Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

TV Hill

From the Bay Journal, Lead paint flakes lead to $2.2 million settlement in Maryland

An incident that caused lead paint chips to rain down from a 1,000-foot broadcast tower onto homes, parks and daycare facilities in Baltimore has led to a $2.2 million settlement against a paint-removal contractor and the company that hired it.

The agreement stems from a civil lawsuit filed by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office, alleging that Television Tower Inc. (TTI) knew its tower contained lead-based paint before the repainting project began.

From May 28 to June 21, 2022, Skyline Tower Painting performed scraping and power washing along the exterior of the tower, officials say. Because no controls were in place to contain the paint chips, they fell onto the surrounding neighborhoods as far as a half-mile away.

TTI is owned by a trio of Baltimore-area TV stations: WBAL, WJZ and WMAR.

The tower is situated in an area informally known as TV Hill, surrounded by a community with an environmental justice score of 88 out of 100. The score indicates a high existing pollution burden and population vulnerability, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment’s environmental justice mapping tool.
...
Two paint chip samples taken from the fallout were tested and showed lead concentrations of 19.6 and 6.2 milligrams per liter, both above the hazardous material safety threshold of 5 milligrams per liter.

“We understand the impact this has had on the community, and it’s important to say clearly that this should not have happened,” said MDE Secretary Serena McIlwain. “This case underscores why strong environmental safeguards — and the careful handling of hazardous materials like lead — are so essential to protecting public health.”

In a separate criminal case, Skyline Tower and its president, Christopher Mecklum of Scottsbluff, NE, each pleaded guilty last December to violations related to the incident and were fined $50,000 apiece.

I'm really questioning the report of the concentrations here. Normally, concentration of lead in a solid like a paint chip would be in milligrams (or even micrograms) per gram, or kg. It makes no sense to consider a liter of paint chips. That looks like red lead paint on the tower at left. I'm going to guess it was red lead oxide paint, with a lot of lead sp it was probably mg/g (parts per thousand).

The Wednesday Wetness

Franklin County Freep, Pennsylvania Faces Widespread Lead Pipe Crisis Despite Increased Funding

Pennsylvania is grappling with a significant lead pipe issue, ranking among the states with the most lead water service lines. Cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia alone report having 29,000 and 25,000 lead pipes, respectively, though experts believe the problem is even larger due to a lack of comprehensive data.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that more than 660,000 service lines in Pennsylvania contain lead. A report by NRDC highlights that many U.S. cities, both large and small, continue to have residents using lead pipes for their drinking water, often without knowing the materials used in their service lines.

All drinking water, and all plumbing systems have lead. The only question is how much. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Loungewear garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

 WBAL TV, Baltimore-area residents will be asked to check 229K+ water pipes for lead

The Baltimore City Department of Public Works needs to inspect more than 275,000 public and private water pipes to see if they contain lead, according to a new map and data obtained by 11 News Investigates.

DPW will inventory the 45,796 public pipes made with unknown materials, but to help inspect 229,616 pipes at private homes, DPW plans to ask Baltimore City and Baltimore County residents to complete a survey and test their own pipes.

Paul Sayan, the acting bureau head of the Bureau of Water and Wastewater at Baltimore City's DPW, explained the massive undertaking -- a city and county joint effort dubbed the "Baltimore Service Line Partnership" -- in an exclusive interview with 11 News Investigates.

Lee Currey, the director of the Maryland Department of the Environment's Water and Science Administration, said the ultimate goal is to identify and replace all lead water pipes statewide.

Every water utility across Maryland is currently working to figure out how many of their customers' water pipes contain lead.

If the Environmental Protection Agency is right, the utilities could be facing a big problem. A first-of-its-kind report from the EPA in April found Maryland has 71,166 lead pipes transporting drinking water, and estimates that removing every lead pipe statewide will cost $14.6 billion.

A few years ago,  our local water system added water meters to all the houses, and in the process, laid hands on the service lines to every house, and were pleasantly surprise to find no lead pipes being used.  

Did Flint's Mayor Divert Water Money for Campaign?

Karen Weaver

Flint mayor diverted water-crisis money to political PAC, suit says

The former city administrator of Flint, Michigan, filed a federal lawsuit against the current mayor's office, claiming she was fired after raising concerns about donors being directed away from a charity for victims of the city's water crisis and toward a fund sharing a name with the mayor's campaign fund.

