The Story

Exide Case

 

This project is a community based initiative that is working to heal the lead-contaminated land surrounding the now-defunct Exide Industries in Vernon. This includes areas in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Vernon, Commerce, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell, where thousands of families live affecting their health. Children are the most vulnerable because they can absorb lead four times more than adults.

The Exide plant and past companies recycled batteries for 90 years and introduced heavy metals, lead and arsenic into the environment, while government agencies were unresponsive to this community health crisis. Community-based organizations like East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and Communities for a Better Environment, among others, advocated and forced the permanent closure of the facility in 2015. Today communities continue to be exposed to the contaminants now present in their soil. To better protect our families there is an urgent need to restore and heal our land.

 

Why is lead toxic?

  • Lead (Plumbum- Pb, lead's chemical symbol) is a non-degradable heavy metal and is not a pollutant in its natural form. Human extraction and use (ex. paints for 50 years, bullets, fuel additive for 70 years, and in the lead-acid battery industry, etc.) changes the mineral structure and becomes dangerous as it reaches high levels in the air, water, or ground. 

  • Lead in paints and fuel additives was banned when the EPA discovered its function as a neurotoxin.  A neurotoxin is a substance that interferes with and damages the regular functioning of the brain and nervous system. This can impact everything from how the body regulates breathing and temperature to learning and behavior.

  • Lead can easily be accumulated into the body by absorption through the skin, drinking water, or breathing contaminated dust. The effects of lead exposure can include: impaired development, reduced intelligence, loss of short-term memory, learning disabilities, and coordination problems, kidney failure, and increased risk for the development of heart and circulatory system diseases. (1) 

  • Children are at greater risk for lead poisoning for two main reasons: They are in closer contact with soil, dust, etc, and tend to put items and unwashed hands in their mouths. Their immature nervous systems do not have the same fully developed structures that adults do and lead exposure can interfere with the regular development of a child's nervous system.

  • There is evidence of behavioral changes seen in humans, showing a relationship between lead exposure and violence in contaminated cities. (2)

  • Animals also are affected by lead. A recent study discovered that lead exposure may be common among wildlife living in urban areas and that this exposure is associated with increased aggression, particularly in birds. (3)

Neighborhoods cleanup process

Los Angeles County is performing the cleaning process through the DTSC (Department of Toxic Substances Control) and identified an area (PIA: preliminary investigation area) that includes 10,161 properties in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Vernon, Commerce, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell.

The government’s current approach to land sanitizing is removing the contaminated soil, relocating to an identified landfill, and replacing the residential sites with clean soil.

A court ruling approved Exide's bankruptcy claim to abandon financial obligations in remediating the former site in Vernon and surrounding communities. While legal battles and government bureaucracies stall progress, communities continue to be exposed to the hazards of lead poisoning. Being soil a source of life, it is a matter of environmental justice to heal this situation and bring our communities back to the soil.

A recent audit performed by the State of California shows the clean-up process performed by DTSC is behind schedule in efforts to clean the most contaminated properties (lead levels 300 ppm or higher, with a California limit of 80ppm).

DTSC’s current residential cleanup rate is around 80 properties/month, which means that it would take more than 5 years for the agency to complete cleaning the area.

As community members, we need to keep track of DTSC’s cleanup progress to ensure the affected neighborhoods are completely safe from lead.

 
 

Included in the PIA (Preliminary investigation area):

Existing funding for cleaning:

Residential Cleanup Progress (Last update: Apr 8, 2022)

Current cleanup rate:

With the current cleanup rate, time for the agency to complete cleaning the area (of the 5,940):

10,161 parcels

5,940 parcels

3,576 parcels cleaned

~ 72 properties/ month

5 years

 

Explore the map below to see the cleanup status:

References:

  1. Hazrat Ali, Ezzat Khan, and Muhammad Anwar, “Chemosphere Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals — Concepts and Applications” 91 (2013): 869–81.

  2. Rick Nevin, “Understanding International Crime Trends: The Legacy of Preschool Lead Exposure,” Environmental Research 104 (2007): 315–36, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2007.02.008.

  3. Stephanie McClelland, “Sub-Lethal Exposure to Lead Is Associated with Heightened Aggression in an Urban Songbird,” Science of The Total Environment 654 (2019): 593–603.

 
 

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Project