Tests Find Lead Levels Stable In Silver Valley Children Average Level Of Lead In Blood Is Below ‘Threshold Of Concern,’ But Some Say Problem Is Far From Solved

After dropping drastically in the 1970s and early 1980s, the level of lead in the blood of Silver Valley children seems to have reached a plateau.

“We’re essentially at the same point we were last year,” said Jerry Cobb, who heads the Valley’s lead screening program for the Panhandle Health District.

“I’d like to see it going down quicker,” he said.

The district on Thursday released this year’s blood screening results. A sampling of Silver Valley children ages 9 months to 9 years have been tested each year since 1974.

The Silver Valley is contaminated with heavy metals from decades of mining and smelting operations. The biggest contaminant, lead, can cause neurological problems and delay mental development and organ growth.

This year’s results show an average blood lead level of 7.2 micrograms per deciliter of blood in Smelterville children, up 1.2 micrograms from last year. Ten micrograms is the federal “threshold for concern.”

Lead levels of Kellogg, Page and Wardner children dropped slightly from 6.5 micrograms last year to 6.3 this year.

Levels in Pinehurst children dropped from 5.4 micrograms to 4.6.

At those levels, Cobb said, there’s no reason for parents to be worried.

“We want to see everyone below a 10,” he said, “but no, people shouldn’t panic at a 10 or 15.”

Cobb said physicians typically wouldn’t recommend drugs to draw the lead out of a child until a level of at least 45 micrograms.

To limit children’s exposure to lead, state and federal officials in 1989 began digging up yards in the 21-square-mile federal Superfund site around Smelterville. Workers replaced the lead-tainted soil with clean dirt, then covered the yard with grass. That way, children playing in the yards wouldn’t be covering themselves with lead-carrying dirt.

“We’ve still got a lot of kids living in unremediated yards,” said Cobb, noting that 700 have been replaced. That leaves about 1,000 to go.

“They’ll be knocking those off at about 200 a year,” he said. “We will stay the course.”

Thursday’s results drew fire from local health activist Barbara Miller.

“If you care about your child, you would - and should - be concerned,” she said. She said she’s troubled that 57 children have blood lead levels over 10 micrograms, some 14 years after the smelter shut down.

“That’s too many children,” Miller said. “One is too many.”

Miller thinks the yard program isn’t enough - that the yards are quickly recontaminated. Also, she said, health officials are doing little to address the inside of homes, where lead may be trapped deep in the carpets, corners and furnace ducts.

She’s a member of a local “Lead Health Intervention Committee” lobbying for better tracking of blood lead and more medical services.

“People in Kellogg, Idaho, seem to think this is a problem that can’t be solved,” she said. “People just want to stick their heads in the sand.”

, DataTimes