Nearly half of Pasadena Unified schools have contaminated soil, district finds
Eleven of the 23 Pasadena Unified School District schools, where students have been back on campus since January, have contaminated soil following the Eaton fire, the district found.
Over 40% of the schools had lead at levels exceeding the state's health-based limits for residential soil, and over 20% had arsenic levels beyond what L.A. County considers acceptable, according to the results released Wednesday.
The district found lead at over three times the state's allowable limit of 80 milligrams per kilogram of soil next to Blair High School's tennis courts and over double the limit at four elementary schools. Lead, when inhaled through dust or ingested from dirt-covered hands, can cause permanent brain and nerve damage in children, resulting in slowed development and behavioral issues.
Arsenic, a known carcinogen, was found at a concentration of 92 milligrams per kilogram of soil at San Rafael Elementary School. The county has used 12 mg/kg as a reference level, based on an estimate of the highest naturally occurring arsenic levels in all of Southern California. The naturally occurring background level of arsenic in Altadena and Pasadena ranges from 4 to 10 mg/kg, according to a 2019 study by the U.S. Geological Survey.
There is no safe exposure level for arsenic or lead.
'I'm worried about her safety,' said Nicole Maccalla of her daughter, a sixth-grader at Octavia E. Butler Magnet, which is located less than a mile from the Eaton fire burn area. 'I would really like to have assurances that she's physically safe while she's at school.'
Instead, what she got was a map of the school posted by the district showing lead levels 40% and 70% above the allowable limit in soil samples taken next to the school entrance and near the outdoor lunch tables, respectively.
'If, literally, you've got to walk by lead to walk up the steps to school, then how many kids are walking through that with their shoes and then walking into the classroom?' Maccalla said. 'It's not like these are inaccessible areas that are gated off.'
Maccalla made the hard decision to let her daughter return to school in January despite early fears — worrying that the trauma of moving schools directly after the fire would be too much.
Along with other concerned parents, Maccalla has been pushing for both soil and indoor testing for months at school board meetings. It was only after the L.A. County Department of Public Health announced in April that it had found 80% of properties had lead levels exceeding the state's standards in some areas downwind that the district hired the environmental firm Verdantas to conduct testing at schools.
'The school board has been very resistant to any request for testing from parents,' she said. 'The superintendent kept saying it's safe.' The parents' response: 'Prove it.'
The district released test results for 33 properties it owns — some with district schools and children's centers, others with charter and private schools, some rented to nonprofits — that were all largely unscathed by the fires. On the 22 properties with public schools, students have been back in the classroom since late January. The full results with maps for each school can be seen on the school district's website.
The district stated on its website there was 'no indication that students or staff were exposed to hazardous levels of fire-related substances in the soil,' noting that any contamination found was highly localized. (For example, while seven samples at Blair High School identified elevated lead levels, 21 samples did not.)
Health agencies also advised the district that soil covered with grass or cement was unlikely to pose a health risk.
In response to the results, the district stated it would restrict access to contaminated areas, complete follow-up sampling and work on remediation over the summer. No classroom instruction will be affected.
'We want to be abundantly clear: Safety is not negotiable,' Pasadena Unified School District Supt. Elizabeth Blanco said in a press release. 'That's why we're moving forward with both urgency and care.'
For Maccalla, it's too little too late. 'I would like to know what their plan is for monitoring the health of the children, given you've got kids that have already been playing outside in that soil for four months straight,' she said. 'So what's their health crisis mitigation plan?'
The test results also found high levels of chromium — which, in some chemical configurations, is a carcinogen — on one campus. Another had high levels of a class of contaminants called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can cause headaches, coughing, skin irritation and, over long periods of exposure, can come with an increased risk of cancer.
Three of the five properties with the district's children centers also had elevated levels of heavy metals — two with lead, one with arsenic.
When Maccalla — who has spent much of her time after the fire volunteering with the community advocacy group Eaton Fire Residents United — first saw the map of her daughter's school, she began to formulate a plan to rally volunteers to cover the contaminated areas with mulch and compost before school buses arrive again Monday morning. (That is an expert-approved remediation technique for fire-stricken soil.)