In the suit filed Monday, fired administrator Natasha Henderson claims that in February 2016, Flint's current mayor, Karen Weaver, directed a former city employee and a city volunteer to stop directing potential donors to a charity called Safe Water/Safe Homes. That charity was run by the Community Foundation of Greater Flint and had been approved by the city for water-crisis donations.

Natasha Henderson

Instead, the lawsuit claims city employee Maxine Murray was directed by Weaver to begin directing donations to "Karenabout Flint." According to the lawsuit, Murray came to Henderson "in tears" and in fear of "going to jail."

CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of "Karenabout Flint," and it does not appear in any state tax registries. "Karen About Flint" was Weaver's campaign slogan when she ran for mayor in 2015, and her Twitter handle is @karenaboutflint.

Murray could not be reached for comment.

One would think this would be an easy thing to check on. Now, it's possible that this is entirely legal transaction, but if so, it's still pretty seamy. It's not like protecting kids from lead poisoning is more important than reelection or anything.

Environmentalists Decry Lack of Pollution Crime

Environmentalists question declining pollution enforcement in Maryland

Representatives from 11 groups, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Blue Water Baltimore and the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, sent a letter to Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles, urging him “to consider whether existing enforcement policies and resources are sufficient to protect our citizens.”

In the year from March 2015 through February 2016, state environmental regulators referred 222 cases to the Maryland attorney general for prosecution, according to data the Center for Progressive Reform said it obtained in a public information request. From March 2014 through February 2015, they had referred 272 cases, and in the year before that, 339 cases.

The letter said that air pollution referrals decreased about 50 percent, lead poisoning prevention referrals declined 46 percent, and clean water referrals dropped 27 percent.

The groups accused state environmental policing to be “quiescent” relative to national enforcement of clean air and water laws.

“To fully meet the state’s commitment to its neighbors with regard to the Chesapeake Bay, as well as its commitments to the citizens of Maryland to ensure that our air, water, and lands are clean and healthy, we need a full commitment to enforcing the law,” the letter said.

A state spokesman said officials are reviewing the letter.

I was expecting them to blame Gov. Hogan (R), who campaigned on a platform of reducing bureaucracy, but in fact, most of the decline occurred during the O'Malley (D) administration.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has emphasized a business-friendly, customer-service-oriented approach to environmental regulation in the past.

But the issue is not a political one, the groups said. “To be sure, enforcement trends were headed in the wrong direction in the final years of Governor [Martin] O’Malley’s administration,” they wrote. The numbers they cited cover the final 23 months of the O’Malley administration and the first 13 months of the Hogan administration.

Could it be that after years of enforcement, the number of violations has dropped to the point that they are that much harder to find and marginal enough that they are more difficult to prosecute?

However, actual numbers of actions, and revenues from fines on pollution were up, due to increased enforcement of lead standards.

State environmental regulators levied $3.7 million in fines and took about 7,700 enforcement actions in fiscal 2015, according to an annual enforcement report. The state reported $3.6 million in fines and 2,150 enforcement actions in fiscal 2014. The massive increase in enforcement actions came from a surge of about 5,000 actions regarding lead exposure in fiscal 2015.

Flint Residents Sue EPA

Flint residents sue the EPA over lead poisoning

Democrats around the nation may be trying to pin the blame for the Flint water crisis on the Governor since he’s the only Republican within striking range, but the residents of the city have apparently been following the news and set their sights on a different culprit. This week attorneys for hundreds of affected public water customers announced a multi-million dollar suit against the Environmental Protection Agency. Their announcement cuts through a lot of the partisan politics surrounding the crisis and pins the tail on the correct donkey. (Detroit News)

. . . On Monday, attorneys for more than 500 current and former city residents filed claims for personal injury and property damage. Those claims, which fall under the Federal Tort Claims Act, total more than $220 million in potential damages.
In a statement released with the lawsuit Monday, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Pitt wrote: “The EPA heard the alarm bell loud and clear but chose to ignore the profound environmental and public health issues brought to its attention in the early stages of this disaster. This agency attitude of ‘public be damned’ amounts to a cruel and unspeakable act of environmental injustice for which damages will have to be paid to the thousands of injured water users.”

