8 ms·

What AT&T and Verizon knew about toxic lead cables for decades

190 points by hammock 3y ago

sclarisse 3y ago
This is part of a series that’s been running in the WSJ for a week now. There are still lead lined cables all over the country, with little awareness of the risks they pose; the first article in the series discussed cables going past playgrounds and daycare centers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/lead-cables-telecoms-att-toxic-5b34408b https://www.wsj.com/articles/lead-cables-telecoms-att-toxic-... https://archive.is/MA0wG https://archive.is/MA0wG “Aerial lead cabling runs alongside more than 100 schools with about 48,000 students in total. More than 1,000 schools and child-care centers sit within half a mile of an underwater lead cable, according to a Journal analysis using data from research firm MCH Strategic Data.” We took lead out of gas (except general aviation). Everyone who buys or rents an older home or even just buys paint at the hardware store is reminded of lead in paint. Most are aware of lead in pipes, especially where these pipes are present. Yet lead levels in children nationwide are still substantially higher than they should be given the mitigations that have already been done. These cables are likely a huge portion of what’s left, and almost nobody has heard of them. Even when they’re right in front of your face hanging from a telephone pole.
- chaxor 3y ago
  This is just an absolutely awful idea simply due to the weight. The reason people are trying to get carbon nanotube electricity lines in the air is not because 'nano' is a cool word, but because they're really light while conducting electricity. Lead is, well, quite the opposite of that.
  - hammock 3y ago
    Carbon nanoparticles might pose their own risk, though my intuition suggests the threat is not as immediate or great as that from lead
    - scrlk 3y ago
      It would not surprise me if carbon nanoparticles could act in a similar way to asbestos, if inhaled.
      - chaxor 3y ago
        This has already been shown to be true, many times. There are significant problems with swcnts (and even more so with dwcnts or mwcnts, due to less effective macrophage breakdown from h2o2 release). But there are some applications where their use can be a large improvement. The fact that only very well trained professionals should ever come in contact with certain materials (like extremely high powered lines) makes this use case more acceptable. Additionally, concealing swcnts in a polymer and using extrusion methods of chlorosulfonic acid into carbon tetrachloride to make really compact nanowires can help quite a bit for making the product affect the public less if any problem may occur that downs the power lines.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    > This is just an absolutely awful idea simply due to the weight. Buried cables used to be lead jacketed before viable polymers suitable for long term use were developed in the modern era.
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    Isn't it a problem that carbon is mostly one of the things you make nearly every resistor out of, instead of wires?
    - chaxor 3y ago
      Armchair swcnts are ballistic conductors. It matters quite a lot how that carbon is oriented.
      - Gordonjcp 3y ago
        How well do they conduct? At the moment aluminium is kind of the "sweet spot" between weight, cost, and conductivity.
        chaxor 3y ago
        Ballistic conduction means 'perfect' conduction in a sense. There's no resistance. It's only for armchair swcnts though. Other metallic swcnts are also great conductors, but if you separate out the chiralities (semiconductors, etc) you might as well separate to just armchairs.
- myself248 3y ago
  "Within half a mile" is an inane standard. There's no evidence that a _buried_ cable leaches lead that far, that's simply bonkers. Lead is definitely not something to chew on, but this is histrionic fearbait reporting.
  - sclarisse 3y ago
    Note that the half-mile statistic is connected to underwater cables, not buried cables. It is certainly an overcount, but it is probably not trivial to assess the local hydrology and the extent to which children’s play areas might be exposed to such water.
    - reaperducer 3y ago
      it is probably not trivial to assess the local hydrology and the extent to which children’s play areas might be exposed to such water. Especially since there are thousands and thousands of schools in America that get their water from wells. It doesn't seem overly-cautious to wonder about lead placed under a water course 50 years to a century ago finding its way into the groundwater supply a half-mile away.
      - prewett 3y ago
        Hopefully that wondering would lead to testing the water to see whether there is actually a problem.
      - gruez 3y ago
        >It doesn't seem overly-cautious to wonder about lead placed under a water course 50 years to a century ago finding its way into the groundwater supply a half-mile away. At that point wouldn't it be so diluted that it's basically indistinguishable from background levels?
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > There's no evidence that a _buried_ cable leaches lead that far Well, the question is how much lead leaches out and gets transported by rainfall down to groundwater tables from which we source our drinking water.
- toast0 3y ago
