Login
More than 2,000 toxic lead-coated cables left behind by telecommunications companies stretch across the country on overhead poles and through soils and water, contaminating the environment as they degrade, according to a new investigation by The Wall Street Journal.
Lead levels in sediment and soil near the cables exceeded safety recommendations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at more than four dozen locations tested by WSJ investigators.
The WSJ also found lead from the cables at nearly 130 underwater cable sites, including along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon and the Passaic River in New Jersey.
AT&T, Verizon and other companies that took over Bell System’s infrastructure in the 1980s have known about the cables and the risks they posed to workers and their potential for leaching into the environment but haven’t addressed the issues, according to internal documents and interviews.
Given the existence of other sources of lead closer to people’s homes, the companies told the WSJ they don’t believe the cables are a public health hazard, claiming they follow regulatory safety guidelines for workers.
The 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,” Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., a former EPA official and director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told the WSJ.
The companies and representatives from USTelecom, which represents the industry, told the WSJ they are “ready to engage constructively on this issue.”
Verizon said it was taking the concerns raised by the report “very seriously.” AT&T said public health was of “paramount importance, but that the WSJ’s report conflicted with “what independent experts and longstanding science have stated about the safety of lead-clad telecom cables,” and with their own testing.
Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany told The Defender the cables also contain other chemicals that pose serious environmental health concerns that should also be investigated.
“Many [of the decomposing cables] have lead on the outside but polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on the inside used as insulating material. Like lead, PCB exposure results in a reduction in IQ,” he said.
“Old cables were a major source of PCB emission from 9/11,” Carpenter said.
Cables may explain persistence of high lead levels in children’s blood
Carpenter said the lead in the cables raises concerns because lead is an “extremely dangerous metal.”
“Exposure results in a reduction in cognitive function, most serious in children but also in adults,” he said. “There is no safe level of lead exposure and even concentrations below CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines are known to cause reduction in IQ in children.”
Lead has been linked to heart disease, increased risk of reproductive problems in both men and women, miscarriage, premature birth or low birth weight, headaches, seizures, hearing and vision impairment, high blood pressure, nerve disorders, muscle and joint pain and declining cognitive functioning in older adults.
It is particularly unsafe for children’s physical and mental development, causing brain and nervous system damage, slowed growth and development, learning and behavior issues and hearing and speech problems.
Carpenter said lead’s “effects on IQ, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], anti-social behavior and reduced ability to deal with frustration are most serious from a societal point of view.”
Lead contamination has been linked to lead paint, leaded gasoline and lead piping, despite the fact that the hazards of lead exposure were long known by industry.
Because of the work of public health advocates, lead was eliminated from those products, leading to an 80% reduction in American blood lead levels between the mid-1960s and the late 1990s.
But a 2021 study published by JAMA Pediatrics found that half of young kids in the U.S. have high levels of lead in their blood.
“A new, uncontrolled source of lead like old telephone cables may partly explain” why children continue to have lead in their blood, Jack Caravanos, Dr.PH, who assisted in the WSJ investigation, said.
In one site the WSJ investigated, children playing near a drooping overhead cable next to their house had high levels of lead in their blood when tested following play.
The WSJ data search also found that more than 100 schools have lead cables running overhead, and more than 1,000 schools and childcare centers are within half a mile of underwater lead cables.
‘Likely far more’ cables throughout the country
The lead-coated cables hold copper phone wires covered by steel cords.
American Telephone & Telegraph laid the cables between the late 1800s and the 1960s. Plastic sheathing and fiber optics later replaced them beginning in the 1950s, but rather than cleaning up the existing cables, they left them in place.
When Bell’s monopoly was broken up in 1984, ownership of the cables was dispersed among the various companies that eventually consolidated into AT&T and Verizon and a few others, such as Frontier Communications.
Those cables are now contaminating the environment, according to the study, leaching levels of lead that vastly exceed the EPA’s recommended threshold of 400 parts per million for soil in children’s play areas and 15 parts per billion in drinking water.
The WSJ reported that it shared cable locations with the telecom companies, which in many instances denied their ownership. Braden Allenby, a former AT&T environmental health and safety officer, told the WSJ that abandoning the cables in place was “standard operating procedure” and that AT&T “kept the discussion internal and informal” and never tried to fully assess the problem.
The investigation included public records searches, an analysis of the five most densely populated states and a dozen of the most densely populated counties in the nation. Environmental consultants working with the WSJ tested samples at many of the locations.
Investigators found more than 1,750 underwater cables — 330 of which are in an area that contributes to drinking water. It found hundreds of bus stops under degrading cables, cables near farms and in people’s backyards.
AT&T settled a 2021 Lake Tahoe case over lead contamination due to cables. It agreed to clean up the cables, but the project has been subject to repeated delays. The WSJ found high levels of lead in the water near the cables in the lake.
Lake Tahoe, the largest freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada and the largest alpine lake in North America, is a popular destination for swimming.
The WSJ also identified high lead levels at sites that included a homeless encampment in Mississippi, a children’s playground in West Orange, New Jersey, and a park in Louisiana, among many others.
It reported that there are “likely far more” cables that it did not identify in its sampling that are located throughout the country.