. . . These were factors which led to the disaster, but once the cards were dealt and the lead began seeping into the water, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Quality were the ones who found out about the toxic lead levels and stood mute while they argued over bureaucratic red tape and procedural options. The issues they were fighting over clearly needed to be addressed, but at the same time, anyone with knowledge of the test results could have picked up the phone, called the local newspaper or television stations and said, “Hey… the water’s poisonous. You might want to tell people not to drink it.”

And there it is. Under most circumstances, the EPA would be more than happy to call the power of the press down on the evil doers. But in this case, they held back. Why? It's not clear, but one senses they really didn't want to confront a red city with the problems they were creating for their own people.

They failed in that fundamental duty, not on a procedural or legal score, but on a level of basic human compassion. A series of errors in judgement allowed the lead to being seeping into the water. A callous disregard for the lives and health of the residents of Flint on the part of the EPA allowed the damage to continue mounting for months on end. If someone is going to pay the piper for this, the plaintiffs in the upcoming lawsuit have finally identified the correct villain.

Could they bankrupt the EPA? It's doubtful, but it would be nice if they scored a big enough take to make an impression on the bureaucracy.

Get the Lead Out

Oh Look, Another Democrat Stronghold Has Excess Lead in the Water

Don’t worry, though, Democrat golden boy and former Newark Mayor Cory Booker won’t be held responsible. The blame will eventually go to Trump’s new BFF, Fat Judas.

Lead levels have been elevated in Newark schools since at least 2012, officials announced Wednesday. The announcement comes after the revelation earlier this month that water in 30 of the district’s schools tested as high as 35 times above the federal action limit for lead.
Out of 2,067 water quality samples collected from taps at Newark school buildings between 2012 and 2015, about 12 percent reported being above the Environmental Protection Agency’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion, the district announced. About 10 percent of the taps tested in 2015 showed elevated levels, officials said.
Though officials said they will not release the specific levels for the past three school years until Thursday morning, those “results are generally consistent with this last round of testing,” which recorded levels ranging from 16 to 558 ppb, the school said.
In response to allegations by the Newark teachers union last week that the district knew about the lead levels for more than 10 years, the district said it is in the process of obtaining testing results dating back to 2004.
“Documentary evidence suggests that schools have been tested and remedial actions undertaken” since 2004, it said.
Over the past several weeks, the teachers union has released internal memos and dated photos suggesting that the district knew about elevated lead levels, and that remediation filters were not being properly maintained.

I'm sure the lead results from all New Jersey's schools bypass all the local democrat governments, and are sent straight to the governors desk for review and action, as democrats never claim responsibility for the bad things that happen on their watches.

Found at Wombat-socho's "In The Mailbox: 03.17.16."

Virginia Eagles Suffer Lead Poisoning

Dozens of Va. bald eagles suffering from lead poisoning

There’s a growing concern among conservationists in the D.C. region as more and more bald eagles are experiencing lead poisoning. They say it is due, in part, to the resurgence of the species.

It’s not deliberately done by sport hunters, says Edward Clark of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, but bald eagles scavenging for food are ingesting lead bullets.

“In 2014, we admitted 42 bald eagles. Eighty percent of those birds had measurable amount of lead in their blood stream,” Clark says.

Everything is measurable, if you try hard enough. Back in the day, I could have measured lead at any level found in birds blood. Give a number!

Even a shard the size of a grain of rice can cause the bird’s organs to shut down, he says. Typically, eagles in the mid-Atlantic range in size but grow no larger than 15 pounds.

“When the birds ingest the lead, it has a very damaging effect on their nervous system. So it causes them to lose sight. It causes their reflexes to go off normal perimeters and dramatically effects internal organs and causes them to shut down,” Clark says.

While the birds are naturally fish eaters and live along waterways, such as the Chesapeake Bay, both an increase in population and more human development is forcing the birds to find alternative habitats.

“So these birds are moving away from the rivers, moving inland … to a habitat that’s not quite prime, and as a result, they have to change their food source,” Clark says.

Lead shot has been banned for waterfowl hunting because of the problem of waterfowl ingesting pellets from the bottom, and becoming sick. Needless to say, however, tons of lead used previously is still in the sediments, waiting to be covered up in the fullness of geologic time. However, it is still used in upland bird shot, ball ammunition, and fishing tackle. I have personally lost several hundred pounds of lead in the Chesapeake, the vast majority of it in 1-2 oz lumps attached to hooks that bird would have to be stupid to eat.

