The Journal. - America Is Wrapped in Toxic Lead Cables

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

In an 18-month investigation, The Wall Street Journal found thousands of lead covered cables across America, some leaching the toxic metal into places where people live, work and play. We travel with the team across the country to test the soil and water around these cables and speak to families living near them. WSJ’s Susan Pulliam and Shalini Ramachandran explain what these high levels of lead in The Journal's sampling could mean for people across the country. Further Reading: - America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables  - How the Journal Investigated Hidden Lead Cables Circling the U.S.  - Bayou Teche Is an Epicenter of America’s Lead Cable Problem  Further Listening: - Part 2: What AT&T and Verizon Knew About Toxic Lead Cables  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a freezing March morning in Northern California, two divers headed out in a boat. We're in amazing Lake Tahoe right now. It's just crazy. It's frigid and beautiful, and there's not a boat in sight except for us. They were out there to find two underwater telephone cables. Both these cables we're looking at, they've been abandoned for a long time.

One of the divers geared up to go into the lake to carefully collect sediment and water samples around the cables. cables. They wanted to find out whether these cables were releasing a toxic material into the lake. That material? Lead. The divers were working with an investigative team at the Wall Street Journal that has been looking into thousands of old lead cables left around the country by AT&T, Verizon, and other telephone companies. Over more than a year of reporting, the journal found that these cables have been leaching lead into places where Americans live, work, and play. Live, work, and play. This started with my getting a tip that AT&T was removing an old lead cable in Lake Tahoe,

which I found curious because I had covered cable and telecom for a long time and had never heard of lead cables in the telecom networks. That's our colleague Shalini Ramachandran. She was surprised about that because lead is considered dangerous. In the 70s, the U.S. government started banning lead in paint and gasoline. In the 80s, public water systems required lead-free pipes. Lead exposure, even at low levels, can cause lasting health problems, especially for children. So Shalini and her colleagues were curious about these lead cables, many of which had been abandoned. And then the question was, how many of these are still out there?

And so we started trying to figure out where there are places where we could go visit and see if they were still there, just like the one that was snaking through Lake Tahoe. When we set out to go and find these cables, we didn't know if we'd find anything. We didn't know if we would find cables. We didn't know if we would find lead anywhere in the soil or the water. We just didn't know what it was going to be. That's Susan Pulliam, another reporter on the investigation. Susan, Shalini, and the team then built out a database of cables using old U.S. Army Corps records, Google Street View, and artificial intelligence. Then Susan started looking for

these cables. Did you just drive around and find these cables? Yes. So we went to 300 cable sites across the country. We drove, I mean, literally thousands of miles. We would be, you know, driving to dozens of locations and we'd hop out, go look for the cable, find it or not find it, hop back in the car, drive 50 miles, hop out, look for the cable, find it or not find it, hop back in the car and go again. And they found lead in the soil by schools and playgrounds

and in waterways where people swim and fish all around the country, from Oregon to New York, Michigan to Louisiana. And what we found, bottom line, was that a lot of these cables were leaching lead into the environment, into the soil, the sediment, and the water. In response to the journal's reporting, AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom companies said they don't believe the cables they own are a public health hazard or a major contributor to environmental lead. They also said they maintain the cables

safely. Today and tomorrow, we're going to take you inside the Wall Street Journal investigation to some of the places where they found cables leaching lead into the environment, and we'll look at the impact on those communities and who is responsible. And people, when they start to understand where these cables are located, will say, you know, if it's not being used, why is it there? And even if it is being used, it's leaching into the environment. And, you know... And lead is bad. Lead is bad.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Thursday, July 13th. Coming up on the show, the thousands of toxic lead cables stretching across America. With Uber Reserve, you can book your Uber ride in advance. 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance.

