Lead smelter has left a permanent imprint on the Helena Valley

For more than 100 years, the American Smelting and Refining Company was considered the benevolent, if sometimes demanding, overlord of East Helena. The company helped fund the town's fire department, gave scholarships to students, shot off fireworks on holidays and supplied manpower and equipment in times of crisis. Asarco employed hundreds of people at good wages, allowing their employees to provide a comfortable life for their families, and during the past two decades spent millions on environmental improvements for its operations.

But as Asarco begins to shut down the East Helena plant, a darker side to this familial figure is emerging, one that will have a lasting legacy long after the lights are dimmed at the smelter.

For more than 70 years, the smelter was basically unregulated and spewed its toxic byproducts far beyond the boundaries of the plant. Reports show those emissions poisoned horses, cows, rabbits, trees, wheat and alfalfa, from Montana City to deep into the Helena Valley.

Underground, arsenic-laden water slowly seeps away from the plant toward the valley aquifer. Above ground, those harmful emissions, coupled with farmers unknowingly using tainted irrigation water on fields, has laden the land with heavy metals -- land that the company quietly purchased.

"To imagine that you can ever make this go away is just impossible," says Scott Brown, who has overseen the East Helena cleanup for the Environmental Protection Agency. "We have to learn to live with it, but still do what you can do. ... You try to do the best you can within the limitations of technology and reasonable funding, then you manage those wastes as well as you can."

Years of contamination

Lead occurs naturally in soil in the Helena area at about 80 parts per million; arsenic also is present in soil and water in small amounts. But those elements also are emitted through Asarco's smokestacks as part of the smelting process, and documents obtained by the Independent Record show that since at least 1957, Asarco knew there were elevated levels of lead in the soils around East Helena.

Those early results weren't too worrisome -- six samples on the Diehl Ranch east of East Helena ranged from 138 to 448 ppm, and even now the EPA only requires cleanup of soil starting between 500 and 1,200 ppm, with efforts focused on homes where young children live and play.

But 1964 tests showed lead levels of 1,100 to 3,374 ppm on ranch land just west of East Helena. A sample in Kennedy Park that year revealed a whopping 15,750 ppm, although that probably was an aberration, and another nearby sample was only 1,976 ppm. And by 1971, Asarco had 12 samples from the Tom Dartman Ranch north of East Helena showing lead levels from 530 to 4,350 ppm. Half of those samples were above 3,500 ppm.

By 1979, water tests were showing elevated levels of arsenic in Prickly Pear Creek, which flows through East Helena. The creek was a popular place for teens to cool off on hot summer days, and also supplied much of the irrigation water for valley farmers.

At one point, the arsenic in the creek flowing through Kennedy Park in December that year was sampled at 0.22 ppm; the standard for drinking water is 0.05 ppm. Arsenic can be lethal at 60 ppm.

The arsenic in Prickly Pear Creek was partially due to an old practice at Asarco of dumping its cooling water directly into the creek. But the lead and arsenic, along with cadmium, zinc and other elements, also were vaporized during the smelting process.

It was emitted as sulfur dioxide through the smelter smokestacks -- records dating from 1941 noted emissions were 125 tons per day that year, and ran up to 320 tons every day until 1977.

These emissions would settle over the Helena Valley for hours or even days, a persistent cloud that created a metallic taste in people's mouths. Residents regularly contacted the state health department to complain of difficulties breathing, nosebleeds, sore throats and children running home from school, trying not to inhale.

In addition, up until 1988, a standard practice at Asarco was to dump its hot slag onto the existing pile, which would send thick clouds of zinc-oxide filled vapor, with a little lead, across East Helena 15 times a day. Officials at that time said that although the clouds had a distinctive smell and noticeable taste, they were considered "pretty harmless."

Still, farmers told of ruined crops, with Asarco paying them for "severe sulfur dioxide damage" to trees, wheat and barley. An investigation in 1968 showed that plants within the town of East Helena -- hedges, apple trees, lettuce, carrot and beet foliage, flowers, cottonwood, birch and poplar trees -- also showed signs of sulfur dioxide injury.