'If the district is not going to do it, the state's not going to do it, our county's not going to do it, our city's not going to do it,' she said, 'well, the citizens will. We absolutely will.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Study says California is overdue for a major earthquake. Does that mean ‘the big one' is coming?
Unlike other earthquake-prone places around the planet, California is overdue for a major quake, according to a recent study. But that doesn't mean a catastrophic event like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is on the verge of striking. 'A fault's 'overdue' is not a loan payment overdue,' said Lucy Jones, founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society and a research associate at the California Institute of Technology, who wasn't part of the work. The new study reported that a large share of California faults have been running 'late,' based on the expected time span between damaging temblors. The researchers compiled a geologic data set of nearly 900 large earthquakes on active faults in Japan, Greece, New Zealand and the western United States, including California. Faults are cracks in the planet's crust, where giant slabs of earth, known as tectonic plates, meet. The Hayward Fault is slowly creeping in the East Bay and moves around 5 millimeters per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. But sometimes plates get stuck and pressure builds. Earthquakes occur when plates suddenly slip, producing a jolt of energy that causes the ground to shake. Scientists study ruptured rock layers deep beneath the surface to estimate when large earthquakes occurred in the past. In the new study, the authors collected data stretching back tens of thousands of years. For a region spanning the Great Basin to northern Mexico, this paleoearthquake record stretched back about 80,000 years. For California, the record extended back about 5,000 years. The scientists used these records to calculate how much time typically passes between large surface-rupturing earthquakes around the planet. The average interval was around 100 years for some sites on the San Andreas Fault; it was 2,100 years on the less famous Compton thrust fault beneath the Los Angeles area. About 45% of the faults analyzed for California are running behind schedule for a major earthquake, meaning that more time has passed since the last large quake on a fault than the historical average. In the other regions studied, this statistic ranged from 9% to 18%. The researchers' analysis only included large surface-rupturing earthquakes. It didn't include the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which was below the magnitude 7 threshold that the study authors used for quakes on the San Andreas Fault. The authors associated seismic punctuality with slip rates, or how fast the two sides of a fault move past each other. 'Our analysis showed that the faster the faults are moving, the more likely it is that they will appear overdue,' said study author Vasiliki Mouslopoulou, a senior scientist at the National Observatory of Athens, in Greece. In tectonically active California, the San Andreas Fault has a particularly high slip rate. The Pacific and North American plates slide past each other an average of more than inch per year in some spots. 'Faults in California are among the fastest-slipping faults in the world,' Mouslopoulou said, adding that other factors are also probably contributing due to the pattern of chronically late large earthquakes. Previous studies had also shown that seismic activity has been unusually subdued in California, compared with paleorecords. A 2019 study reported that there's been a 100-year hiatus in ground-rupturing earthquakes at a number of paleoseismic sites in California, including on the San Andreas and Hayward faults. The authors of the 2019 study treated large earthquakes at these sites as independent events, akin to flipping pennies and counting how many turn up heads. They calculated a 0.3% probability that there'd be a 100-year hiatus in ground-rupturing quakes across all the California sites. Scientists have suggested that there could be earthquake 'supercycles,' with large quakes occurring in clusters, with less active periods in between. 'There are these longer-term, decadal, century-long ups and downs in the rate of earthquakes,' Jones said. Potentially, California is in a quiet time and large earthquakes are currently less likely. Katherine Scharer, a U.S. Geological Survey research geologist who wasn't part of the new research, commended the authors of the study, explaining that compiling the paleoseismic records was a 'tremendous amount of work' and will enable more scientists to investigate earthquakes. California's relatively sparse big earthquake activity could be connected to the geometry of its faults. While the analyzed faults in California were more or less in line with each other, those in other regions resembled 'a plate of spaghetti,' Scharer said. 'From the study, I think you would say that the main California faults are mechanically different somehow than the averages from these other places,' Glenn Biasi, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who wasn't part of the new work. Biasi emphasized that it's impossible to say if California's faults are truly overdue for a big earthquake. 'The faults slip on their own schedule and for their own reasons,' Biasi said. Scientists can't accurately predict large earthquakes in advance but paleoearthquake data could help. The authors of the new study found that, excluding California's recent lack of large earthquakes, faults around the entire planet have generally produced surface-rupturing quakes at intervals expected from paleoearthquake and historic records. Considering such data could improve earthquake forecasts, Mouslopoulou said.
