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takyon writes:

Hurricane Katrina and the cleanup and rebuilding of the city in the aftermath have improved soil quality in New Orleans by reducing levels of lead:

Mielke says, prior to Hurricane Katrina, 64 percent of the children living in neighborhoods identified as high-lead areas had blood lead levels equal to or above five micrograms per deciliter. According to the Centers for Disease Control, even a low level of lead in blood has been shown to affect IQ, academic achievement and behavior. Ten years after Katrina, Mielke says the number of children with blood lead levels five and above in high-lead areas dropped to 19 percent. The median amount of lead in the soil dropped from 280 milligrams per kilogram (i.e. ppm) pre-Katrina to 132 mg/kg after the storm.

The reasons for the decrease are threefold, says Mielke. The hurricane and levee failures flooded nearly 80 percent of the city, depositing varying depths of low lead sediment from the coastal environment. Mielke says the massive cleanup that followed also helped reduce the amount of lead dust in the air and soil, as housing interiors were cleaned out and materials covered in lead-based paint were removed or repainted. Lastly, uncontaminated soil was brought in from outside the city for new construction projects.

Spatiotemporal dynamic transformations of soil lead and children's blood lead ten years after Hurricane Katrina: New grounds for primary prevention (DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2016.06.017) (DX)

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