AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the U.S., under the water, in the soil and on poles overhead, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work and play.
The lead can be found on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon and the Passaic River in New Jersey, according to the Journal’s tests of samples from nearly 130 underwater-cable sites, conducted by several independent laboratories. The metal has tainted the soil at a popular fishing spot in New Iberia, La., at a playground in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and in front of a school in suburban New Jersey.
The U.S. has spent decades eradicating lead from well-known sources such as paint, gasoline and pipes. The Journal’s investigation reveals a hidden source of contamination—more than 2,000 lead-covered cables—that hasn’t been addressed by the companies or environmental regulators. These relics of the old Bell System’s regional telephone network, and their impact on the environment, haven’t been previously reported.
Lead levels in sediment and soil at more than four dozen locations tested by the Journal exceeded safety recommendations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At the New Iberia fishing spot, lead leaching into the sediment near a cable in June 2022 measured 14.5 times the EPA threshold for areas where children play. “We’ve been fishing here since we were kids,” said Tyrin Jones, 27 years old, who grew up a few blocks away.
For many years, telecom companies have known about the lead-covered cables and the potential risks of exposure to their workers, according to documents and interviews with former employees. They were also aware that lead was potentially leaching into the environment, but haven’t meaningfully acted on potential health risks to the surrounding communities or made efforts to monitor the cables.
Lead in a Coal Center, Pa., sediment sample was 7.5 times the EPA's recommended threshold for children's play areas.
Doctors say that no amount of contact with lead is safe, whether ingested or inhaled, particularly for children’s physical and mental development. Even without further exposure, lead can stay in the blood for about two or three months, and be stored in bones and organs longer. Risks include behavior and learning problems and damage to the central nervous system in children, as well as kidney, heart and reproductive problems in adults, according to U.S. health agencies.
The Journal’s findings “suggest there is a significant problem from these buried lead cables everywhere, and it’s going to be everywhere and you’re not even going to know where it is in a lot of places,” said Linda Birnbaum, a former EPA official and director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a federal agency.
In Coal Center, Pa., medical tests independently sought by the mother of 6-year-old twins, Joyanna and Beau Bibby, and shared with the Journal, showed they had high levels of lead in their blood. The tests were taken a few days after they played in a lot next to their house under a drooping cable.
In response to the Journal’s reporting, AT&T, Verizon VZ
and other telecom companies that succeeded Ma Bell said they don’t believe cables in their ownership are a public health hazard or a major contributor to environmental lead, considering the existence of other sources of lead closer to people’s homes. They said they follow regulatory safety guidelines for workers dealing with lead.
Shannon Bibby walks her children home from the school bus drop off in Coal Center, Pa. The cable ‘shouldn’t be here,’ she said.
The companies and an industry group representing them said they would work together to address any concerns related to lead-sheathed cables. “The U.S. telecommunications industry stands ready to engage constructively on this issue,” said a spokeswoman for USTelecom, a broadband association that represents companies in the industry.
“The health, safety and well-being of our people, our customers, and our communities is of paramount importance,” AT&T said in a written statement. The company said the Journal’s reporting on lead-sheathed cables “conflicts not only with what independent experts and longstanding science have stated about the safety of lead-clad telecom cables but also our own testing.”
In a written statement, Verizon said it is “taking these concerns regarding lead-sheathed cables very seriously,” and is testing sites where the Journal found contamination. It added: “There are many lead-sheathed cables in our network (and elsewhere in the industry) that are still used in providing critical voice and data services, including access to 911 and other alarms, to customers nationwide.”
Some former telecom executives said companies believed it was safer at times to leave lead cables in place than remove them, given the lead that could be released in the process.
Seth Jones, from environmental consulting firm Marine Taxonomic Services, collects water samples in the Passaic River in New Jersey. He and a colleague discovered cables under Lake Tahoe and have been advocating for their removal.
The lead-covered cable network included more than 1,750 underwater cables, according to public records collected by the Journal. A Journal analysis of the five most densely populated states, and more than a dozen of the most densely populated counties in the nation, identified about 250 aerial cables alongside streets and fields next to schools and bus stops, some drooping under the weight. There are likely far more throughout the country.
Journal reporters visited about 300 cable sites around the U.S. and collected roughly 200 environmental samples at nearly 130 of those sites. The samples were analyzed for lead content by Pace Analytical Services, an accredited environmental-testing lab. A researcher at the University of Washington who analyzed the chemical fingerprint of lead at some of those sites verified that the lead contaminating the water and soil likely originated from the cable.
Among the findings:
—Roughly 330 of the total number of underwater cable locations identified by the Journal are in a “source water protection area,” designated by federal regulators as contributing to the drinking-water supply, according to an EPA review performed for the Journal.
—Aerial lead cabling runs alongside more than 100 schools with about 48,000 students in total. More than 1,000 schools and child-care centers sit within half a mile of an underwater lead cable, according to a Journal analysis using data from research firm MCH Strategic Data.
—In New Jersey alone, more than 350 bus stops are next to or beneath aerial lead-covered cables, a Journal analysis of NJ Transit data found.
—Roughly 80% of sediment samples taken next to underwater cables, which the Journal tested, showed elevated levels of lead. It isn’t known if the level of leaching is constant; experts say old cables tend to degrade over time.
Ben Grumbles, executive director of an association of state environmental regulators, called the Journal’s findings disturbing. “This is a type of toxic exposure that isn’t on the national radar and it needs to be,” he said. “There is a need to act and clean it up.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lead-cables-telecoms-att-toxic-5b34408b
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