USA Today
2 days ago
- USA Today
The Big One: Is California 'overdue' for a devastating major earthquake?
The Big One: Is California 'overdue' for a devastating major earthquake? A near-certain disaster looms for California, but there are real things people can do to prepare. Here's what to know about the risks. Show Caption Hide Caption California governor signs emergency declaration after quake California's governor says "we're concerned about damage" from magnitude 7 earthquake." It's the unavoidable series of questions Christine Goulet gets every time she's asked what she does for a living. "When is the next big earthquake coming? Do you know where? When should we get ready?" Goulet, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Science Center in Los Angeles, told USA TODAY. "It's almost without fail once they know I study earthquakes. If I received a dollar every time I'm asked, I'd be rich." Goulet has answers, but she can't predict the future. The ominous truth: The Big One could happen any time, and there's more than one possible "Big One." "It's gonna happen. An earthquake could be in a matter of minutes, the next hour, tomorrow, or in a week from now, we can't predict that precisely at this time. We don't know," Goulet said. "But the point in general is we want and need to prepare for them." 'Swaying back and forth': Magnitude 7 earthquake, aftershocks rock California The most authoritative research on the risk to California was conducted in 2015, but little has changed in the past decade. The state will almost certainly face a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake within the next three decades, the USGS concludes. Some of the most at-risk locations are San Francisco and Los Angeles. California's continuous temblor risk coincides with a huge earthquake brewing along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. San Francisco Bay Area faces high chances of getting a Big One With nearly four dozen faults in the region stretching from Napa to Monterey, the San Francisco Bay Area has a 72% chance of a major quake registering 6.7 magnitude or higher by 2043, USGS researchers previously estimated. The findings also indicate that the Bay Area has a 51% chance of experiencing an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 and a 20% chance of measuring a magnitude of 7.5 or higher within that time frame. "The earthquake threat is very real," said Richard Allen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Berkeley Seismology Lab. "It is a real challenge as we have to take that long-term view, but also not to live our lives in fear." In December, thousands in the Bay Area and across Northern California were worried after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck along a sparsely populated northern coast of California, triggering a tsunami warning across a swath of the West Coast stretching from southern Oregon to San Francisco. Traci Grant, 53, a public relations specialist who felt the quake in San Francisco, told USA TODAY at the time she felt her retrofitted apartment move in slow motion. "It just kept going and going," Grant said. "It was scary and a bit exciting at the same time. It was more of a roll than just shake, shake, shake." Fragile environment: A collapsing glacier destroyed a Swiss village. Is climate change to blame? Less than two hours after the initial quake, some areas experienced 13 different aftershocks, ranging from 5.1 to 3.1, the USGS reported. Two hours after that, at least 39 aftershocks of at least a 2.5 magnitude occured in the region, authorities said. No earthquake-related injuries or major damages were reported. Goulet said if the quake had been directly on land, "the impact would've been more devastating." Goulet said December's quake magnitude conjured up the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. It was a nearly minute-long 7.9 magnitude quake followed by a fire that burned for three days, destroying thousands of buildings. The San Francisco quake killed an estimated 3,000 people and destroyed roughly 80% of the city. It is known as one of the deadliest in U.S. history. Allen also noted the 1868 Hayward Fault earthquake that struck the heart of the Bay Area and killed 30 people. With all the Bay Area faults, Allen said his research shows there's a "two-in-three chance" the Big One could be soon. "We're overdue for a recurrence," Allen said. The last major earthquake in the Bay Area occurred more than a decade ago, when an earthquake rattled Napa Valley in 2014. The 6.0 magnitude quake in Wine Country killed one person and injured 300 people. The incident caused more than $1 billion in damage across Napa and neighboring cities, including Vallejo, California, which took years to rebuild. Then there was the Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989, killing 63 people