The town of Herculaneum, Missouri is a big red blotch on the map. Leslie and Jack Warden, raised their son there, less than a mile from the Doe Run lead smelter. Their son has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Her niece and nephew, who lived just one block away, were both diagnosed with lead poisoning. For years Mrs. Warden said that she and all her neighbors assumed that everything was OK in their small town, since “that’s what everyone from the government told us”.

In 1999, when they finally learned about the widespread air and soil pollution, and all the children with lead poisoning, they felt duped and betrayed. The latest blow came this year when EPA announced that it is considering eliminating the air quality standard for lead. When she heard the EPA announcement, Mrs. Warden said: “Then why don’t they just put it back in gasoline or in paint? They think it’s OK to use our children as lead monitors; that would be the only air monitor we’d have left in this community is our children.”  

She is right. If EPA eliminates the air quality standard for lead, they will also finish dismantling the national lead air quality Compliance Monitoring Network. Then we will have no way of knowing which counties have lead problems, and how high the levels are in our air. The first hint of a problem will be when children in our communities get lead poisoning, and that’s too late.

Find out if one of the more than 16,000 lead polluters is in your neighborhood by checking out these lead polluter maps.