Discovering unrecognized lead-smelting sites by historical methods.

ABSTRACT April 2001, Vol. 91, No. 4 American Journal of Public Health 625 William P. Eckel, MS, Michael B. Rabinowitz, PhD, and Gregory D. Foster, PhDObjectives. Our objective was toenumerate unrecognized former leadsmelters in the United States. Methods. Defunct smelters wereidentified by historical research. Thecompiled list was compared with gov-ernment registries of hazardous sites. Soilsamples were taken from 10 sites. Results. Approximately 430 siteswere unknown to the federal authorities.Only 5 of 319 sites were known to au-thorities in the top 8 states. Nine of the10 sites sampled exceeded residentialstandards for soil lead level. Conclusions. Approximately 430former lead-smelting sites were unrec-ognized in the United States. Samplingresults indicate that the sites may posea threat to public health. ( Am J PublicHealth. 2001;91:625–627) William P. Eckel is with the Environmental Sci-ence–Public Policy Program, George Mason Uni-versity, Fairfax, Va. Michael B. Rabinowitz is withthe Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole,Mass. Gregory D. Foster is with the Department ofChemistry, George Mason University.Requests for reprints should be sent to WilliamP. Eckel, MS, 321 N Langley St, Alexandria, VA22304 (e-mail: weckel@osf1.gmu.edu).This brief was accepted June 24, 2000.