Tristan Baurick, Verite News and Halle Parker, Verite News
NEW ORLEANS — Sarah Hess began taking her toddler, Josie, to Mickey Markey Playground in 2010 as a result of she thought it might provide a refuge from lead.
After a routine physician go to revealed Josie had lead poisoning, Hess rapidly traced the supply to the crumbling paint in her household’s century-old dwelling within the Bayou St. John neighborhood. While it underwent lead remediation, the household stayed in a more recent, lead-free home close to Markey.
“Everyone was telling us the safest place to play was outside at playgrounds, so that’s where we went,” Hess stated. Josie grew to become a Markey common, enjoying on the swings and slides.
Josie’s subsequent blood take a look at was a shock. “It skyrocketed,” Hess stated. Josie’s lead ranges had leaped to almost 5 instances the nationwide well being normal. The probably perpetrator, in accordance with scientists on the time, was Josie’s favourite park. Soil testing discovered it had dangerously excessive ranges of lead.
City officers took no motion to tell Markey’s customers or make the park secure. But dad and mom began posting warning indicators on the park and flooded City Hall with calls and emails. With Josie on her hip, Hess made an impassioned speech at a City Council assembly.
In brief order, the town employed an organization to check Markey and different parks and pledged to repair the lead drawback wherever it was discovered.
“My impression was they were going to make them all lead-free parks,” Hess stated.
But a Verite News investigation performed over 4 months in 2025 discovered that lead air pollution in New Orleans parks not solely persists — it’s extra widespread than beforehand recognized. Dozens of metropolis parks with playgrounds stay unsafe, together with Markey and different parks that underwent a city-sponsored lead remediation in 2011.
The findings point out that metropolis officers fell brief of their cleanup efforts then, and {that a} very massive variety of New Orleans youngsters are uncovered to extreme quantities of lead, stated Howard Mielke, a retired Tulane University toxicologist and one of many nation’s prime specialists on lead contamination.
“It’s a failed program,” he stated. “They didn’t do what they needed to do to bring the lead levels down in a single park.”
Verite News reporters examined a whole lot of soil samples from 84 metropolis parks with playgrounds in fall 2025. Adrienne Katner, a lead-contamination researcher with Louisiana State University, verified the outcomes. The testing discovered that about half the parks had lead concentrations that exceeded the federal hazard level established in 2024 for soil in city areas.
“If there’s evidence of kids playing in soils that are as high as you described, that’s kind of horrifying,” Gabriel Filippelli, an Indiana University biochemist who research lead publicity, advised Verite News.
Public well being researchers and medical doctors say that youngsters beneath 6 take up lead-laden mud extra simply than adults, contaminating their blood and harming the long-term growth of their brains and nervous methods. There is not any recognized secure publicity stage for kids, and even hint quantities may end up in behavioral issues and decrease cognitive talents.
Larry Barabino is the CEO of the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, which oversees a lot of the metropolis’s parks. He stated the town doesn’t routinely take a look at for lead in parks, and he confirmed that the final important effort to take action was in 2011.
He known as Verite’s outcomes “definitely concerning” and pledged to work with metropolis officers, native specialists, and a metropolis environmental guide, Materials Management Group, to probably remediate unsafe parks.
“It’s definitely concerning if it’s at the level that’s considered a true risk or threat, and we would get it to Capital Projects immediately to get MMG out there,” Barabino stated, referring to the News Orleans Capital Projects Administration. “If there’s anything that’s a true environmental concern or risk, that’s something that we believe in definitely making sure we take action.”
But New Orleans is in monetary straits, with a budget deficit of about $220 million, and it’s unclear what sources new mayor Helena Moreno would be capable to commit to restart lead remediation efforts. In response to the monetary disaster, Moreno has already eradicated dozens of positions and plans to furlough 700 staff in the future per pay interval to save cash. Moreno’s administration didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Andrea Young heard pledges just like Barabino’s 15 years in the past. Like Hess, Young had a baby who frequented Markey and had excessive lead ranges in her blood. Alongside different moms, she helped push the town to take motion. Young thought that they had succeeded however stated she now realizes that the town didn’t do sufficient.
“It makes me question the value” of the work the town did, Young stated, “and the safety we felt in letting our kids play there again.”
Testing New Orleans Parks
Lead is often present in very small quantities in pure soil. The common lead abundance in U.S. soils is 26 parts per million, equal to lower than an oz of lead per ton of soil.
But New Orleans, like many different cities, has an extended historical past of lead contamination in its soil, from sources together with lead-based paint, leaded gasoline, and emissions from waste incinerators and different industrial services. Lead particles unfold simply by wind, finally settling within the topsoil.
The federal hazard stage for lead in soil was 400 ppm until early 2024, when the Environmental Protection Agency lowered it to 200 ppm for many residential areas and 100 ppm in city areas like New Orleans with a number of sources of lead publicity. Last fall, the Trump administration eliminated the lower 100-ppm limit, arguing it was complicated to have two thresholds. It didn’t argue that the 100-ppm stage was secure.
