’s 30-foot and 15-foot smokestacks were not equipped with a pollution filtration system, called a baghouse, until 1977, according to state permit records. The plant was still processing lead as recently as 1994, records show, then ceased all production activity in 2003.

Howard Mielke, a Tulane University expert on lead-contaminated soil, said the highest concentrations of lead dust would likely have landed — depending on winds — within three to five miles of the smelter. Additional lead deposits may have come from nearby I-85, which would have been traveled for years by vehicles spewing exhaust from leaded gasoline. Winds in Atlanta generally blow from west to east, and from northwest to southeast.

Mielke, who has published studies of lead contaminated soil and its impact on children, said the threat posed by tainted soil is often overlooked. Bare soil in playgrounds and other play areas is of greatest concern, Mielke and other said.

“A child’s exposure haunts them for the rest of their life. It’s a bigger problem in the U.S. than we want to admit,” Mielke said.

The EPA assessment, which will begin in the coming months, will determine whether the site and surrounding property has the potential to be on the federal Superfund list for cleanup. The state’s cleanup fund has no money to take on additional projects, said Smith, the EPD official. “That’s why we have talked with the EPA about it,” he said.

Piecing together the smelter’s pollution history may involve soil tests, identification of old documents and interviews with former employees, Smith said. Regulators will be trying to determine where the lead dust landed — and if the soil is in areas that are coming into contact with people, particularly children.

An AJC review of blood tests reported to the state over the years on children in census tracts within a five-mile radius of the smelter site doesn’t show any obvious pattern of lead poisoning. Forrest Staley, director of the state health department’s child lead poisoning prevention program, said nothing jumped out on initial review of the data.

Lead poisoning frequently goes undiagnosed, experts say, because it often has no obvious symptoms. Most children aren’t tested, according to state reports. Children from more affluent families, like those in Morningside, are even less likely to be tested, experts said.

News of the smelter site surprised several Morningside residents who live about a mile away. Kerri Markovic, who was out walking with 5-year-old daughter Sophie earlier this month, said she’d never heard of it. She said she doesn’t think Sophie or her brother, 9-year-old Jackson, have ever had blood-lead tests. “It’s not one of the standard things,” she said.

Even longtime residents such as Ruth Weinkle, 82, never knew there was a smelter across Cheshire Bridge Road. “That part over there was all commercial. We never went over there,” said Weinkle, who has lived in her home 54 years and raised five children. “Lead poisoning never came up.”

Database specialist John Perry contributed to this story.

Evans Metal Co.:A smelter forgotten over time

1934: Evans Metal Co. begins operating a lead smelter and lead casting plant at 740 Lambert Drive NE in Atlanta.

1972: Georgia creates state environmental regulatory agency, the Environmental Protection Division.

1973: Evans Metal Co. applies for a permit to be a source of air contamination.

1974: The smelter is processing 5,000 tons of lead a year in its two furnaces, which have been in operation for 40 years, according to data gathered in a survey of plants by Fulton County’s health department.

1975: Georgia EPD approves the smelter’s permit application.

1977: The smelter installs a pollution control device, called a baghouse, to contain exhaust from the lead melting kettles.

1990s: The plant changes name and ownership, first to Taracorp-Evans, then to Metalico-Evans.

1994: The plant continues to engage in “lead fume-producing operations,” correspondence between the plant and state regulators show.

2003: The plant ceases all production activity.

June 2003: Metalico receives a permit from the city of Atlanta to demolish a commercial and industrial building at the smelter site.

July and August 2003: Contractors for Metalico sample soil on the property and find large areas with lead contamination exceeding 400 parts per million.

January 2004: Contractors receive a city permit to remove a foundation and soil from the property. A property diagram, filed with the permit, shows the locations of lead contamination identified in the 2003 tests.

2005: Thomas Concrete purchases the property from Metalico and turns it into a ready-mix cement plant.

2009: State and federal environmental officials say they will investigate risks posed by the old smelter site.

What you can do

● Avoid bare dirt: The danger, especially for young children, comes from ingesting lead-contaminated soil and dust. Established lawns help limit contact with soil. Keep play areas away from exposed dirt and the bases of homes or other buildings where lead may have accumulated. Wash hands after gardening, and thoroughly wash vegetables.

● Test your children: A simple finger-stick blood test is used to check children for exposure to lead, which accumulates in their bodies. Private doctors and county health departments can perform the tests.

● Test your soil: The University of Georgia’s Cooperative Extension Service can test soil samples for lead and other elements for $20 per soil sample. The Fulton County extension office can be reached at 404-762-4077. Tulane University soil-lead expert Howard Mielke recommends separately sampling a few areas to get an idea of how lead levels may vary across a yard.

● Read more: While lead poses the greatest risk to children, it can also harm adults. Lead-based paints, tainted food, water and metal toys are other sources of exposure. For more information about reducing risks, call 1-800-CDC-INFO or go to www.cdc.gov/lead/ and www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts13.html.

How we got this story

The reporter, who had previously investigated old lead smelters in other cities, wondered whether Atlanta had any that had been forgotten or eluded cleanups. She found Evans Metal Co. listed as a lead smelter throughout the 1960s in editions of the Standard Metal Directory archived at the West Virginia State University library.

The smelter’s history was pieced together by examining corporation records, property records, as well as state and federal regulatory records obtained under state and federal open records acts.

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