and injuring nearly 3,800 others. The earthquake disrupted the World Series and damaged the Bay Bridge, Oakland's Cypress Freeway, and swaths of San Francisco. It caused up to $10 billion in damage. "There's this perception that large quakes are frequent, but actually, they are quite rare," Goulet said. "We just don't know when they will happen." Los Angeles is ripe for a Big One as well The Los Angeles area also stands a chance of getting a major earthquake, as there's a 60% chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake within the next 30 years, the USGS said. Additionally, there is also a 46% probability that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake will hit L.A. and a 31% chance a 7.5 magnitude quake will strike during that same period. Allen, the Berkeley seismologist, said Southern California has just as high an earthquake risk compared to its Northern California counterparts. "They face a similar threat, if not higher," Allen said. Goulet added that with Los Angeles and the surrounding areas being so populous (nearly 18.6 million residents according to California Finance Department statistics), there is a high probability for major destruction. She cites the disastrous 6.7 earthquake in Northridge, California, in 1994, which killed 60 people and injured more than 7,000. The devastation also left thousands of buildings and structures collapsed or damaged across Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and San Bernardino counties. Thousands of residents became homeless as the aftermath caused between $13 billion to $20 billion in damages. "The closer an earthquake is to a large population, the greater the impact will be," Goulet said. Goulet also points to a sequence of earthquakes in 2019 in Ridgecrest, California. A 7.1 magnitude earthquake rattled the city two days after an initial 6.4 magnitude quake. Goulet was among a USGS on-site team researching the first quake when, surprisingly, the second temblor struck. "It was terrifying," Goulet said. "We were there taking measurements and just as we were finishing our work and planning for the next day, the second one occurred about six miles away from us. That was extremely close." Goulet said she remembers reassuring panicked residents that everything would be okay. "That's why we cannot specifically predict earthquakes, when and where they will occur and how big they will be," Goulet added. "But what we can do is collect all of the research that causes earthquakes and the probabilities, which are called probabilistic seismic hazard analysis." Now what?: Federal database that tracked costly weather disasters no longer being updated How to prepare for an earthquake disaster Huge earthquakes have long been an existential crisis for millions along the West Coast, as described in a 2022 USA TODAY article. But experts said there are real things people can do to help them prepare for a major disaster. If you experience an earthquake, Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the USGS's Earthquake Science Center in Mountain View, California, advises not to run. "If you feel shaking, you should drop, cover and hold on to protect yourself," Minson said. "Don't go anywhere. Don't run outside. A huge number of the injuries that occur in earthquakes are people stepping on broken glass or trying to run during the shaking and falling down." Allen, the Berkeley seismologist, recommends that households create an earthquake plan, including where they will meet and possibly have a bag or suitcase ready for at least a couple of days. Residents will at least want a flashlight and a way to charge their phone. They should also be prepared to have access to electricity or water cut off for days or weeks. Here are a few practical tips: When trying to use your phone, text – don't call. In a disaster, text messages are more reliable and strain cell networks less. To power your phone, you can cheaply buy a combination weather radio, flashlight and hand-crank charger to keep your cell running even without power for days. A cash reserve is good to have, USGS seismologist Lucy Jones previously said. You'll want to be able to buy things, even if your credit card doesn't work for a time. Simple things like securing bookshelves can save lives. Downloading an early warning app can give you precious moments to protect yourself in the event of a big quake. Buying earthquake insurance can protect homeowners. And taking part in a yearly drill can help remind you about other easy steps you can take to prepare. Contributing: Elizabeth Wiese and Joel Shannon
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Miami Herald
Yellowstone geyser that exploded last summer shows activity. See the eruption
