The “Ghost Factory” in the New Kensington area of Philadelphia has nothing to do with Halloween. A ghost factory is the name given to any property where a factory once stood. The property is not necessarily vacant, but can be part of a shopping center, a school or even a housing development.
From 1848 to 1996 a large factory stood on the property where lead products such as lead-based paints were manufactured. Lead dust was discharged from the factory’s smokestacks and coated the backyards of the row houses.
Alison Young, writing for USA Today (October 12, 2015) in an article entitled: “More evidence children harmed by lead near Philadelphia ‘Ghost Factory’” stated:
“Children living near the former site of a huge lead factory in Philadelphia are six times more likely than children nationwide to have elevated levels of toxic lead in their bodies, according to a new federal study prompted in part by a USA TODAY investigation. Tests of soil where these children play also found dangerously high levels of lead contamination in most of the samples examined.”
The contamination is not a secret to the EPA however as so often happens the case has become a political football. The EPA has been dragging its feet on testing the soil samples and instituting a plan for mitigation. Meanwhile community activists and politicians are fuming as to why so little has been done.
“While Pennsylvania environmental regulators required the last operator of the factory to address soil contamination inside the factory’s property boundaries around 1998,” states the article, “they did not require the company to do any assessment or cleanup of lead contamination in the surrounding neighborhood.”
Serious levels of lead
In 2014, officials collected blood samples from the children and soil samples in the vicinity of the factory – far beyond the property boundaries. It would not be until September 17, 2015 that the results were made public. The numbers are frightening.
For example, “Of 72 soil samples collected from children’s outdoor play areas, 51 samples – or 71% – were contaminated with more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of lead, the EPA’s potential hazard level. The amount of lead in the soil samples ranged from 40 ppm to 7,700 ppm, with a mean of 774 ppm, according to the CDC’s preliminary findings.”
Lead dust was found in homes around the old site. For example, 22% of the homes tested were found to have lead dust in the entryways with slightly lesser amounts in children’s play areas.
About 11% of the children had elevated levels of lead in their blood, whereas nationally 2.5% have lead contamination. The problem is further compounded by the fact that there really is no set standard. Brain damage and losses in cognition could begin at much lower levels than what experts believe is elevated.
There are conflicting pieces of information and agendas in play. Let’s first establish that the EPA and government regulators have known about the contamination since the 1980s. The debate has been in regard as to how much of the contamination was due to dust versus lead-based paint. Then there are debates over the differences in sample collection. Finally, there are additional arguments as to urban areas in general; a piece of land in a city such as Philadelphia has been subjected to pollution from multiple sources for centuries. Who knows where it comes from, they say.
There is this back and forth between all of the agencies that are involved. Superfund clean-up sites require huge amounts of taxpayer money and no one seems anxious to pay for it. Meanwhile children in the area have passed into adulthood and who knows how many lives have been affected by soil contaminated with lead dust?
Protect the environment – or not?
America was literally built on the back of cities such as Philadelphia. Far before the rules and regulations and environmental concerns our cities supplied the rest of the nation, indeed – even the world – with the tools to fuel the economy. The fact that part of a ghost factory’s property might now be covered by asphalt or even a shopping center, or used as a nursery school playground does not negate the presence of pollutants.
We talk of superfund clean-up and mitigation in terms of money, regulation, methodology and responsibility and all of that is important. What of an ethical responsibility? Who is ethically responsible for a child with an IQ problem or irreversible brain damage as the result of lead?
“We” did not know the answers in 1848 or even 1948, but what of 2015?
It is understandable that a taxpayer living in the suburbs might be against their taxpayer money going to cleanup parts of Philadelphia, however as a consumer of goods, they also bear a responsibility for the pollution.
There is a whole area of environmental ethics that has yet to be properly addressed. We may as well start in Philadelphia by saving some children.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
I’m doing a paper on Ghost Factories for my college and I talk about the contamination in my HAZWOPER class that I teach. It sounds almost as bad as the days the superfund came into being with the Love Canal in New York and Times Beach in Missouri.