By 1986, the state warned East Helena residents to limit consumption of local vegetables, and three years later, a "fact sheet" from the EPA expanded the contaminated area to include most of the Helena Valley. The EPA said tests showed that an area of about 100 square miles had been affected to some degree by Asarco emissions. The agency noted that vegetables grown in East Helena gardens had 5½ times as much arsenic, six times as much cadmium, and 17 times as much lead as those grown in Townsend. Oddly, the highest lead concentrations found were in lettuce grown more than a mile away from the smelter.

Animals being poisoned

People also were reporting dozens of animals dying from heavy metal buildup in their bodies, and Asarco often would reimburse ranchers and farmers for their losses. For example:

n In 1966, Asarco replaced a horse for rancher Fred Lamping, after a veterinarian inspected Lamping's sick horse. The Wilson Ditch, which runs past Asarco and through Lamping's property, recorded arsenic at 3.3 ppm in 1979, and to this day retains lead in its bank at 4,665 ppm.

n In 1971, Tom Dartman, whose 200-acre ranch was a mile northeast of the smelter, reported three steers died of the "blind staggers." Seven years later, state veterinarian pathologist Dr. Grover Ford confirmed that other cattle owned by Dartman suffered from a "clear-cut case of lead toxicosis," with blood lead levels as high as 0.75 ppm. The average level for cattle in other parts of the state was 0.3 ppm.

In 1977, Asarco sent a check to Dartman for $6,334, with plant manager Stan Lane noting in a letter that this was the final payment of a $25,000 settlement. Lane wrote "As was true of prior settlements with you for each of the years from 1968 through 1975 (which totaled $43,141.50), these settlements are not to be construed as an admission of liability on the part of Asarco, liability being at all times denied."

Lane also offered the rancher $275,000 for his 218-acre farm, noting that this payment included "all claims for loss of, or damage to, crops and livestock through calendar 1976." In addition, he urged Dartman to allow the company to make his property "environmentally acceptable for residential development" and was so confident of the methods to be used -- often deep plowing and new topsoil -- that Lane said he would guarantee the results in writing. Both those offers were rebuffed, but Dartman eventually sold his land to Asarco.

n During that winter of 1977-78, about 55 cattle within two miles of the lead smelter died from lead toxicosis. Also in 1978, Gail "Chick" Smith, whose family had a 900-acre ranch near Montana City, blamed the deaths of seven cattle on lead poisoning.

n In March 1985, a bag broke at a copper oxide production facility in the plant, which resulted in emissions that coated snow over much of the city with a dark material. Blood analysis of one dog, which became extremely ill after eating the snow, showed measurable lead and arsenic concentrations.

n But perhaps most chilling is a 1968 letter from a physiology professor at the Dartmouth Medical School. A landowner near the plant had noticed that many of the rabbits he raised were having stillborn litters, a situation that Dr. Henry Schroeder warned was indicative of lead poisoning.

"I would suspect that the East Helena mothers will also, in time" suffer similar problems, Schroeder stated in a letter to University of Montana researcher Clancy Gordon. "... I hope you have no friends or relatives in East Helena. I would fear for them."

A quick look at the number of fetal deaths in East Helena gives Lewis and Clark County Coroner Mickey Nelson pause, although this initial glance doesn't prove a connection between lead and the deaths.

Of the 232 fetal deaths in the Helena area since 1968, 19 were to fetuses whose mothers had an East Helena address. Another 20 fetuses that were stillborn to mothers who gave an East Helena valley address.

Today, East Helena makes up about 3.5 percent of the Helena and Helena Valley population, but the community alone had at least 8 percent of the fetal deaths between 1968 and 2000.

Nelson cautions that no one should jump to any conclusions with these numbers.

"There could be people who lived in East Helena, conceived under the smokestacks, but moved away to give birth. There could have been people who conceived in Colorado, lived in Utah and came to grandma's house in East Helena to deliver," Nelson said. "But if you just look at the addresses, I think this is significant.