  The conspiracy theorist in me wonders why the telcos want us to know there's lead in the wires now. Maybe so they have an excuse to tear the wires down and end services in areas they don't care to service anymore. Maybe so they can get more subsidies to run fiber that they'll promise to connect people with, but won't ever need to account for.
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    They've probably reached a point where they're failing at a higher rate and need replacing. Leaking this info would get the government involved and the telcos can probably get the taxpayers to foot the bill replacing all of them.
    - bnjms 3y ago
      Can tax payers also take ownership of the physical plant and sell access like we do to public airwaves? States rights should allow at least some states to do the right thing.
    - DropInIn 3y ago
      Beyond gross how often citizens are subsidizing the businesses that rob Peter to pay Paul... We should be forcing the profiteers (shareholders) to repay it and be imprisoning the thieves, not paying Peter (remediation) for them.
    - BitwiseFool 3y ago
      It's certainly possible that this situation might sway Congress to pass some sort of lead wiring replacement act.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      The cables are near end of life and unlikely to be replaced at all, because the entirety of the copper network and its associated hardware is also near end of life.
      - EvanAnderson 3y ago
- DANmode 3y ago
  It depends on the local water table, doesn't it?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    One day we will also focus on why live electricity is running right in front of schools and sidewalks where children are walking to and from school.
- MrVitaliy 3y ago
  GA is getting rid of lead too -- https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20and%20reliable,damage%20at%20higher%20power%20settings https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas#:~:text=The%20mo....
- downrightmike 3y ago
  Actually little remediation has gone on, as it would cost billions to solve the problem and keep kids safe, and not many in government want to actually solve the issue. The only thing that has happened is pretty much the removal of lead from paint and gas and let nature bury the rest.
- BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
  > Everyone who buys or rents an older home or even just buys paint at the hardware store is reminded of lead in paint. Most are aware of lead in pipes, especially where these pipes are present. Yet lead levels in children nationwide are still substantially higher than they should be given the mitigations that have already been done. Things like food contamination can be tricky to stop, but we’re getting better at it. I get amazon alerts when batches of a food I buy from whole foods were found to be contaminated. That’s only happened once, but it turned out to be okay. Worth noting that the mitigations you mentioned do work, because many kids live in the environment you describe but do not have elevated levels of lead.
hypercube33 3y ago
Just wait until journalists figure out we used lead extensively in plumbing... Edit: I meant that we have bare lead pipes in the ground along with water being sent through them. I also think there was lead used in solder on copper pipes until the 70s or something like that. Surely these are more likely reasons for higher lead accumulations than (poorly) insulated lead wires in the ground? Lead alloy was also used as the primary electronics solder, and of course in gas and paint in higher quantities so I really was getting the feeling these articles are drawing weird conclusions that telephone cables were the cause of the lead they are finding.
- chickenbittle 3y ago
  I believe plumbers used plumbum.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    immediately made me think of this package I used to use when I did Python development https://plumbum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://plumbum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- reaperducer 3y ago
  Just wait until journalists figure out we used lead extensively in plumbing... I guess you haven't read a newspaper in the last 70 years.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    They probably were too busy worrying about the lead type at the printers…
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Unless you are a civil engineer or an activist, probably the reason you know about lead plumbing is because journalists extensively wrote about it for decades. Yes, journalism is not perfect, sometimes they err catastrophically, but let's not discount all the good things good journalists have done and are still doing.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Wait, wait, hold the phone: > Once you use a soldering iron and you begin to melt it, then you begin to get gaseous lead and that can be inhaled and that's more of an exposure problem. So the question would be, in a case like that, are they properly protected when and if that lead is mobilized? At normal temperatures, that’s Flux, not lead. “Gaseous lead?”
- ghouse 3y ago
  The CDC believes that: "Lead fumes are produced during metal processing when metal is heated or soldered." https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/workerinfo.htm https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/workerinfo.htm
