His subject was lead-covered cables, which as soon as carried telephone service and had lengthy been out of date. Weren’t these historic cables gone?
“NO,” his slide presentation stated. “Some older metropolitan areas should still have over 50% lead cable,” the slide stated. In some locations, they posed dangers for phone-company staff and the encompassing atmosphere, Malone concluded.
For many years, AT&T, Verizon and different companies relationship again to the previous Bell System have recognized that the lead of their networks was a potential well being threat to their staff and had the potential to leach into the close by atmosphere, in response to paperwork and interviews with former staff.
They knew their staff working with lead usually had excessive quantities of the steel of their blood, research from the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s present. Environmental data from an AT&T smelting unit within the Nineteen Eighties present contamination within the soil. Authorities companies have performed inspections, prompted by employee complaints, that led to citations for violations involving lead publicity and different hazardous supplies greater than a dozen instances over 4 a long time, data present.
Over time, AT&T officers themselves expressed concern about potential employee publicity to steer. Dangers embrace kidney points, coronary heart illness and reproductive issues in adults, in response to U.S. well being companies.
But the businesses haven’t meaningfully acted on potential well being dangers to the encompassing communities or made efforts to watch the cables, in response to historic information, paperwork and interviews with former executives, security managers and staff who dealt with lead. The telecom trade’s lead-covered cables have been largely unknown to the general public. The trade doesn’t have a program to take away or assess their situation. 4 former Federal Communications Fee chairs stated they weren’t conscious of lead in telephone networks.
Within the 2010 presentation, Malone acknowledged the environmental impression, saying that “soils retained between 83 and 98 p.c of the launched lead inside 2 inches” from the cables.
“They knew the dangers, however they didn’t need to do quite a bit to mitigate it,” stated James Winn, who labored as a cable splicer amongst different jobs for a number of Bell System firms for 45 years. Firm testing within the Nineteen Eighties discovered that he had excessive ranges of lead in his blood, however his supervisor informed him to return to working with lead shortly after, he stated.
A Wall Road Journal investigation has revealed that telecom firms left behind greater than 2,000 probably harmful lead-covered cables underneath water, in soil and overhead. Many extra are prone to exist.
Journal reporters visited about 300 cable websites across the U.S. and picked up roughly 200 environmental samples at practically 130 of these websites. Roughly 80% of sediment samples taken subsequent to underwater cables confirmed elevated ranges of lead.
Docs say that no quantity of lead is protected, whether or not ingested or inhaled, notably for kids’s bodily and psychological growth. With out additional publicity, lead stays within the blood for less than about two or three months, however it may be saved in organs longer and in bones even for many years, in response to Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of this system for international public well being and the widespread good at Boston Faculty.
Like asbestos, lead should both be sealed away or eliminated utterly to get rid of the dangers. USTelecom, a commerce group that represents firms within the trade, stated “the scientific literature and accessible research” on lead-sheathed cables present they aren’t a public-health difficulty or a threat to staff when precautions are used.
The group declined to offer or describe any such research and literature.
Malone, who has labored for AT&T for greater than 20 years and is taken into account an trade lead knowledgeable, declined to publicly remark.
An AT&T spokesman stated that “these are public trade shows about occupational well being procedures to guard staff through the removing or restore, which is in keeping with our dedication to managing these legacy cables in accordance with related legal guidelines and rules. It will be false and deceptive for the Journal to indicate or state that any trade presentation about employee security is an acknowledgement that lead-clad cables pose a common public well being difficulty. As mirrored in these shows, we observe finest practices to take care of this legacy infrastructure in a approach that’s protected for all primarily based on established science.”
In a 2013 presentation, Malone described how staff needs to be protected within the area, saying “POISON” indicators wanted to be positioned visibly for technicians working with lead, and that staff dealing with the poisonous steel ought to put on respirator masks and disposable Tyvek coveralls.