"We're pretty high to start with (for fetal deaths) in the county. Now, I'm not shocked over anything much, but I was more shocked than I thought I would be after I looked at this."

Dr. Michael Spence with Montana's Department of Health and Human Services also is concerned about women in their childbearing years who may have had some type of long-term exposure to lead. Long-term exposure can cause lead to move from the blood and be stored in a person's bones.

While not aware of the fetal deaths in East Helena, Spence did say that in a pregnant woman, the hormones of pregnancy can mobilize the lead from her bones in the third trimester, and that lead will cross the placenta to the fetus. The third trimester is the time when brain development is greatest in a fetus.

"So obviously, women who are pregnant with lead in their body are contaminating their babies -- not intentionally, but they are," Spence said.

Nelson adds that it probably is close to impossible to try to prove any correlation between the fetal deaths and lead, if there was any relation in the first place.

"I don't think there ever was a fetus that had a work up to see if there were any heavy metals, et cetera, in the fetus," Nelson said.

No evidence of harm to adults

Overall, there is no clear evidence that the pollutants are taking a toll on human lives. Ask many East Helena residents, especially those who worked at Asarco or had relatives there, and they'll tell you of family members who lived in the shadows of the smelter smokestacks and had long, healthy lives. No deaths in East Helena have been linked to exposure to heavy metals emitted from the smelter and overall cancer rates of Lewis and Clark County residents seem to be at normal levels.

Inside the plant, Asarco has monitored the health of its employees for decades, testing their urine and later their blood, on a regular basis for exposure to lead. Arsenic and cadmium levels also are monitored. Employees are given physicals every six months, and those with high levels of lead in their blood are sent to work in the cleanest areas of the plant until their blood lead levels drop.

"We have taken some really positive steps to really keep an eye on people's biologic levels," said Adam Harbour, the medical hygienist for the East Helena smelter for the past eight years. "The blood lead levels in this plant, I think, have dropped at a rate that's unmatched anywhere. The employees became actively involved ... in protecting themselves. Back in September of 1994, we had 58 people in this plant with a blood lead average of 40 or greater. In October of 1999, we had zero. In the past 13 months, including this last month, we had no one in the plant with a blood lead level over 40. They've really done some amazing things here."

Outside of the smelter, Asarco has spent more than $13 million on cleaning up lead-laden yards and testing children for lead exposure.

Asarco officials acknowledge that the company contaminated areas beyond the plant's boundary, and it concerned them. For example, in a 1987 memo, former East Helena plant manager Pat DeSantis, who by that time had moved to the company's New York office, strongly urged the East Helena smelter operators to comply with air emission standards.

DeSantis wrote that the airborne lead readings for Sept. 11 to Oct. 29, 1986, "are of very great concern (his emphasis) and I believe (are) worse than those reported."

"Again, I want to re-emphasize to you that the readings are so bad that if they continue, the very existence of the East Helena Plant can be jeopardized. ... It is urgent that East Helena meet the lead standard with what you have if possible. I urge you to get your staff together and come up with a plan that can be observed and enforced every single day and night. ... Again, we have run out of time and you and your staff must get the job done in 1987 starting immediately."

Much of the damage to the land and water was done in the smelter's early years, from 1890 to 1980, before many people knew of the dangers the emissions posed. And although the company usually would loudly protest requirements put on it by the state and federal government to lower emissions or change operating procedures, Asarco eventually complied.

That compliance didn't come cheaply. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars -- about $108 million by Asarco's account since the early 1970s -- on cleaning up its operation, both at the plant site and off-site.

Evaluating lead impacts

Arsenic is a known carcinogen, with links to skin and lung cancers. Chronic exposure can affect the central nervous system, causing tingling in hands and feet.

Cadmium is common in cigarette smoke, and predominantly affects the kidneys.

But in East Helena, as in so many other towns with nearby smelters, the focus is on lead.