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I am admittedly talking about electrical soldering, which the person quoted was also referring to, but there are different kinds. You would need to set your solder gun to about (edit 750, not 1100) degrees Fahrenheit to begin truly vaporizing the lead. Which, some soldering irons are capable of, but lead solder’s lower melting point of about 400 degrees makes the risk low. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629580
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    The CDC believes a lot of fairly bonkers stuff that does not match up to reality. If you heated solder up to the point that lead was boiling off, your circuit board would be on fire. You cannot get lead poisoning from using leaded solder.
    - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
      I mean if you start licking it or chewing it you might, but normal usage just wash your hands afterward and you're fine.
      - Gordonjcp 3y ago
h2odragon 3y ago
[flagged]
MisterTea 3y ago
In addition to telephone, electrical power distribution is still accomplished using PILC cable (paper insulated, lead covered.) There's tons of it under NYC and it is still manufactured to this day. And since the insulation is oil soaked paper, there's a good chance the oil is contaminated with PCB's. Back in high school electrician shop class we had a few sections of medium and high voltage distribution and transmission cable (The cross sections were neat to look at esp the 130kV 1000 MCM that was about 4 inches in diameter). One of which was a 1 foot length of PILC partly stripped to show the construction and mounted to a wooden base. It sat out in the open on a table covered in dust and lead oxide. After touching it our shop teacher made sure to tell us to thoroughly wash our hands. edit: forgot to mention lead water mains that still exist. Family friend worked for the DEP and said they liked to "leave the lead be" as the harmful oxides were on the outside of the pipe and not a major threat to the water within. Disturbing the pipes was said to be a larger hazard than leaving them in service.
- quercusa 3y ago
  The Flint water crisis was caused by failing to perform corrosion control: In April 2014, because of annual rate increases from the DWSD, the Flint City Council voted to join the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), which would be developing a raw water supply pipeline from Lake Huron. The water supply contract with DWSD was subsequently terminated, and the Flint water treatment plant began treating water from the Flint River on a full-time basis and distributing the treated water to residents and other customers. When the plant went into full-time operation, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) did not implement corrosion control, as mandated by the LCR. Instead, the Flint water treatment plant was allowed to complete two six-month monitoring periods without corrosion control and then the MDEQ would decide if corrosion control treatment was necessary. https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selection-design/2016/06/the-science-behind-it-corrosion-caused-lead-tainted-water-in-flint-michigan https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selec...
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
I encourage everyone to read this series. It's fantastic reporting from the last great newspaper, with beautiful site design and a well-woven narrative.
Solvency 3y ago
Can we start reporting on the fact that literally all small airplanes still fly using leaded gas? Live in SoCal? Cool, there are hundreds of small Cessna and similar planes flying overhead 24/7 just spewing it into the air above you.
- eppp 3y ago
  If I recall, the FAA recently approved unleaded for that use.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel. It won't stop the use of leaded fuel until the FAA bans it, which should have happened decades ago. Your airplane can't fly without unleaded fuel? Cool! You can stare at it in the hangar!
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel. Jet engines are completely different from the piston engines you'll find in general aviation (sans choppers, which mostly run on jet engines). Piston engines need leaded fuel for lubrication as well as knock resistance, and deviating from the original certification of the engine/plane requires a type-specific certification - every model of plane you want to fly that was certified with 100LL AvGas needs to be separately tested if it can fly safely with lead-free AvGas [1]. [1] https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/faa-approves-100-octane-unleaded-aviation-fuel-hastening-shift-from-leaded-gas/150065.article https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/faa-approves-100-octane...
      - andrewg 3y ago
        JetA-burning piston aircraft exist - almost all Diamonds for instance.
thomas_ma 3y ago
I've been following this series. It seems like the journalists are trying to make a scandal where there really isn't one. I don't see how buried cables if left undisturbed are really an issue at all. The ones in the water maybe, but even there how much lead can a single cable really leach into water such that it rises to an unhealthy level? Maybe the ones strung on poles are an issue, but even then--how much is lead really going to flake off an intact cable? Remember that in many parts of the country we still have lead water pipes and tons of lead-painted surfaces. What's the relative risk of these cables compared to, say, houses that kids live in that have accessible lead paint surfaces? It does seem reasonable to ask that if a lead cable is overhead on poles and not in use anymore it should be pulled down. In general we shouldn't leave a ton of abandoned infrastructure up in the air on poles. I can believe there are health issues for telco workers who historically worked with lead cables, and the telcos absolutely need to protect their current workforce from lead if they are regularly working around and disturbing this old infrastructure.