“The well being, security and well-being of our individuals, our clients, and our communities is of paramount significance,” AT&T stated in a written assertion. “The legacy cables that stay in our networks are maintained in compliance with relevant environmental, well being, and security guidelines, in keeping with our strategy for all our infrastructure.”
On a webpage, AT&T stated the Journal’s reporting on potential hurt related to steer cables “conflicts not solely with what unbiased consultants and long-standing science have said concerning the security of lead-clad telecom cables but additionally our personal testing.” The corporate offered the Journal with a single check report associated to 1 lead-cable location, in Lake Tahoe, that stated it discovered “very low” ranges of lead within the water and that the lake’s water high quality is “not adversely impacted” by the lead cables.
In a written assertion, Verizon stated it’s “taking these issues relating to lead-sheathed cables very severely,” and is testing websites the place the Journal discovered contamination. It added: “There are lots of lead-sheathed cables in our community (and elsewhere within the trade) which can be nonetheless utilized in offering important voice and information providers, together with entry to 911 and different alarms, to clients nationwide.”
The cables have been laid by the unique American Phone & Telegraph, often known as the Bell System, which operated as a bunch of regional phone firms beginning within the late 1800s. With the breakup of the Bell System’s monopoly in 1984, regional telephone firms grew to become unbiased opponents that consolidated over time to kind the spine of contemporary carriers AT&T and Verizon.
Some lead consultants say the cables needs to be eliminated, and any contaminated soil needs to be taken to an applicable landfill. Eradicating a lead-sheathed cable may launch lead into the atmosphere through the course of however some consultants say leaving the lead may lead to decadeslong contamination.
Different consultants say less-drastic measures may lower the chance of contamination, akin to masking areas the place the cables are uncovered. Eradicating underwater cables can be a much more sophisticated and expensive course of that would require an evaluation of the chance of disturbing the lead.
Telecommunications firms have wrestled with deal with the cables. Malone’s 2010 presentation famous that eradicating the cables that have been underground wasn’t straightforward. “Extraction of cable from underground duct can launch sudden excessive ranges of lead mud,” the presentation stated. “Underground cable presents actual prospects for overexposure” to staff eradicating them.
The oldest cables are usually on the backside of a manhole or conduit, stated retired AT&T govt Invoice Smith. Cables from the Nineteen Twenties could possibly be practically inconceivable to drag out, he stated. “Within the underground, except you actually wanted the conduit duct…you would go away it in place,” he stated.
Chuck Smith, former president of AT&T West, stated firm executives took environmental and employee security severely. When a lead cable “was left in place, it was left in place as a result of it was safer…than to only dig up,” stated Smith, who retired in 2006 after practically 40 years at AT&T.
The query of who could be chargeable for any cleanup is sophisticated, stated Brian Berkey, an affiliate professor of authorized research and enterprise ethics on the College of Pennsylvania’s Wharton College. When the cables have been put in, in the event that they have been an inexpensive and accountable choice, and thought of protected on the time, the cleanup may ethically be a collective duty involving firms and the federal government, he stated.
LEAD ROOTS
After the invention of the phone within the 1870s, the primary strains to go up have been single-line connections strung on poles, connecting one level to a different. Tangles of wires quickly crammed metropolis skies. Within the late nineteenth century, firms started utilizing cables containing bundles of wires that delivered extra capability and higher transmission. Sheathing the cable in lead reduce electromagnetic noise within the wires and saved water out. By 1940, nearly all of the telephone community was in lead-covered cables.
There have been indicators on the daybreak of the trade that lead may hurt staff, Alice Hamilton, a pioneer of contemporary industrial medication and the primary feminine school member at Harvard College, included phone staff amongst these going through dangers from lead in her 1925 e book “Industrial Poisons in the US.”
By 1956, the Bell System was utilizing round 100 million kilos of lead a yr, in response to a Bell doc. That’s heavier than greater than 6,660 male African elephants.
