Lead and Soil

Summer Sprout Soil Testing in Cleveland. 

From CLASH Stay in Touch April 26, 2025 Edition

Ashley Schreder from Ward 3 raised the issue of soil lead testing in the Summer Sprout program at Monday night's City Council meeting. You can hear her remarks here, beginning at 36 minutes. This is a real issue for Clevelanders who are doing urban gardening projects. Nick Castele from Signal covered some of the issues in a March 1, 2025 interview with Ms. Schreder, but she is not alone in raising the issue of the cost of new lead testing.   Ms. Schreder told CLASH: "Testing need to be local to Cleveland and available". Anyone in CLASH-land interested in helping?

• • Why should gardeners bear the costs of testing the soil or should the costs be a part of the 2025 agreement between the city and OSU? 

  • If the soil plots were previously shown to be below the new EPA standards, should they be required to test again? 

  • Are the water lines that supply many of the gardens actually made of lead?

Next steps

CLASH will send a request for assistance to our Lead Professionals listserve. As you may know owning an XRF machine is just a starter. Besides the $25K cost, soil sampling with an XRF machine requires setting the machine to sample soil as well as paint, training the operator, getting a state license to operate a device that uses radioactivity.

Chemical testing is slower but more accurate than XRF. Ohio State's Lab can do chemical testing. https://dirt.osu.edu/testing.  An approved commercial testing lab that CLASH has used is Accurate Analytical Testing in Michigan.

CLASH will also reach out to Anthony Weaver of Lead Paint Detectives in Toledo to see if he has experience with Lumetallix on soil samples. There are two downsides to this new product

• Lumetallix is not approved by the State of Ohio or USEPA, but the product has remarkable results. 

• Alas, Lumetallix will only give a yes or no answer to the presence of lead....no indication of the level of lead exposure. While there is no safe level of lead...the EPA current standard in 200 parts per million (PPM).

In 2023 and 2024, CLASH sponsored SoilSHOP events in conjunction with the US EPA Region 5. They suddenly pulled out of our final workshop last August and, since the new Administration has taken over we have lost all our contacts with them. It *might* be worth an effort to reach out to the new Regional director Anne Vogel who is the former director of the Ohio EPA. 

Let CLASH know if you have discover any other testing resources for home gardeners. 

In the News

• 06-14-2024. The Conversation. What the EPA’s new standard for lead in soil could mean for households. "When the standard is adjusted down to the proposed level of 200 parts per million, 23.7% of households—nearly one in four—contain a lead hazard. [.....] Children can be exposed to lead by swallowing or inhaling soil while they are playing. Young children often put their hands in their mouths and may have dirt on their hands. Kids and pets also can track lead dust from soil indoors. And anyone who eats fruit or vegetables grown in contaminated soil can ingest lead. Early in 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lowered the screening level for lead in residential soils from 400 parts per million—a standard that was more than 30 years old—to 200 parts per million. This more protective lower number reflects current understanding of soil as a significance source of lead exposure for children. EPA officials said that at homes exposed to lead from multiple sources, the agency will generally use a more conservative 100 parts per million screening level. This new level is not a cleanup standard; it’s a threshold at which the EPA will make site-specific decisions about how to protect people there. Actions may include providing information about soil lead, recommending ways to reduce exposure, or removing the leaded soil and replacing it with clean soil. The standard is designed to guide EPA assessments of residential soils around polluted sites under two federal laws. The Superfund law addresses hazardous wastes that were improperly created or disposed of before 1976, while the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governs hazardous waste generation and disposal from that year forward. More than 4,000 sites across the nation are currently being cleaned up under those two laws. I study urban lead poisoning in children from soil and other sources, and I have worked with colleagues to analyze tens of thousands of soil samples collected from typical homes by research scientists and by citizens across the U.S. This work is ongoing, but our newly published findings show that under the new EPA standard, potentially harmful lead exposure from soil is far more widespread than many people—including public officials—realize. Reducing this risk will be a very long-term effort." Here's the link to the study 

• January 17, 2024. Press Release. Biden-Harris Administration Strengthens Safeguards to Protect Families and Children from Lead in Contaminated Soil at Residential Sites "Utilizing updated, best available science, EPA lowers screening levels for the first time in 30 years. [   ] EPA is lowering the screening level for lead in soil at residential properties from 400 parts per million (ppm) to 200 ppm. At residential properties with multiple sources of lead exposure, EPA will generally use 100 ppm as the screening level. Screening levels are not cleanup standards. While this update will help EPA site teams make site-specific cleanup decisions to protect nearby communities, EPA makes cleanup decisions specific to each site, using site-specific factors, including risk factors and community input that can vary from site to site. [   ]  While the guidance goes into effect immediately, EPA welcomes feedback from the public that may be considered in any future updates to the guidance. Please submit written feedback on the guidance in the public docket (Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OLEM-2023-0664) for 60 days from January 17, 2024, to March 17, 2024.

Where do toxic hazards in soil come from?

• Abandoned automobiles can leak fluids on to the ground. Abandoned houses where there is chipping and peeling paint can spread lead dust to surrounding areas.

• Exhaust from leaded gasoline (outlawed in the mid1980s) are still lurking in bare soil areas. Sites where cars, trucks, and buses sat idling are likely sources of lead pollution.

• Highway and train overpasses are likely spots for lead contamination where structures are rusting and chipping.

• Industrial emissions from plants which process metals can travel from smokestacks for miles in all directions. You won’t know if you have toxic elements until your soil is tested.

• Demolished houses where there was lead paint were often buried on site. Over the years the lead in the buried debris can come to the surface where people walk and play.