Long-term lead exposure in adults has been tied to Alzheimer's disease, kidney damage and neurological disorders. Low levels of exposure can cause joint and muscle pain, high blood pressure and infertility. Higher levels of lead poisoning can cause memory loss, nerve problems, and possibly death.

The normal method of assessing lead exposure involves testing a person's blood. But as scientists learn more about how lead reacts in the body, they're concerned that a blood lead level only shows a snapshot of how much lead is in the blood at that particular moment, not how much lead the body is retaining.

That's because once in the body, lead materializes in the blood, but with continued exposure lead moves into the bones and central nervous system. A new study shows that prolonged lead exposure by adults is associated with declines in cognitive functions.

Dr. Brian Schwartz at Johns Hopkins University said his research evaluated 535 former lead workers who worked at a plant that manufactured tetraethyl lead -- the lead added to gasoline -- from about 1923 to 1980. These workers had been exposed to both organic and inorganic lead and were evaluated in a series of neurobehavioral tests. The men were about 55 years old and hadn't been exposed to lead for about 16 years.

"Six tests showed statistically significant declines in performance over time due to lead exposure, after controlling for age and other important factors that can influence test scores," Schwartz said.

He also measured blood pressure, peripheral nervous system function and central nervous system function, and noted that lead was correlated with worse values for each.

Perhaps most importantly, though, Schwartz said he gauged the lead both in the workers blood and in their bones, and found that lead in tibia bones was a much better predictor of future neurobehavioral declines. Lead in blood has a half-life of about one month, which means that after one exposure to lead, the amount in a person's blood would drop by half in one month.

But once that lead moves into a person's bones, it has a half-life of about 30 years, Schwartz said.

"If we had relied on blood only (a single measurement), we would have concluded that lead did not influence test scores," Schwartz noted.

Schwartz and others warn that measuring only blood lead levels, and not the "total body burden" -- the amount of lead found in the bones of people with long-term lead exposure -- can give inaccurate pictures of how much lead actually is within a person's body.

Spence, with Montana's Department of Public Health and Human Services, is part of a research project looking at long-term impacts of people who lived near the Bunker Hill smelter in Idaho. He notes that the total body burden of lead can be significantly greater than the blood lead level, and wondered aloud about Asarco's practice of moving employees with high blood lead levels out of high exposure areas only until their blood lead levels dropped. Once the blood lead levels were in the acceptable range, the workers were rotated back into the main plant.

"One blood lead level measurement is a snapshot, a point in time, but it doesn't tell us whether the amount of lead in your body is going up, down or remaining stable," Spence said. "It (rotating employees) is what has been done for long periods of time and is an acceptable practice. Is it medically sound? I don't know. But I have to question that practice."

Harbour, the hygienist at the East Helena plant, defends their use of only blood lead levels.

"One of the reasons, I think, that we had kind of hesitated to look at bone lead is because it's fairly new technology. So once you have the information you really can't do anything with it -- it hasn't been put to a scale," Harbour said. "Blood lead levels are very well researched and have been thoroughly documented. So when you have a number for lead in the blood, you can have a very clear idea of what kind of effects it will have on the body's system. With lead in the bones, you have nothing like that. So even if you have a number from a test of the bone, it doesn't mean anything."

He adds that his research indicates that blood in the bones has a half-life of 20 years.

Impacts on children

Since at least 1975, health experts in East Helena have focused lead testing on young children, mainly because of the potential long-term and possibly irreversible impacts on their rapidly developing brains and nervous systems, and because they often ingest contaminated soil and lead-based paint chips.

But the results of those tests have had conflicting interpretations, and recent studies are statistically meaningless.

In the 1975 program, about 90 children in East Helena had blood drawn, with only five showing lead levels greater than 40 milligrams per deciliter, which at the time was considered the standard at which the state would take action. In a 1977 letter to the state Air Quality Bureau, two state epidemiologists interpreted the study to show that "East Helena does not have an excessive burden of lead in the environment, at least in a form that is readily absorbed by these children."