The trade started to deploy extra cables that used plastics and various metals as an alternative of lead over roughly the following decade, and moved away from putting in new lead cables utterly, as know-how improved. Employees nonetheless maintained the previous cables utilizing molten lead and, at instances, eliminated them.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, the U.S. started limiting lead in gasoline and banned lead-based paint in residential properties. The Occupational Security and Well being Administration drafted its first requirements on employee publicity to steer and different hazards.
Bell Laboratories, the Bell System’s know-how and science engine, was a frontrunner in lead analysis within the Nineteen Seventies and invented a tool that would display screen for lead publicity from a drop of blood.
A 1977 Bell examine offered a snapshot of excessive lead ranges amongst feminine lead-soldering staff at Western Electrical, then the manufacturing arm of the Bell System. Primarily based on testing, it estimated that the employees had blood-lead ranges within the vary of 24 to 45 micrograms per deciliter. These ranges have been as excessive as triple the typical degree of the inhabitants on the time. Bell scientists concluded the employees have been “not being uncovered to a lead hazard” as a result of a management group of Western Electrical workplace staff additionally had excessive estimated lead ranges.
Blood assessments confirmed excessive lead ranges in one other team of workers—cable splicers, who fastened and maintained cables. A 1978 letter between Communications Employees of America union officers stated that AT&T “has confirmed that cable splicers could also be uncovered to a lead hazard,” and that the corporate “is anxious to check splicers that will have been or are uncovered to overdoses of lead.”
The typical lead ranges within the blood of 90 cable splicers was greater than 27 micrograms per deciliter, and 29% reported central nervous system signs, in response to a 1980 paper by Mount Sinai, Bell Labs and New York Metropolis’s well being division.
Whereas rules and lead bans drove down publicity throughout the inhabitants, there have been nonetheless greater than 40,000 telecom staff working with lead in 1983, in response to a Bell System doc. Regardless that firms stopped deploying new lead-sheathed cables within the Nineteen Sixties, the prevailing community nonetheless wanted to be maintained, and lead-based solder has remained in use.
SMELTING HEADACHES
Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, AT&T was recycling massive quantities of supplies because it up to date its programs and retired tons of lead used all through the community. The corporate did the work utilizing its AT&T Nassau Metals division, a part of Western Electrical.
The smelting unit, which an AT&T govt stated on the time obtained about 50 million kilos of lead-sheathed cable a yr in Gaston, S.C., obtained citations from the state’s labor division for security violations that affected, amongst others, “150 soften store staff who’re overexposed to steer.”
Environmental data present lead contamination within the soil subsequent to the positioning. An inspection doc from 1985 stated staff there have been uncovered to airborne lead practically 17 instances OSHA’s security customary. And a handwritten desk by an AT&T official confirmed that amongst 90 staff examined that yr, the typical blood lead degree was 33.7 micrograms per deciliter, greater than twice common ranges again then and practically 10 instances what’s thought-about excessive right now.
Underneath U.S. Environmental Safety Company and state scrutiny, AT&T agreed to assist clear up the positioning, together with correctly containing waste and environmental monitoring.
Proof means that staff have nonetheless confronted publicity to steer within the fashionable period. A employee at CenturyLink, an organization that descended from Ma Bell, alerted the CWA union that he was feeling intensely fatigued following work in manholes, triggering a 2013 Minnesota OSHA investigation that led to 9 “severe” lead-related citations, in response to union officers and regulatory data for CenturyLink, which now goes by Lumen Applied sciences.
A Minnesota OSHA doc known as the corporate’s lead coaching “insufficient” and confirmed {that a} employee dealing with lead was uncovered to airborne lead averaging 76 micrograms per cubic meter of air over eight hours, 52% above the regulator’s restrict.
“The well-being of our staff and communities is of the utmost significance,” a Lumen spokeswoman stated, including that the corporate has specialised security coaching for dealing with lead-sheathed cables and can present testing to present and former staff.