The same geyser that erupted last summer in a hydrothermal explosion in Yellowstone National Park was recorded erupting again, video shows. 'Small eruption from Black Diamond Pool, site of a hydrothermal explosion on July 23, 2024, captured by new webcam on May 31 at 8:39 p.m. MDT!' U.S. Geological Survey Volcanoes said in a Facebook post Monday, June 2. The video shows the steaming pool bubble ever so slightly before a bulb of steam and black mud shoots up from the geyser. The pool then settles again and water spills over its edge in tiny waves. 'On May 14, a new webcam was installed at Biscuit Basin to track activity at Black Diamond Pool, where a hydrothermal explosion occurred last summer,' U.S. Geological Survey said in the post and in a June 2 news release. The camera posts an image every 15 minutes to the agency's website and logs a video that can be downloaded later, officials said. 'Analysis of the static images indicated changes in the pool on the evening of May 31, and downloaded video captured a small eruption from the pool at 8:39 p.m. MDT. This is the first eruption from Black Diamond Pool that has been captured on video since the hydrothermal explosion on July 23, 2024, although there is evidence from other monitoring data and some eyewitnesses that sporadic eruptions have occurred several times since the July 2024 event.' Yellowstone Volcano Observatory scientists track surface deformation in the area each spring using semi-permanent GPS stations, officials said. They installed the new webcam during maintenance of geophysical and temperature monitoring stations, and they hope to establish 'a new seismic/acoustic/GPS station at Biscuit Basin' in June. Tracking activity in Yellowstone and abroad Someone asked in the comments whether the activity reflected that Yellowstone is showing signs of erupting due to frequent earthquakes. 'Not about to erupt anytime soon. And, there aren't frequent earthquakes going on at Yellowstone right now. In fact, there are far fewer earthquakes so far in 2025 than for an average year,' the U.S. Geological Survey replied. 'Typically there are 1500-2500 quakes in a given year. That's normal for the region, given all of the hot water beneath the surface and preexisting faults in the region. The magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is mostly solid, and it would take a while to rejuvenate it to the point it could support a significant explosive volcanic eruption.' A team of researchers recently discovered a magma cap about 2.5 miles under Yellowstone's surface that 'acts like a lid' and keeps the volcanic system from erupting, McClatchy News previously reported. A few people chimed in to theorize that volcanic activity and eruptions seem to be increasing across the globe. Several of them referenced the recent eruption of Mount Etna in Italy, the volcano's first eruption in about a decade, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. Geological Survey set the record straight in the comments. 'There actually isn't really any change in eruptive activity worldwide, although it can sometimes seem that way owing to uneven media coverage and a few noteworthy events (like Etna's recent activity – but even that was a relatively small event, spectacular though it was),' the agency said. 'Global volcanic activity isn't any more or less significant than usual right now. One person claimed that 'volcanic activity is escalating globally.' The U.S. Geological Survey pushed back on that narrative in the comments. 'Not so much – volcanic activity worldwide has been at pretty steady levels (and this eruption isn't volcanic anyway, but rather a steam burst from a geyser system.),' the agency said, directing them check out the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program, which tracks all eruptions worldwide. 'From those records you can see that eruptive activity isn't any more or less vigorous now than at other times.' Eruption awes viewers Others commented on how fascinating they found the visuals from the eruption. 'It is so weird to see black ash erupt from clean water,' someone said. 'The earth is crazy and cool!' In a reply to another comment, the U.S. Geological Survey explained that the eruption appeared dark in color due to mud that had settled at the bottom of the pool. 'These sorts of eruptions have happened in prior months, and geologists have noticed muddy deposits on the pool margins as a consequence,' the agency said. It looked similar to the hydrothermal explosion from the same geyser last summer, when charcoal-colored debris and steam blasted hundreds of feet into the air and ultimately changed the shape of Black Diamond Pool, McClatchy News reported at the time. Biscuit Basin has been closed to visitors since that 2024 explosion. 'Wow, no indication that was about to happen, I saw no change in water level,' someone said. 'I know the area is closed, but it would have been quite a surprise to anyone walking by at the time.'
