Santa Ana, CA currently faces an environmental crisis due to hazardous soil lead levels spread city-wide. Lead exposure in children has many adverse health impacts.
Affected Areas
Is it possible your child may live or go to school in an area affected by lead contamination?
Map of elementary schools, daycares/preschools, and parks in correlation with soil lead concentrations (from left to right). Red and orange areas indicate the highest levels of soil lead, while blue and green indicate the lowest levels of soil lead. The darker yellow portion already exceeds CA state safety guideline of 80 ppm (parts per million) for the presence of lead.
Background
In 2017, this environmental concern was raised by Santa Ana residents. Reporter, Yvette Cabrera, published an article in ThinkProgress about the issue. The ¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana! (Lead-Free Santa Ana!) collaborative was created between Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ), Jovenes Cultivando Cambios (Youth Cultivating Change), and the University of California Irvine (UCI) to work on community-based participatory research (CBPR) to determine lead concentrations in the soil. Santa Ana is a predominantly Latina/o, immigrant and low-income community bound by multiple freeways, with a large industrial corridor, and with 65% of houses built prior to 1960.
In 2018-2020, this partnership collected and looked at over 1,500 soil samples and discovered a scary pattern – soil lead levels were highest in Census tracts with a greater proportion of low-income residents, children, and Latina/o residents. Many of these residents have grown concerned over how life-exposure may shape children’s behaviors and academic performance; linkages between school and criminal legal systems; and the absence of a comprehensive family-, school-, and community-level approach to fostering a healthy community and reducing the social, academic, and health consequences of lead exposures.
Primary Causes
The primary cause of soil lead was the use of leaded gasoline, which was determined by looking at the maps of the oldest roadways in Santa Ana and seeing it was almost directly correlated to where the highest concentrations of soil lead exist in the city. Leaded gasoline was used throughout the United States up until it was banned in 1996. Other contributors to lead poisoning include lead-based paint as well as lead in agricultural products, however, neither is as significant of a factor in the city of Santa Ana compared to remnants of leaded gasoline.
Map of roadways in Santa Ana as of 1931 (left), map of roadways in Santa Ana as of 2020 (center), and map of soil lead concentrations in Santa Ana as of 2018 (right).
Who is most affected?
- People of color
- People who are lower income
- Those without a college education
- Those who rent homes/apartments
- Residents without health insurance
- Residents with immigrant status background
- Limited English proficiency
- Latinx residents
What are the health effects of lead poisoning?
Lead can cause or exacerbate:
- Anemia
- Abdominal Pain
- Asthma
- Headaches
- Rashes
- Joint and Muscle Pains
- High Blood Pressure
- Memory Loss
- Learning Disabilities
- Behavioral Issues
- Hearing Problems
- Speech Problems
- Seizures
Role of I-CLEAN
The Inequities in Childhood Life-Course Lead Exposure and Academic and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes (I-CLEAN) study aims to work with the community to look closely at the effects of life-course childhood lead exposures to estimate the prevalence and its impacts to then develop a multi-level Public Health Equity Action Plan to guide preventative and mitigative strategies for reducing lead exposures and its negative health effects.
Community Initiatives
Since all of this research, community members and organizations have gathered together to push for policy change regarding lead contamination. In 2022, Santa Ana residents rallied together to protest in front of the city council for the inclusion of policies related to remediating the lead (prioritizing a method known as bioremediation) as well as more access to blood lead testing for affected residents. We were successful in getting these policies passed in the General Plan Update. Now we have bi-monthly meetings with representatives from the city of Santa Ana, OCEJ, Getting Residents Engaged and Empowering Neighborhoods – Madison Park Neighborhood Association (Green-MPNA), OC Healthcare Agency, and more to work on implementing these policies and reducing the impact of lead poisoning as a whole throughout the city.
As of now, OCEJ is continuing to raise awareness and educate community members about the soil lead issue by hosting focus groups to gather resident opinions on solutions they want to see around lead contamination summarized into an Environmental Health Equity Action Plan, creating a comic book with the assistance of four OC-based high schoolers/college students that illustrates the soil lead issue for younger audiences, community and school-based presentations and bioremediation seed ball workshops, and more.