Uber Reserve. See Uber app for details. In Lake Tahoe, two environmental consultants have been keeping track of lead cables in the water. I'm Seth Jones with Marine Taxonomic Services. Hi, my name is Monique Rydell. I'm with Marine Taxonomic Services. Seth and Monique spotted the cables more than 10 years ago and have advocated for their removal. They've become experts on the ways in which lead leaches into the environment, including water. I began to think of them as like cable whisperers because they would sort of know where we could potentially find the cables. The Wall Street Journal worked with Seth and Monique to identify lead cables and collect samples to be tested for contamination. Seth and Monique's firm received guidance and $85,000

from the Environmental Defense Fund to partly fund their research for the journal's project, including the research done in Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay. So we are going to head out to Emerald Bay and we are going to take a look at a cable that's out there, an old telecom cable, and we're going to collect some data and we're going to head out to Emerald Bay, and we are going to take a look at a cable that's out there, an old telecom cable. And we're going to collect some data, and we're going to look at another cable that is offshore that runs about eight miles. This cable was part of an old network that brought telephone service around the country. These cables were put up between the late 1800s and the 1960s. And they're wrapped in lead.

Lead was a great material to use because it's durable, it's waterproof, and it cuts down on electromagnetic noise. So it was considered state-of-the-art and a very important technological advance. and a very important technological advance. The morning of this dive, portions of the Turquoise Lake had frozen over. Seth and Monique drove their boat through several patches of ice. They pulled up to the severed end of one cable,

and Seth geared up for the dive. When you're diving underwater, when it's like this, you can see all the reflection and shimmeriness. It can kind of put you in a trance. You got to like be careful not to zone off in the water because it's so pristine and beautiful. Uh, mask? The gear is all iced up. I had to chip ice out of my mask. My hoses are kind of frozen in place, but... But it's still breathing fine.

These are made for cold water. So I'll just jump in here, swim over the severed end, and take a sample. Woo! So Seth just jumped into the water there and gave us the Universal Diver's OK. How you doing? Invigorated. After Seth swam over to the cable and collected the sample,

he made his way back to the boat and handed it to Monique. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so what we've done is we've just filled our sample jar full of the water from the syringe and sealed that up and put it away for safekeeping. The Wall Street Journal team took the samples from Lake Tahoe to an independent accredited lab for testing. took the samples from Lake Tahoe to an independent accredited lab for testing. They found that there were very high levels of lead in a number of spots. They even found lead moving away from the cables toward the beach at levels that we didn't expect to find. So, you know, with that information, we knew that the lead, if it's exposed to water, you know, can dissolve. And lead is really heavy,

and when it leaches, tends to kind of stay where it is. And that seems like what's happening out in Tahoe. The lead is leaching near the severed ends. Environmental scientists told Susan that it's rare to find any lead in water bodies. But one sample the team collected was well above the lead level that the EPA says is safe for drinking water. It was more than 2,500 times that level. That sample wasn't from part of the lake that people use for drinking, but some of the other samples that the journal team tested were taken from areas where people swim, camp, and boat. It's worth

noting that not all the underwater cables we tested were leaching lead. In 2021, AT&T settled a lawsuit about the Lake Tahoe cables brought by an environmental group. Seth and Monique's firm was not part of the lawsuit. During litigation, AT&T hired an environmental consulting firm to take samples in the lake near the cables. Their tests found, quote, very low levels of lead in the water, according to AT&T. The study found the water quality was, quote, not adversely impacted. In the settlement, the company didn't admit any wrongdoing and agreed to remove the cables, which hasn't happened yet.

The Wall Street Journal team also tested water elsewhere in the country and found lead leaching in rivers in places like Michigan and Oregon. and found lead leaching in rivers in places like Michigan and Oregon. But they were also interested in whether lead was leaching from cables hanging from telephone poles. We found the Wappingers Falls cable sort of by accident. Old records led to a small town in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Susan was there with our producer, Laura. Hi! Great to meet you all. Good to see you in person.

