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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)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:33AM
Soil is good for growing again! And all you dickwads will think to grow is marijuana. It's a cash crop, hurr hurr hurrrrrrr.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:40AM
Bush doesn't care about Black people, Bama doesn't care about White people, Obama killed Osama, Obama's almost a lame duck. Yep, it's been ten years. Shame the economy still hasn't recovered yet. Well that's what you get, when you vote for 16 years of Bushbama. Fuck the American voters to Hell.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:05AM
Vote Hillary! for 8 years of Feminist Utopia!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:55PM
Now that you mention it, after watching that shitshow over the weekend here, a feminist utopia doesn't sound so bad. At least the mental disease the TERFs were suffering seems to have jumped on over to the alt-right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:57AM
With the heavy rain that's been falling, perhaps Baton Rouge will experience the same benefit.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:33PM
I've been trying to set up the Secret Government Weather Control Machine for a Cat-4 hurricane on Flint, MI.
Turns out it mandates an upgrade and a subscription to Prime... Can't catch a break even to help people.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:03AM
I haven't read the article (503 error) but I wonder whether they compared the change in blood lead concentrations to another city that didn't experience flooding. Leaded paint and tetraethyl lead in fuel were discontinued years before the hurricane; one would expect that lead might wash away, or be painted over, even without a flood.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:58AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:10AM
And it reduced the level of housing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:12PM
Climate change = more hurricanes = reduced poison. So climate change is good! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @09:22PM
Dispersed, not reduced.