More of a information than a mandate, the EPA screening ranges can steer federal cleanup actions and are sometimes adopted by state and metropolis governments to tell native responses to steer contamination. California has lengthy had a a lot lower standard of 80 ppm.
Mielke stated the Trump administration’s change doesn’t align with the science, which has lengthy proven that youngsters are harmed when uncovered to soil with ranges under 100 ppm. He was one in all a number of scientists who had pushed for decrease thresholds after the EPA established its first screening ranges greater than 30 years in the past.
He stated the 100-ppm stage ought to nonetheless be utilized in city areas, particularly New Orleans.
Verite performed soil exams on the 84 metropolis parks that property inventories and maps record as having play constructions. Samples have been taken from floor soil, which is most certainly to come back into contact with youngsters’s fingers and toys or be inhaled when kicked up throughout play or blown by the wind.
The common soil pattern collected by Verite contained lead ranges of about 121 ppm. Elevated lead ranges tended to observe the age of the neighborhood. The metropolis’s older neighborhoods, together with the Irish Channel and Algiers Point, had a number of the highest lead ranges, whereas locations like Gentilly and New Orleans East, developed principally after the Nineteen Fifties, tended to have decrease ranges, in accordance with Verite’s findings.
The highest lead ranges have been discovered at Evans Park within the Freret neighborhood. Beside a low-hanging oak department, on floor worn naked by youngsters’s play, Verite recorded lead at 5,998 ppm, practically 60 instances the 100-ppm city soils threshold.
Verite spoke to greater than a dozen dad and mom at playgrounds all through the town, and most have been shocked on the ranges of lead within the parks.
In the Irish Channel, Meg Potts watched her son run across the dusty Brignac playground. All of Verite’s samples at that park surpassed the edge the EPA deemed secure for city areas, reaching practically 600 ppm.
Potts knew excessive lead ranges existed within the metropolis however stated she didn’t notice her neighborhood park might be a supply of publicity for her son.
“ I’m just, like, thinking about all of this now because he’s had to go in and have his lead tested,” she stated. “He’s like right on the cusp of having too-high lead.”
Katner, the LSU researcher, stated Verite’s outcomes can function a place to begin for metropolis officers to conduct extra complete testing in parks, noting that even a single lead scorching spot in a park is regarding.
“The kid playing in that part of the park is going to get the highest dose,” she stated.
A Legacy of Lead
Before the Nineteen Seventies, lead was ubiquitous. A 2022 study estimated that a lot of the U.S. inhabitants born earlier than the Eighties was poisoned by dangerously excessive ranges of lead in early childhood, leading to a mean lack of a minimum of one IQ level.
Lead air pollution from automobiles unfold into areas close to roads, particularly main thoroughfares, till leaded gasoline was phased out by 1996. Similarly, emissions from trash incinerators and industrial websites contaminated the encompassing soil in some New Orleans neighborhoods till they have been closed within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s.
Today, probably the most pervasive supply of lead in soil is degraded paint. Lead-based paint was used extensively for properties and buildings till it was banned in 1978. In New Orleans, a lot of the homes have been constructed earlier than 1980, in accordance with the 2024 American Community Survey. As the paint deteriorates, Tulane University epidemiologist Felicia Rabito stated, it could possibly chip or flip into poisonous mud.
“ The leaded paint goes straight into the dust and it goes straight into the soils, which is a major source of exposure for young children in the city,” stated Rabito, who research lead poisoning and different well being circumstances.
Children beneath 6 are particularly susceptible, partially as a result of they like to stay their fingers of their mouths. A baby consuming a dropped Cheerio or placing their thumb of their mouth after enjoying on a seesaw may be sufficient to trigger hurt. Rabito advisable that oldsters keep away from contaminated playgrounds.
The solely method to know whether or not a baby has lead poisoning is a medical take a look at. By state law, Louisiana well being care suppliers are required to make sure each little one between 6 months and 6 years of age receives a minimum of two blood exams, advisable at age 1 and age 2.
But the regulation doesn’t embody a method to implement these testing necessities, so many well being care suppliers don’t take a look at, in accordance with a 2017 report from the Louisiana Department of Health. In 2022, fewer than 1 in 10 youngsters beneath 6 have been screened for lead poisoning within the metropolis, in accordance with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“ There’s not anything that we can say about lead poisoning or lead levels in children in Orleans Parish with any scientific certainty,” Rabito stated. “ Parents really need to get their children tested.”
Limited Soil Testing, Patchy Fixes
In 2011, the final time there was outcry over lead air pollution in parks, the New Orleans well being commissioner on the time, Karen DeSalvo, stated the town ought to do “everything we can to understand what the risk might be and to remediate it.” But she additionally known as it “not the greatest challenge, honestly,” according to The Times-Picayune.
Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu promised a complete response.
“The city will take all necessary measures to investigate possible lead contamination in other parks and playgrounds and remediate them as soon as possible,” he stated in March 2011.
Two months later, testing and remediation have been accomplished at a number of parks. Parents introduced their youngsters again to the reopened playgrounds.
