#Omaha Is Home to a Massive #Superfund Site. Most Kids Living There Aren’t Tested for #Lead
by Chris Bowling, Flatwater Free Press
April 15, 2026
Excerpt: "For more than a century, smoke from a lead smelter and other factories deposited 400 million pounds of the #toxic metal across the city’s east side. That prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to begin investigating the pollution in 1999, and a few years later, the agency declared 27 square miles of east Omaha to be a Superfund site. Over more than two decades, the EPA and the city have dug up and replaced nearly 14,000 yards, from about a third of the site’s residential properties.
Faced with similar public health concerns about lead, 13 states, including #NewJersey, #Louisiana and neighboring #Iowa, have passed laws requiring universal #LeadScreening, meaning all kids would get a blood test before entering kindergarten.
But not #Nebraska."
Read more:
https://www.propublica.org/article/omaha-nebraska-lead-kids-blood-tests
#USPol #NebraskaPol #LeadPoisoning #SuperfundSite