This high school is contaminated with lead. It blames the recycling plant next door

As the closing bell rings at Jordan high school, a cacophony of adolescent chatter nearly overpowers the mechanical noises that emanate from the metal recycling plant next door. Students hardly register the lustrous dust – laced with lead, chromium and other contaminants – that settles into the blacktop as they rush out the front gates.

For generations of Jordan students, the mounds of scrap metal behind campus are a familiar sight. The high school opened in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts in 1923, while the plant, owned by S&W Atlas Iron & Metal Co has been there since 1949.

“Nobody really complained about it, because I guess we just kind of had to get used to it,” said Diana Salvador, who graduated from Jordan high in 2019. But she’s horrified when she thinks back. “We would sit outside, eating lunch while they were throwing scrap pieces around. And we were breathing that air – inhaling lead.”

It’s only in recent years that local authorities started to grow concerned – linking toxic contamination on school grounds to the piles of metal detritus next door. Lab testing in 2020 commissioned by the school district and state authorities found dangerous levels of lead – a neurotoxin – and other heavy metals in the school’s softball field and inside classrooms. Test results reviewed by the Guardian revealed concentrations several times higher than what the US government considers safe for children.

Now, two lawsuits could push Atlas out, and allow Jordan high students to breathe a bit easier.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/25/california-high-school-watts-pollution