- CPLX 3y ago
  Fishing weights come to mind, as do tire/wheel balancing weights.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Unless you're in the Mojave a buried cable is, so to speak, "in the water..." what do you think roots are there to do?
- StrictDabbler 3y ago
  On the topic of relative risk, millions of Americans spend time at firing ranges breathing in aerosolized lead and covering themselves in lead dust. They of course wash their clothing in the same washing machine that launders their family's clothing. Hunted meat contains a detectable level of lead, and pigs fed lead-hunted venison have a detectable rise in blood-lead levels within days. [1] So a sub-group of the population regularly and deliberately exposes itself to quite a bit of lead. It's the largest risk factor for high blood levels in children. [2] Seems like a potential problem. Might be worth switching to lead-free ammunition and considering what effect these decades of selective lead exposure may have had on our communities. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669501/ [2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-firearm-licensure-linked-with-higher-blood-lead-levels-in-children/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-f...
Aloha 3y ago
As someone who has spent a majority of his career in Telecom, I think the risk is wildly overstated. First - only 20-60% of the cable in the wild is lead (depending on the locality, and age of construction), from the mid to late 60's on, PIC (or other similar plastic covered cable) was installed. Also, as capacity was added in between 1980 and 2000, lead cable was removed from service over time. Second - Yes, You're gonna get exposed to lead working in the field on wired telecom, I have some measure of exposure, lead is not good - but its a risk to employees who work on the legacy wired plant. "Shalini Ramachandran: I talked to a number of women who worked in AT&T central offices doing lead soldering work, connecting lead sheathed cables from the outside with the internal central office machinery. They actually showed gloves with the fingertips cut off because they had to do sort of small, intricate work to melt the solder with a soldering iron. So, they describe breathing in those fumes. They're not being sort of fans or exhaust around and feeling headaches often every day coming home from work and gastrointestinal issues, nausea, constipation, infertility issues, miscarriages. One woman had developed kidney cancer and had to have a kidney removed." Though I see one glaring issue with the way the mention things here - by the time a cable reached the main frame of a CO, they were stripped from their sheath - yes they wore fingerless gloves because you needed to be able to wrap the fine copper wire around the lug on the frame, and then solder it with an iron who's tip is roughly the size of a human thumb. That wire though is copper, and the wire from the field was on the back side of the frame, not the front side where the regular work was done to run jumpers. That said, the solder users was lead based. I have no doubt AT&T studied blood lead levels among employees (AT&T had a how-to document on sweeping), they had a document for every purpose, and studied every aspect of their operations. Those studies were done just before we understood how harmful lead is, it was known to be not good, but not how bad even safe levels of lead could be for humans. Third - while there is a risk to the general public, its generally infinitesimally small - meaning there is probably more lead in the soil from cars going by for 40-50 years with leaded gasoline, than there is from the buried lead cable underground, or the areal lead cable overhead on the poles. Fourth - Most of this plant is either going to be abandoned or replaced within 20ish years. Copper last mile is a declining business, even AT&T (nee SBC) is moving to a FTTP from a FTTN architecture. Meaning outside of some remediation costs, removing it from the ground and/or poles will be enough to solve this.
dboreham 3y ago
I read the article. This seems to be about a former lineman who had a high blood lead level in the 1980s, and also a study where line workers doing soldering were found to have high lead levels in their blood. Reading this, my first and biggest question is : how did the lead get into their blood? Having spent ~20 years soldering in the electronics industry on a daily basis I had always assumed that lead isn't getting into your body unless you ingest it. There are ways to ingest lead that we know about : flaking lead paint becomes dust and can be breathed in; lead compounds from burned gasoline can be breathed in; lead in water that has traveled through lead pipes (and possibly copper pipes soldered with lead) can be drunk. But how do you ingest solid or liquid lead? Disappointing the article never addressed this. It seems the authors heard "worked with lead" and "lead in blood" and just said "yeah that seems obvious". Wouldn't we see very high levels of lead poisoning in plumbers? (before the move away from lead solder they were heating the stuff with a blowtorch, often in cramped unventilated conditions). Were studies done to eliminate the possibility that the people above ingested lead in some other way?