Between 2007 and 2016, blood-lead check outcomes for 208 Verizon staff confirmed that 85, or greater than 40%, had ranges above 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, in response to Verizon information shared with the union. That’s the present degree at which the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention recommends looking for medical or environmental follow-up.
Rob Prokopowicz, who retired from Verizon in 2021 after 40 years of working with lead, stated he raised issues with managers about routinely pumping out water from manholes that was probably contaminated with lead, together with in entrance of colleges. He stated they informed him, “For those who don’t really feel protected, we’ll ship another person.”
“When the manholes fill with rainwater and runoff, all of the water we’re pumping out is contaminated with lead mud,” stated Prokopowicz, 62.
“For the small proportion of our workforce that will must work round lead-sheathed cable, we’ve got a sturdy security and well being program to offer coaching, supplies and assets wanted to take action safely,” a Verizon spokesman stated. The corporate stated its work practices on such cables are primarily based on the accessible science, authorized necessities and steering from medical and work-safety organizations.
“Verizon’s lengthy standing coverage permits for any worker who requests to be examined for lead publicity to take action at any time and with none price to the worker,” he stated.
A examine final yr at Mount Sinai of 20 Verizon staff, with a mean tenure of 23 years, confirmed that 60% had measurable lead of their tibias, stated Dr. Rabeea Khan, the examine’s principal investigator. “The truth that we will detect it in your bones suggests you may have had long-term publicity,” she stated.
Practically half of the employees within the examine, principally cable splicers, confirmed lead concentrations of 10 micrograms per gram of bone, indicating elevated threat of neurological or organic issues, Khan stated. Mount Sinai is planning a broader examine later this yr.
In Walker County, Texas, some landowners alleged in a 2016 federal lawsuit that an deserted AT&T underground lead cable that ran from Dallas to Houston was contaminating their properties, and demanded its removing. AT&T argued that “nonuse alone is inadequate to point out abandonment,” and that the statute of limitations had handed. It additionally contested the declare that the cable was contaminated. The case was dismissed in 2020.
In 2021, an environmental group sued AT&T, alleging that two lead cables on the ground of Lake Tahoe have been leaching lead, presenting “imminent and substantial endangerment to well being and the atmosphere,” and requested for them to be eliminated. The cables are estimated to be sheathed in additional than 95,000 kilos of lead, primarily based on permits filed by AT&T and an assay of a Lake Tahoe cable by Marine Taxonomic Companies, which assisted the Journal in gathering samples for testing.
AT&T disputed the allegations and stated it had stopped utilizing the cables across the Nineteen Eighties and now not owned them. It agreed to settle the case and take away the cables at a value of as much as $1.5 million.
The cleanup has been delayed repeatedly. AT&T’s contractor has cited logistical points together with that removing may “disrupt nesting birds (bald eagles, Peregrine falcon, osprey),” in response to an e-mail reviewed by the Journal.
Testing in Lake Tahoe by the Journal in March and Could of this yr confirmed excessive ranges of lead close to the cables. AT&T stated the Journal’s assessments battle with its personal outcomes from March 2021.
The corporate’s chief govt, John Stankey, has a home subsequent to the lake and he has given cash to The League to Save Lake Tahoe, an environmental group, in response to property and donation data. The League to Save Lake Tahoe, in an internet posting in 2020, referred to an area information article headlined: “The Cables Leaking Lead in Lake Tahoe.” The group is just not a celebration to the Tahoe litigation. AT&T and Stankey declined to touch upon his residence or donations.
The League to Save Lake Tahoe stated it has labored to have the cables eliminated as shortly as potential. “As a result of we’ve obtained donations from AT&T prior to now, we had entry to their senior management, which we used to voice our issues and push them to take away the cables,” a spokesman for The League to Save Lake Tahoe stated.
In response to the Journal’s reporting, AT&T, Verizon and a bunch representing the broader telecom trade stated they might work collectively to handle any issues or points associated to lead-sheathed cables.
The EPA hasn’t gotten concerned within the Tahoe dispute or publicly commented on the removing course of.