Despite metropolis leaders’ assurances of a broad response, solely 16 parks have been examined in 2011 and the town’s piecemeal cleanup lined solely patches of contaminated soil fairly than total parks, in accordance with paperwork obtained by public information requests.
That shocked the vocal group of fogeys who had pushed for cleansing up the Markey playground. Young, one of many moms, stated the scope of the 2011 testing and remediation was way more restricted than she thought.
“If the majority of the parks they tested were high, what would make them think all the others are fine?” she stated.
Verite’s testing discovered excessive ranges of lead at a number of playgrounds that have been remediated in 2011, together with Markey.
The outcomes disturbed Mielke, the Tulane toxicologist.
In 2010, Mielke led an effort to scale back lead publicity at 10 non-public little one care middle playgrounds in New Orleans. He and his crew lined all the footprint of every playground with water-pervious plastic cloth after which 6 inches of Mississippi River sediment from the Bonnet Carré Spillway, a supply of unpolluted, low cost, and simply accessible soil. Lead ranges fell, with most playgrounds testing under 10 ppm.
In distinction, the town’s remediation was principally restricted to areas with lead ranges above 400 ppm, leaving many hazardous areas uncovered. Testing and remediation reviews obtained by Verite sometimes confirmed MMG centered on two or three spots in every park, with the remaining going untreated.
At Easton Park in Bayou St. John, as an example, the 2011 remediation lined 4 areas totaling about 4,700 sq. toes, however the park’s playground was left untouched. Verite measured 4 samples across the playground that exceeded the 100-ppm threshold, together with 1,060-ppm and 603-ppm readings close to Easton’s swing set.
One park, Evans within the Freret neighborhood, wasn’t remediated regardless of lead ranges as excessive as 610 ppm in 2011. The purpose wasn’t clear in progress reviews submitted by MMG. In Verite’s 2025 exams, Evans recorded the very best stage, with 5,998 ppm in a single location.
MMG didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Landrieu didn’t reply to a request for remark. DeSalvo, who retired final summer time as Google’s chief well being officer, stated “extremely limited resources” compelled the town to weigh its response to steer contamination in parks with the various different well being threats residents confronted.
“We worked to address the range of exposures whenever possible with the resources we could muster,” she stated.
A Road Map for Cleanup?
Filippelli, of Indiana University, stated the town ought to conduct complete testing of each park and do common checkups.
But as a result of lead contamination in New Orleans parks is in depth and metropolis leaders are struggling to shut a big price range deficit, Filippelli recommends that the town remediate the worst parks first.
He and Mielke don’t consider the town should go the costly route of full remediation, which entails digging up lead-tainted soil and trucking it to a hazardous waste landfill. It’s often pointless if a park is correctly capped with clear soil, Filippelli stated.
Verite obtained price estimates for 10 of the 13 parks focused for remediation in 2011. The whole price was $83,000 in 2011, or about $120,000 at this time. The work lined simply greater than 1.3 acres throughout the ten properties. Filippelli estimated that related work might be completed at this time for about $20,000 per acre — a couple of fifth of what was spent to remediate simply over an acre at New Orleans parks.
Remediation must be coupled with efforts to scale back contamination from close by sources, primarily previous homes shedding lead-based paint, Rabito stated.
“When you clean up soil, you’re not going to do it much good if you haven’t identified what’s contaminating the soil,” she stated.
Cleaning up New Orleans parks can be more likely to require sustained public stress, stated the dad and mom concerned with the lead subject in 2011.
“I was not intending to kick butts or make anybody look bad,” Claudia Copeland stated of her efforts to alert dad and mom in regards to the risks at Markey. “But nothing would have happened unless all these parents were calling in to the city.”
Methodology
Verite News reporters Tristan Baurick and Halle Parker have been skilled to make use of an X-ray fluorescence analyzer, or XRF, a handheld machine that may detect the distinctive traits of lead at hint ranges, all the way down to 10 elements per million. The analyzer is extensively utilized by authorities and college scientists.
The reporters examined 531 soil samples over a month in late 2025, following protocols developed by retired Tulane University toxicologist Howard Mielke and vetted by three different lead-contamination researchers. The reporters examined floor soil in and round play constructions and different areas of parks that youngsters use. Of the greater than 110 parks in New Orleans, Verite targeting the 84 that metropolis property inventories and maps record as having play constructions. The reporters took between three and 11 samples at every park, relying on the scale, web site accessibility, and ranges of contamination. A GPS machine was used to report every pattern’s location.
Verite’s outcomes have been reviewed by Adrienne Katner, a lead-contamination researcher at Louisiana State University. She verified the accuracy of the testing by evaluating it with a smaller set of park soil samples collected by her crew final summer time.
While legitimate, the strategy did have limitations. The outcomes can’t be used to find out the state of an entire park. But even one elevated soil pattern can present a place to begin for metropolis officers to conduct extra complete testing.
This article was produced in collaboration with Verite News. The four-month investigation was supported by a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting grant funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute. It was additionally produced as a venture for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship fund and Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism.