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Lead solder turns into lead oxide fumes which get absorbed into your blood through your lungs. https://warwick.ac.uk/services/healthsafetywellbeing/guidance/leadpolicy/soldering https://warwick.ac.uk/services/healthsafetywellbeing/guidanc... Plumbers don't do much soldering and use very little solder when they do. And lead solder has been banned in any pipe that carries drinking water since the 80s.
  - huthuthike 3y ago
    I think this is unlikely to happen at typical soldering temperatures. The lead vaporization point is over 3000 degrees F. https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf
    - Aurornis 3y ago
      You don't need to vaporize lead to form lead oxide. > https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf The first page of this link you shared mentions lead oxide: > During the soldering process in the form of lead filler metals, lead oxide fumes are formed and excessive exposure to lead oxide fumes can result in lead poisoning.
rastapasta42 3y ago
Time to buy telecom stocks?
josh_carterPDX 3y ago
One only needs to go into a Central Office to know how at risk you are for any number of toxic chemicals. The more shocking part of this is that there aren't more studies that link cancer among telecom engineers that work closely in Central Offices and around legacy telecom infrastructure. Having been a former lineman at PacBell (yes, I'm old), I can tell you that there should be no surprise when you're working in old buildings, with old legacy systems, in a building with zero windows.
- Aloha 3y ago
  Most of the old phone people I'm aware of lived long, healthy, productive lives, often living many decades beyond retirement. Those who did not, in my own personal experience, dont really have a single cause of death.
beerandt 3y ago
Lead tends to stabilize in-situ in most installations over time to be fairly safe and non-reactive. Messing with it or changing the environmental equilibrium is often what what increases risk / makes it a non-negligible risk. See also: EPA's embarrassing DC screw-up where replacing chlorine with a "safer" alternative caused lead chemical pathways to reverse and lead levels to spike: years of deposits into non-lead infrastructure -from (previously removed) lead pipes- suddenly became unstable and began leaching back into water due to the chemistry change. The leadfree water system suddenly had a lead problem, because some one at the EPA decided that the chlorine system was a bigger problem than it really was. Especially when it comes to these types of (potential) remediation projects, never assume that the unknown unknowns will be harmless, or even less risky than the no-build alternative.
- beerandt 3y ago
  Separately, the US has a problem in that activism has largely become its own industry, existing for the sake of itself more than for its founding causes. When an industry depends on problems to exist, problems will be always be found. When goals and reasons-to-be are accomplished, very few seem willing to 'admit' their victory - and give up their self-important justification for whatever selfimage they've built on top their cause. So the cause is extended or a new one is invented. "In conclusion, further study - and more research funds - is needed."
  - dumpsterlid 3y ago
    [dead]
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    > When an industry depends on problems to exist, problems will be always be found. If your "industry" is finding the poisons that we human are putting into the Earth, then I think it is true that problems will always be found.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      If by no other means than adding things to the list constitutes a poison or how much of a given supposed poison is safe.
Animats 3y ago
Lead cable splicing was pretty bad. Here's the process of splicing an underwater cable being installed between San Francisco and ... Oakland. This was a big project at the time. Watch the cable splicers pouring molten lead over a cable while catching the extra lead by holding an asbestos pad underneath, around 2:30 into [1]. [1] https://archive.org/details/0840_Underwater_Cable_and_Other_Communication_News_and_Views_An_12_30_58_00 https://archive.org/details/0840_Underwater_Cable_and_Other_...
dahfizz 3y ago
In related news: ATT stock is seriously on sale right now
- bob1029 3y ago
  I've been taking really big scoops out of the free ice cream bucket all day. Bad news is the best news when you are in it for the long haul.
tamaharbor 3y ago
Aren’t there similar problems with lead covered underground electrical cables throughout the US, particularly within large city networks?
RecycledEle 3y ago
I worked in telecom in the 1990's. A politician made a big deal of lead from old home cables back then. My boss explained that the lead had leeched out already, and pulling up the cabled just disturbed / unearthed lead contaminated soil that was better left in place. There is no non-manual-labor way to remove the lead contaminated soil with the cables. Any effective remediation will kill many workers. The same was true of asbestos remediation. It was better to leave it in place, but that never stopped a well meaning idiot from contaminating a whole building pulling out perfectly safe and effective insulation.