Also an update on the death of 13 Bald Eagles in Maryland. While authorities aren't saying what killed the eagles, they are clearly pointing the finger at it being a deliberate act:

Lab results showed that the eagles did not die of natural causes, including diseases such as avian influenza, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Catherine Hibbard. The agency declined to say whether the birds were poisoned.

"Our investigation is now focused on human causes and bringing to justice the person(s) responsible for the death of these eagles," Hibbard said in a statement.

Maryland Natural Resources police received a call on Feb. 20 reporting four dead eagles near Federalsburg in the eastern part of the state. Officers arrived and discovered nine more dead birds nearby.

EPA Passed on Pb Enforcement in Flint

Despite knowing of lead in water, EPA planned to let Flint keep drinking it into 2016

Four months after being notified about high lead levels in a Flint home, the Environmental Protection Agency was prepared to let the city continue giving lead-contaminated water to customers until at least 2016, emails released Friday show.

Jennifer Crooks, the Michigan program manager for the EPA's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, sent out an agenda on June 8, 2015, for a planned call with Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials.

In that email, Crooks said it was known that Flint had not been adding any corrosion-control chemicals to its water to prevent lead from leaching from the pipes into drinking water since April 2014. She said the city was in its second six-month testing period.

It didn't make sense for the city to start a corrosion control program in June 2015, Crooks wrote. "Since Flint has lead service lines, we understand some citizen-requested lead sampling is exceeding the Action Level, and the source of drinking water will be changing again in 2016, so to start a Corrosion Control Study now doesn't make sense," Crooks wrote.

"The idea to ask Flint to simply add phosphate may be premature; there are many other issues and factors that must be taken into account which would require a comprehensive look at the water quality and the system before any treatment recommendations can/should be made."

Phosphate is a relatively cheap, innocuous, (even nutritional) chemical which forms insoluble lead phosphate on the lead surface of the pipe, preventing further corrosion of the pipe. It's a bad idea to use lead pipe (it hasn't been done since the 1930s). but if there are lead pipes in a system, it is important that lead corrosion be considered and phosphate added if warranted. Waiting 2 years is not an option.

The email was sent almost four months after EPA researcher Miguel Del Toral was made aware of high lead in Flint's water.

It's only a problem if you can blame a Republican.

Does Lead Poisoning Cause Lead Poisoning?

An old theory is getting new new attention courtesy of Mother Jones magazine, that the epidemic of violence in the 1980s was linked to the rise in lead in the environment in the 60's due to leaded gasoline, and that the current ongoing decline in violence is due to the reduction of lead in the environment following the Clean Air Act of 1970.  The heart of the argument can be expressed in two graphs, a plot of violent crime versus lead used in gasoline (lagged by 23 years):

and a plot of intelligence in children versus blood lead content:

Leading to the hypothesis that lead (more specifically the tetraethyl lead used in gasoline) in the 60, absorbed by children, affected their brains, producing both lower intelligence and more violent behavior as young adults.

There is no doubt that lead, and tetraethyl lead, are powerful neurotoxins. However, repeat after me the magic chant that removes the emperor's clothes on many cases of bad science:

"Correlation is not causation!"

However much we want to believe in such a relationship, it remains very difficult to prove.  Take the graph showing violent crime vs lead use.  Literally hundreds if not thousands of industrial compounds have show similar usage trajectories, and if allowed some convenient lag period (why 23 years, are violent people most violent at 23? I would have guessed 19) could be fit to violent crime and show a similar result.  The combined effects of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 was such that a large number of important pollutant compounds (e.g. organics such as DDT, PCB and dioxin and trace metals including Hg and Cd) show similar temporal patterns, and if you allow yourself to lag the data by similar suitable amounts, would produce similar graphs.

As for the lead in children graph, the analysis of lead in environmental media (tissue, water and sediments) underwent a revolution between 1971 and 1991.  I know; I was there doing lead analysis in the the environment for most of that time.  There was an enormous volume of erroneous trace element analyses made in the early days; it wasn't until the early and mid 80's that the role of clean techniques, and newer analytical methods made lead analysis reliable (mostly).

So, did lead in gasoline cause the '80s violence epidemic, and the removal of lead from gasoline stop it 23 years later?  Maybe, but the actual causal links are lacking, and we may never know.