31-5 Remediation of Lead Contamination from Former Smelting Sites in the USA, 1980–2025

Session: Environmental Geochemistry and Health (Posters)

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Abstract:

Smelting is one of the major sources of lead (Pb) to the global environment, both historically and currently. Primary smelting is defined as pyrometallurgical recovery of metals including Pb, zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), nickel, precious metals, and others, from ores or concentrates. Secondary smelting refers to metal recycling, also using pyrometallurgy. In the case of secondary Pb smelting, the main source of Pb scrap is the recycling of lead-acid batteries.

Currently there are no active primary Pb smelters in the USA; the last one to close was in Herculaneum, Missouri in 2013. There are currently 11 active secondary Pb smelters in the USA. Modern smelting facilities are highly regulated to minimize harmful air emissions. Most of the primary and secondary Pb smelting sites that were active in the USA during the 1880s through the 1980s operated with less effective emission controls, resulting in contamination of soils at the smelter sites and in surrounding areas with Pb and other metal(loid)s, including arsenic and cadmium. Metal(loid) concentrations in soils, sediments, and other environmental media in these areas have commonly been found to exceed regulatory criteria, requiring remediation to protect human and ecological health.

Several dozen historical smelters and surrounding areas were remediated in the USA from  1980 to 2025 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and various state agencies under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (or Superfund) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Using publicly available records, total remediation costs were compiled for 50 former Pb(-Zn-Cu) smelters (35 primary and 15 secondary) and surrounding regions.  Corrected for inflation to 2025 US dollars, the total remediation costs were $6.76 billion ($5.22 billion for primary smelters and $1.54 billion for secondary smelters).  As part of these efforts, more than 51,600 residential and commercial properties were remediated (> 42,000 properties associated with primary smelters and >9,600 properties associated with secondary smelters). The magnitude of these efforts provides some perspective on the effects of smelting and its environmental legacy in the USA, which produced approximately 35 to 40% of global Pb supply from 1900 to 2021.

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