190 points by hammock 3y ago

This is part of a series that’s been running in the WSJ for a week now. There are still lead lined cables all over the country, with little awareness of the risks they pose; the first article in the series discussed cables going past playgrounds and daycare centers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/lead-cables-telecoms-att-toxic-5b34408b https://www.wsj.com/articles/lead-cables-telecoms-att-toxic-... https://archive.is/MA0wG https://archive.is/MA0wG “Aerial lead cabling runs alongside more than 100 schools with about 48,000 students in total. More than 1,000 schools and child-care centers sit within half a mile of an underwater lead cable, according to a Journal analysis using data from research firm MCH Strategic Data.” We took lead out of gas (except general aviation). Everyone who buys or rents an older home or even just buys paint at the hardware store is reminded of lead in paint. Most are aware of lead in pipes, especially where these pipes are present. Yet lead levels in children nationwide are still substantially higher than they should be given the mitigations that have already been done. These cables are likely a huge portion of what’s left, and almost nobody has heard of them. Even when they’re right in front of your face hanging from a telephone pole.

chaxor 3y ago
This is just an absolutely awful idea simply due to the weight. The reason people are trying to get carbon nanotube electricity lines in the air is not because 'nano' is a cool word, but because they're really light while conducting electricity. Lead is, well, quite the opposite of that.
- hammock 3y ago
  Carbon nanoparticles might pose their own risk, though my intuition suggests the threat is not as immediate or great as that from lead
  - scrlk 3y ago
    It would not surprise me if carbon nanoparticles could act in a similar way to asbestos, if inhaled.
    - chaxor 3y ago
      This has already been shown to be true, many times. There are significant problems with swcnts (and even more so with dwcnts or mwcnts, due to less effective macrophage breakdown from h2o2 release). But there are some applications where their use can be a large improvement. The fact that only very well trained professionals should ever come in contact with certain materials (like extremely high powered lines) makes this use case more acceptable. Additionally, concealing swcnts in a polymer and using extrusion methods of chlorosulfonic acid into carbon tetrachloride to make really compact nanowires can help quite a bit for making the product affect the public less if any problem may occur that downs the power lines.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  > This is just an absolutely awful idea simply due to the weight. Buried cables used to be lead jacketed before viable polymers suitable for long term use were developed in the modern era.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  Isn't it a problem that carbon is mostly one of the things you make nearly every resistor out of, instead of wires?
  - chaxor 3y ago
    Armchair swcnts are ballistic conductors. It matters quite a lot how that carbon is oriented.
    - Gordonjcp 3y ago
      How well do they conduct? At the moment aluminium is kind of the "sweet spot" between weight, cost, and conductivity.
      - chaxor 3y ago
        Ballistic conduction means 'perfect' conduction in a sense. There's no resistance. It's only for armchair swcnts though. Other metallic swcnts are also great conductors, but if you separate out the chiralities (semiconductors, etc) you might as well separate to just armchairs.
myself248 3y ago
"Within half a mile" is an inane standard. There's no evidence that a _buried_ cable leaches lead that far, that's simply bonkers. Lead is definitely not something to chew on, but this is histrionic fearbait reporting.
- sclarisse 3y ago
  Note that the half-mile statistic is connected to underwater cables, not buried cables. It is certainly an overcount, but it is probably not trivial to assess the local hydrology and the extent to which children’s play areas might be exposed to such water.
  - reaperducer 3y ago
    it is probably not trivial to assess the local hydrology and the extent to which children’s play areas might be exposed to such water. Especially since there are thousands and thousands of schools in America that get their water from wells. It doesn't seem overly-cautious to wonder about lead placed under a water course 50 years to a century ago finding its way into the groundwater supply a half-mile away.
    - prewett 3y ago
      Hopefully that wondering would lead to testing the water to see whether there is actually a problem.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >It doesn't seem overly-cautious to wonder about lead placed under a water course 50 years to a century ago finding its way into the groundwater supply a half-mile away. At that point wouldn't it be so diluted that it's basically indistinguishable from background levels?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > There's no evidence that a _buried_ cable leaches lead that far Well, the question is how much lead leaches out and gets transported by rainfall down to groundwater tables from which we source our drinking water.
toast0 3y ago
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders why the telcos want us to know there's lead in the wires now. Maybe so they have an excuse to tear the wires down and end services in areas they don't care to service anymore. Maybe so they can get more subsidies to run fiber that they'll promise to connect people with, but won't ever need to account for.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  They've probably reached a point where they're failing at a higher rate and need replacing. Leaking this info would get the government involved and the telcos can probably get the taxpayers to foot the bill replacing all of them.
  - bnjms 3y ago
    Can tax payers also take ownership of the physical plant and sell access like we do to public airwaves? States rights should allow at least some states to do the right thing.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Beyond gross how often citizens are subsidizing the businesses that rob Peter to pay Paul... We should be forcing the profiteers (shareholders) to repay it and be imprisoning the thieves, not paying Peter (remediation) for them.
  - BitwiseFool 3y ago
    It's certainly possible that this situation might sway Congress to pass some sort of lead wiring replacement act.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    The cables are near end of life and unlikely to be replaced at all, because the entirety of the copper network and its associated hardware is also near end of life.
    - EvanAnderson 3y ago
DANmode 3y ago
It depends on the local water table, doesn't it?
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
[flagged]
- nashashmi 3y ago
  One day we will also focus on why live electricity is running right in front of schools and sidewalks where children are walking to and from school.
MrVitaliy 3y ago
GA is getting rid of lead too -- https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20and%20reliable,damage%20at%20higher%20power%20settings https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas#:~:text=The%20mo....
downrightmike 3y ago
Actually little remediation has gone on, as it would cost billions to solve the problem and keep kids safe, and not many in government want to actually solve the issue. The only thing that has happened is pretty much the removal of lead from paint and gas and let nature bury the rest.
BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
> Everyone who buys or rents an older home or even just buys paint at the hardware store is reminded of lead in paint. Most are aware of lead in pipes, especially where these pipes are present. Yet lead levels in children nationwide are still substantially higher than they should be given the mitigations that have already been done. Things like food contamination can be tricky to stop, but we’re getting better at it. I get amazon alerts when batches of a food I buy from whole foods were found to be contaminated. That’s only happened once, but it turned out to be okay. Worth noting that the mitigations you mentioned do work, because many kids live in the environment you describe but do not have elevated levels of lead.

