Richland County residents in Franklin Park fear health effects of elevated lead levels in drinking water

Residents of a Richland County neighborhood have as much as seven times the national average of lead in their blood - and they want to know why the state health department did not keep the toxic metal out of their drinking water.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control knew in 1985 that lead tainted the drinking water at Franklin Park. As far back as 1976, the agency called the system deficient. But DHEC never forced the neighborhood utility company to install pollution controls that would keep lead out of the water.

Mary Jean Brown, lead prevention chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said officials in South Carolina should have eliminated the threat of lead in the water long ago. That would have resolved any questions about water quality at Franklin Park and the impact of lead on people's health, she said.

"Why would you not do everything to keep it from getting in?" Brown asked. "We know enough about the risk of lead exposure to say, categorically, that these sources need to be controlled and eliminated."

Franklin Park isn't the only neighborhood DHEC has failed to protect from lead pollution. Five companies serving six other neighborhoods in Richland and Lexington counties have ignored DHEC's repeated orders to install equipment to keep lead out of the water, according to agency records.

For young children, ingesting even small amounts of lead can cause permanent brain damage. Some studies have linked decreased IQ to lead exposure at low levels. In adults, the poisonous metal has been linked to high blood pressure, kidney failure and numbness of the hands.

Blood tests conducted at Franklin Park on Aug. 17 for The State newspaper uncovered lead levels more than twice the national average in six of 24 residents.

Among those was a 10-year-old boy.

A seventh resident, a 4-year-old boy, has been diagnosed with lead poisoning, according to blood tests ordered by his doctors.

Those with above-average lead levels live within three blocks of each other, mostly in homes that have shown elevated amounts of lead in the water more than two dozen times in the past decade.

The 4-year-old boy is not able to talk and has had rotten teeth, conditions that can be caused by lead poisoning. He is undergoing tests to determine why he has speech difficulties. The 10-year-old is having difficulty reading in school, which studies show is a possible sign of lead poisoning.

"For years, we have had problems with the water down here," said 55-year-old Johnny Smith, a Cabin Creek Road resident. "But nothing has ever been done about it."

Most Americans have 1.6 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in their systems; Smith has 5.

DHEC officials said they tried to force the Franklin Park utility company to protect the water, noting agency concerns in inspection reports and enforcement orders, but were unsuccessful in fixing the problem.

In a written statement issued Thursday, DHEC officials discounted concerns about lead in the water and in people's blood.

"While lead can be found in water, there is nothing to substantiate that the drinking water is the source of lead levels found by The State's testing," spokesman Thom Berry said in the statement.

DHEC physician Rose Fitchett also noted that every blood-lead level is within federal standards for the toxic metal.

"Regardless of the exposure, the person is not in adverse health-effect danger," Fitchett said.

The agency's statement said many children and adults have lead levels comparable to what the newspaper found, but Berry could not provide data to support that statement.

A 2005 CDC report says children younger than 12 and adults older than 60 have average blood-lead levels of less than 2.3.

Agency officials told The State in June that the elevated lead levels in drinking water showed up only sporadically since 1994, so they did not pose an imminent health hazard or warrant testing residents' blood.

'ENOUGH TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT'

Lead poisoning is diagnosed when the blood-lead level hits the federally established limit of 10 micrograms per deciliter for children; for adults, it's 25.

Franklin Park residents tested Aug. 17 by Midlands Exams and Drug Screening had levels ranging from less than 2 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, which is about the national average, to 10 micrograms per deciliter. That's more than six times the national average.

Lead exposure can come from a variety of sources, including job hazards, lead paint in homes, dusty miniblinds and soil contaminated by leaded gasoline.

A test Sept. 15 of two homes found no evidence of lead paint, according to a federally certified inspector hired by The State. Applied Building Sciences Inc. also spot-checked soil in one yard and found no evidence of lead.

Jimmy Roberts, a doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina, said it is difficult to know how the heavy metal might affect people's health. But he said the issue is worth more study, particularly for neighborhood children vulnerable to lead poisoning.

"This is enough to be concerned about," he said.

THREE STORIES OF LEAD EXPOSURE

For residents of Franklin Park, the chronic annoyance of spotty water service - cutoffs, discolored water, foul taste - has darkened into anxiety about the effects of lead on their health.

*** The water in Benjamin Richardson's house has shown elevated lead levels more times - 10 - than any other home at Franklin Park since 1994, according to DHEC records.

Richardson, of 103 Ault Road, also had the highest blood-lead level of anyone tested in August.

At 10 micrograms per deciliter, his blood-lead level was more than six times higher than the national average.

His family physician, Dr. William Miles of Columbia, tested Richardson's blood again last month and found the blood-lead level had grown to 11.3 micrograms per deciliter, seven times the national average.

Miles has advised Richardson to drink only bottled water and to come back for further testing in two months.

"His lead levels . . . have increased in a matter of weeks," Miles said. "That is a concern."

Miles said Richardson suffers from high blood pressure and has had kidney problems. Both are side effects of lead poisoning.

The 72-year-old Richardson, a soft-talking grandfather whose wife died of kidney failure this year, has lived in the same Franklin Park home for 36 years, raising eight children there.

