This is nothing compared to the millions of tons of lead buried in old plumbing and waste systems. Unless you are going to be spending months of your childhood

This is nothing compared to the millions of tons of lead buried in old plumbing and waste systems. Unless you are going to be spending months of your childhood playing in the mud 15 cm from these cables, this is a whole lot of nothingburger. If there’s ever been a house on your block painted white in the 1950s your whole block is probably more contaminated than this. The amount of heavy metal leachate represented here is tiny. The cables no longer in use should be pulled up where practical, left buried where it’s not. The lead and copper salvaged will pay for the removal as long as nobody gets stupid and tries to turn it into some kind of scary thing. This is a tiny amount of lead, probably less than the amount lost off of vehicle tire weights every year, and the risk to anyone who doesn’t ingest or bathe in the mud next to the cable, or drink water directly against the cable, is statistically insignificant. It’s nothing compared to the millions of tons of lead buried in old plumbing and waste systems under every city that is more than 80 years old. Lead is toxic. But unless you are ingesting it or breathing it, it doesn’t easily enter your body. Removing this will probably cause more human exposure to lead than other mitigation strategies in the very few situations they are needed. We should be spending our resources on PFOAS and other environmental contaminants that are actually impacting people.