Connection: Silver Valley Makes Gains At Getting The Lead Out

The blood of the Silver Valley’s children once ran heavy with lead, but today health officials say levels are way down.

Kids living in Smelterville in the 1970s showed the highest lead levels recorded in this country.

The Bunker Hill Co. smelter spewed lead particles into the air in 1974 after the company opted to bypass filters destroyed by fire.

Children tested that year averaged 65 micrograms of lead for every deciliter of blood, according to Jerry Cobb, with the Panhandle Health District. Kids in what eventually became the Bunker Hill Superfund site averaged 40 micrograms per deciliter.

The acceptable level is 10. The U.S. average is 2.7.

But roughly 5,000 blood tests since the 1970s show a significant drop in the amount of lead turning up in the valley’s children, Cobb said.

Last year, the average level of lead in the Superfund “box” was 4.5 micrograms, he said. Thirty-one kids still show levels above 10, but only one is above or at 20, the level that triggers a visit from a physician.

Various factors led to the drop. The Bunker Hill smelter shut down in 1981 and families were relocated from several lead-ridden neighborhoods. Health officials continue to track exposure from contaminated yard dirt and house dust.

But the valley’s lead problems are far from over, said Michele Nanni, Get The Lead Out coordinator with The Lands Council in Spokane. Kids under 6 continue to show higher lead levels than others around the country, Nanni said. “Our rate of lead poisoning is 3 times the national average.”

Lead from mine tailings and the Superfund site still coats yards and beaches in the Coeur d’Alene Basin. A sweeping federal study on cleaning up mining pollution is due out next year. In the meantime, the Environmental Protection Agency red-flagged 32 public places where lead exceeds 1,000 parts per million - more than twice the national residential safe standard.