His home showed no sign of paint contamination in the Sept. 15 tests. He was a sanitation truck driver with the city of Columbia for 22 years. For several years in the late 1960s, he worked in the steel industry, which could have exposed him to lead.

Richardson said he heard about lead in the water at Franklin Park several years ago at a public meeting in Hopkins, but state officials assured him the problem was being corrected.

The water "looked like it tasted all right, so I was drinking it," he said. "I'm kind of afraid now."

Alice Edmond said it's all a worry to her.

Her mother, Jessie, had four instances of elevated lead in the water of her house at 201 Ault Road during the late 1990s, according to DHEC. Six more water tests showed lead levels slightly under the federal standard of 15 parts per billion.

The Environmental Protection Agency says lead in drinking water can be dangerous at any level.

Jessie Edmond registered an 8 in the Aug. 17 blood-lead tests in Franklin Park - more than five times the national average.

She is not likely to have been exposed in the workplace because she was a homemaker all her life, Alice Edmond said. She said neither DHEC nor the local water company ever told them lead had shown up in her mom's water, and only recently did she learn about the problem.

"The only thing I do know is that lead is dangerous," Alice Edmond said. "DHEC is supposed to protect people. They should at least notify us.

"At least we would have known."

It is unclear, from a review of agency records under the Freedom of Information Act, how much public notice people received at Franklin Park when lead showed up in drinking water.

Notifying people about lead in the water is the responsibility of the utility company, according to DHEC. The agency encourages water companies to tell people about the results of individual water samples they take at their homes, but it is not required.

DHEC files show Piney Grove Utilities Inc., the neighborhood water company, prepared a notice in December 1998 about the hazards of lead in the water. The company's Charles Raye said it was distributed to every customer.

Agency files included no other such notice.

Christena Reed, who lives two streets over on Cabin Creek Boulevard, said she was shocked to learn she had lead in her blood.

A computer specialist with Richland 1 schools, Reed, 53, said she believes she is in good health other than a few aches and pains. But she wonders about the future.

Her blood-lead level - 5 - is more than three times the national average.

"When I received my results, I was disappointed. I was praying I didn't have any traces of it in my blood," she said.

Reed said her water had never been monitored for lead. The State could not find a record that the water had been tested.

Records provided by DHEC show about half of the neighborhood's approximately 50 homes have been tested for lead in the water in the past decade. Federal law requires water systems to choose the homes most likely to have lead contamination and check them regularly.

Water companies such as the one serving Franklin Park must conduct tests of 10 homes every six months until they can show the water is largely free of lead. The Franklin Park water system has shown lead in some homes since testing began in 1994.

DECADES OF BACK-AND-FORTH

Reece Williams IV, who acquired the Franklin Park water system in 2000, said DHEC never stressed the importance of installing the pollution controls to keep lead out of Franklin Park 's water.

The system also has had troubles with low pressure, leaking lines and discolored water.

Of DHEC, Williams said: "One guy tells me to do one thing, then another guy says he just started and they don't know what to do. I just wanted a list that says this is the first thing you need to do."

Williams was given Piney Grove Utilities Inc. in 2000 by its owners, executives of the C.W. Haynes Co. Piney Grove also owns the Lloydwoods sewer plant near Dixiana and the Allbene Park water system in Hopkins.

In 1985, DHEC told the Haynes Co. to install corrosion controls at Franklin Park . Agency inspectors had found elevated amounts of lead in the drinking water of a home at 105 Ault Road, and they were concerned about the impact on residents' health. The Haynes Co. said the equipment was too expensive and asked DHEC not to require the work.

The equipment was not installed until Friday, when DHEC issued a fast-track permit to Richland County to run the system.

In 1992, DHEC ordered Piney Grove Utilities to install the pollution controls, but it did not issue a fine. The agency did levy a $32,000 fine in 1999, but failed to collect it. A judge criticized DHEC earlier this year for taking so long to resolve the dispute.

Then in June, DHEC fined Williams more than $4 million for sewer spills and drinking water deficiencies in the Columbia area.

Richland County agreed late this summer to take over Franklin Park 's water system and sewer service.

County workers have been fixing leaky water lines since August.

"We have got the water system operating like it should be," county utilities director Andy Metts said.

The county's action, however, doesn't erase the threat lead presents in Franklin Park by years of inaction, neighborhood residents contend.

"I guess we weren't high on anyone's priority list," Reed said.

MUSC's Routt Reigart, a doctor and nationally known expert on childhood lead poisoning, said exposure to lead as a youngster can cause irreversible brain damage.

"Lead has a way of creating injuries, then the blood-lead levels come down," he said. "I compare it to the child who almost drowns. Someone saves him, takes him to the hospital and his lungs are fine.

"But there is brain damage because of the period of time he was under attack by water in his lungs."

Karen Shiver, who has lived at Franklin Park about four years, said she and her 12-year-old son won't stay at their home on Acie Avenue. She said living in Franklin Park isn't worth the risk.

She showed almost no lead in her blood from the Aug. 17 test. The water has rarely been tested at her home but did show elevated lead levels in a 2003 sample.

She is moving to Forest Acres because of the water problems.

"I'm not sure who is really responsible for these problems," she said. "But I can't stay in a neighborhood like this."

This story was originally published October 9, 2005 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Richland County residents in Franklin Park fear health effects of elevated lead levels in drinking water."