Yeah, I'm Laura. Also there were researchers from the NYU School of Public Health. Professor Jack Caravanos, who assisted the journal in this project. Hi, Laura. I'm Jack. Nice to meet you, Jack. And two grad students who were testing the soil. Jordan. Nice to meet you. I'm'm Jack. Nice to meet you, Jack. And two grad students who were testing the soil. Jordan.

Nice to meet you. I'm Shari, nice to meet you. We were looking for another cable, and we weren't able to find the cable that we were looking for, but we were sort of tromping around the neighborhood, and we looked up and saw this cable running along and around a playground.

It looks like a cable coated with pure lead. And that's as a shield for electromagnetic radiation. Jack walked over to a patch of grass next to the playground, close to a children at play sign. He was concerned that wind, sun and rain could have degraded the lead, washing traces off the cable and into the soil. So tell me what you're doing here. Okay, so we want to get a sense of the lead levels directly below the cable because, you know, of course it rains, lead is then mobilized and falls probably directly under the cable.

Jack and his team pulled out a lead detection device that sort of looks like a digital pricing gun at a grocery store. You found some high numbers already? 668. Yeah? According to the EPA, playground soil should have less than 400 parts per million of lead. Any more than that is considered dangerous. Yeah, so one of the interesting chemical facts about lead

is that it really doesn't migrate through the soil very easily. So all the lead that's been deposited pretty much is in the first, you know, one foot, six inches of soil, if it's been undisturbed. And the bad part there is that children, of course, are playing. They love soil. They love digging and building and helping with gardening. Okay, so what do we have?

134 right here. 81 right here. And then, in one area close to the cable. We got 1,000 right here. Yeah, right here. As we get deeper, it gets lower. Uh-huh. Okay. Interesting.

All right. But not very fast. I mean, it's still pretty high. Way higher than the EPA's threshold of 400. Yeah, no, this is exactly what the experts describe as the kind of situation where somebody would get contaminated. You sit down there, watch your friends play, you're eating Doritos, you put your hand on the ground, you pick up the Dorito in your mouth, and you've got, you know, lead exposure. You just need a little dirt on your fingers to

put into your mouth and ingest, and you get an elevated blood lead. So you don't need much contamination and much contact to get an elevated blood lead. After the break, residents and parents find out they've been living close to toxic lead cables. Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now, get a small, organic Fairtrade coffee and a tasty bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only $5

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Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Earlier this year, the investigation took Susan to a city in Louisiana. New Iberia has a really interesting culture and a lot of festivals and events that go on right in that part of town. They've got a gumbo cook-off and canoe races.

People watch the fireworks from that spot. That spot is under a bridge. It's a popular place to picnic. Trees nearby are covered in Spanish moss. And the day Susan was there, it was sunny. So we were standing on the bank of Bayou Tesh in downtown New Iberia, kind of right in the center of town. And in the middle of everything is a big cable jutting up from the ground.

Susan was checking it out when she met Tyron Jones. Tyron, it was his day off, and, you know, he was under the bridge on the other side. So I went over and introduced myself and told him what we were doing. She told him she was there to test the soil around the cable for lead. So we walked under the bridge, and, you know, I pointed it out to him, and he turned around. He said, you know, I've been fishing here since I was a kid. Usually I'll sit down and I'll grab a large rock or something like that and, like, pull it down and see where I can fish. But you've been fishing right in this spot since you were a kid, did you say?

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. It was here for you. How old are you? Well, it's been here since... Don't touch it. This cable has been there since 1940, according to records. It was laid by a company that's now owned by AT&T. Susan also spoke to Tyron's mom, who said that most of her 11 kids had spent their childhoods fishing close to the cable in the bayou.