Because of this, epidemiologists Martin Skinner and Harry Hull said they didn't see any justification for lowering state emission standards for Asarco.

However, less than 10 years later, the state requested money from the EPA to fund a new study. In making the request in a Dec. 10, 1985, letter, Dr. John Drynan, then-director of the state Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, noted that the February 1975 screening study of children "showed lead toxicity in half of the sampled children. Although this study was not conducted with the high level of quality control found in the 1983 summer study, the results were clear in showing that toxicity existed among East Helena children in 1975."

In attachments to the letter, state scientists added that winter studies conducted in 1979 show that "if a child ate the snow equivalent of one 12-ounce can of pop, he or she would simultaneously ingest 5-10 milligrams each of lead and zinc, 0.05 to 0.10 milligrams of cadmium and 0.5 to 1.2 milligrams of arsenic, depending on where the child selected the snow."

Furthermore, they noted that 7.1 tons of lead fall onto the East Helena area in a given year, or about 1,200 pounds per month, and these amounts build up during winter periods. One 7-year-old child who showed 67 milligrams per deciliter of lead in his blood was reported by his mother to eat snow regularly. "It is believed that East Helena children take large amounts of lead in by eating snow, especially the older children," the scientists stated.

But blood lead levels can be misleading, reminds Dr. Spence, even though it is the most common way to measure lead levels.

He said the current concern level of 10 ppm in the blood is an "arbitrary level." Physicians used to be troubled only when the measurement reached 60; then the standard was lowered to 40, then to 25 and finally to 10.

"But the bottom line is that lead isn't involved in the normal body processes," he said. "It is a foreign substance and I don't believe there is any such thing as a safe level."

The problem in setting a standard is the insidious, subtle way that lead can impact children. In addition, studies of the long-term impacts of high lead levels in children only have begun recently.

It's known that lead in children can cause hearing loss and slowed growth. It can reduce IQ, and induce hyperactivity. At high levels, it can cause coma, convulsions and death. But at low levels, it presents no obvious symptoms.

"The fall in IQ points is not a great fall, but a small one," Spence adds. "That's not a big deal individually, but if you lower the whole population's IQ, what is the impact of that?"

In addition, lead affects people differently. Spence tells of one family taking part in a study in the Bunker Hill area in Idaho, near a former smelting operation. In this particular family, three children had elevated blood lead levels -- about 96, 92 and 72.

"These kids didn't measure any adverse affects, but you have to question whether they would have been geniuses without the exposure," Spence said. "In fact, the only one having problems in school was the one with the 72 blood lead level."

In East Helena, only two of the 103 children age 3 and younger who were tested recently had blood lead levels above the action levels of 10 parts per million -- an average of 1.9 percent.

While those numbers initially sound good, county health workers believe that there are about 2,400 children in Lewis and Clark County who are 3 or younger. If they apply the 1.9 percent figure to the total number of children in the county, that means there possibly are 44 other children who have elevated blood lead levels.

"It's hard, when you only have a few numbers," said Amy McKenzie, lead awareness program coordinator in East Helena. "What we are trying to look for is a trend -- are the lead levels going up or going down? We would like to get more kids tested, but we can't force anyone to take the test."

Lewis and Clark County Health Officer Joan Miles said she hopes a new, more comprehensive study will be done soon.

Because as EPA's Scott Brown reminds people, while the smelter may eventually shut down on a permanent basis, the contamination left behind must be dealt with by those who live, work and play in the Helena Valley. The EPA held back on cleanup in some areas in response to the community, he said, which puts part of the burden of living safely with contaminated soils squarely on the shoulders of area residents.

"We are concerned that a certain level of complacency has come over East Helena," Brown said. "We would like to see people take it more seriously that they live next to a smelter. My own observation is that people think the EPA, the state and Asarco have been successful in the cleanup efforts. But we don't want people to become complacent."

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or by e-mail at eve.byron@helenair.com.