She said they would go down there, you know, all the time in the summer and spend the day down there underneath the bridge where it's shady. And you put your fishing pole down, you put your hand on the ground, you're close enough to the cable that there's lead in the soil. So the cable there in New Iberia, really, it turned out that it had a very high level of lead. The samples the team had tested found high lead levels, The samples the team had tested found high lead levels, more than 14 times as high as the EPA says is safe for play areas. But there's no way to know just how long the lead there's been leaching and at what rate. AT&T didn't respond to requests for comment on that cable. The concern about lead leaching from cables, like this one in Louisiana, is that doctors say no amount of lead exposure is safe.

Lead mimics calcium. And because of that, in the body, it can penetrate what's called the blood-brain barrier, which ordinarily keeps toxins out of the brain. Lead is especially bad for children. As they grow, their bodies absorb lead and can store it in their bones and organs. The toxic metal can cause learning problems and behavioral issues, and can permanently damage the central nervous system. When you spoke with parents in the communities you visited about cables, what were some of the most common responses you heard?

We met a lot of people out there who knew when we'd tell them what we were looking for, they'd say, oh yeah, it's right over there, you know, it's down to the bridge, or it used to be here, and then they moved it there. So people out there sort of knew about these cables. I think a lot of people maybe didn't know they were lead. But there was one town where the residents already knew about a toxic lead cable in their community. It's a mile-long cable that runs through this small town in southwestern Pennsylvania. The town is called Cole Center. It's about an hour from Pittsburgh and has just over 100 residents.

Some people there have been trying to get the cable taken down for a while. Susan visited Cole Center last year. One of the people we met right away there was a woman named Shannon Bibby, who lives where the cable comes and kind of makes a bend around two roads. And her house is right basically across the street and they own the lot that's under the cables. So in one of our trips there, the lot underneath the cable was being dug up for a mobile home that was going to be put in, and her children were playing in that lot. One of the people with Susan was Seth Jones from the Lake Tahoe dive. And we just bought this piece of property here, which you can see. Here's the hanging lead lines. The line is like, you know, 10 feet above the ground here.

And runs about a mile here. Yeah. Look at the telephone poles waiting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. That's what caught our eye when we drove in. We're like, why are all these poles like sagging everywhere? Yeah.

We're like, holy cow. And we were doing more testing. And Shannon was becoming more concerned about what this might mean for her children. And so she went and had her kids tested after we left town, unbeknownst to us. And one of her kids showed up with levels above 3.5. 3.5. That's 3.5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.

That's the level at which the CDC recommends someone get further medical attention. One of Shannon's kids was above that level. The other one was at 3.5. When the team had a soil sample tested from Shannon's property, it showed lead levels more than 40% higher than the EPA recommends for play areas. So when Shannon Bibby called me up and told me that her kids had tested positive, that was really, you know, upsetting.

You know, she was upset and didn't quite know what to do. And it just really sort of drove home the real risk of these cables. home the real risk of these cables. Susan says we don't definitively know that the cable was the reason for the kids' elevated lead levels. Later, their levels did drop. Verizon, which owns the cable, says it's taking these concerns very seriously and is testing sites where the journal found contamination. The company added that there are many lead cables in its network and elsewhere in the industry that still provide critical services, like 911. The cable in Kohl Center is still there. Based on this investigation you've done for a year, these cables are everywhere.

They are everywhere. You know, we put together a map of about 2,000 cables across the U.S., and the number is much, much larger than that. I live in New Jersey, and they're all over New Jersey. Whenever I'm driving around, I'm a little bit of a hazard on the road because I'm always looking to see, you know, if I can spot another lead cable. Susan and the team went to 300 sites, tested water and soil from 130 of them. And in many of those places,

there was lead leaching either into the soil or the water. Tomorrow, we find out who put up the cables and who's responsible now. This episode has been updated to include the financial contribution the Environmental Defense Fund made to Marine Taxonomic Services. The EDF provided $85,000 to MTS to partly fund its field research for the journal's project, which involved collecting water and soil samples. That's all for today, Thursday, July 13th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode

by Thomas Greida, Colter Jones, and John West. Special thanks to Phil Corbett. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.