hypercube33 3y ago

Just wait until journalists figure out we used lead extensively in plumbing... Edit: I meant that we have bare lead pipes in the ground along with water being sent through them. I also think there was lead used in solder on copper pipes until the 70s or something like that. Surely these are more likely reasons for higher lead accumulations than (poorly) insulated lead wires in the ground? Lead alloy was also used as the primary electronics solder, and of course in gas and paint in higher quantities so I really was getting the feeling these articles are drawing weird conclusions that telephone cables were the cause of the lead they are finding.

chickenbittle 3y ago
I believe plumbers used plumbum.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  immediately made me think of this package I used to use when I did Python development https://plumbum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://plumbum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
reaperducer 3y ago
Just wait until journalists figure out we used lead extensively in plumbing... I guess you haven't read a newspaper in the last 70 years.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  They probably were too busy worrying about the lead type at the printers…
elzbardico 3y ago
Unless you are a civil engineer or an activist, probably the reason you know about lead plumbing is because journalists extensively wrote about it for decades. Yes, journalism is not perfect, sometimes they err catastrophically, but let's not discount all the good things good journalists have done and are still doing.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Wait, wait, hold the phone: > Once you use a soldering iron and you begin to melt it, then you begin to get gaseous lead and that can be inhaled and that's more of an exposure problem. So the question would be, in a case like that, are they properly protected when and if that lead is mobilized? At normal temperatures, that’s Flux, not lead. “Gaseous lead?”

ghouse 3y ago
The CDC believes that: "Lead fumes are produced during metal processing when metal is heated or soldered." https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/workerinfo.htm https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/workerinfo.htm
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I am admittedly talking about electrical soldering, which the person quoted was also referring to, but there are different kinds. You would need to set your solder gun to about (edit 750, not 1100) degrees Fahrenheit to begin truly vaporizing the lead. Which, some soldering irons are capable of, but lead solder’s lower melting point of about 400 degrees makes the risk low. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629580
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  The CDC believes a lot of fairly bonkers stuff that does not match up to reality. If you heated solder up to the point that lead was boiling off, your circuit board would be on fire. You cannot get lead poisoning from using leaded solder.
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    I mean if you start licking it or chewing it you might, but normal usage just wash your hands afterward and you're fine.
    - Gordonjcp 3y ago

h2odragon 3y ago

[flagged]

MisterTea 3y ago

In addition to telephone, electrical power distribution is still accomplished using PILC cable (paper insulated, lead covered.) There's tons of it under NYC and it is still manufactured to this day. And since the insulation is oil soaked paper, there's a good chance the oil is contaminated with PCB's. Back in high school electrician shop class we had a few sections of medium and high voltage distribution and transmission cable (The cross sections were neat to look at esp the 130kV 1000 MCM that was about 4 inches in diameter). One of which was a 1 foot length of PILC partly stripped to show the construction and mounted to a wooden base. It sat out in the open on a table covered in dust and lead oxide. After touching it our shop teacher made sure to tell us to thoroughly wash our hands. edit: forgot to mention lead water mains that still exist. Family friend worked for the DEP and said they liked to "leave the lead be" as the harmful oxides were on the outside of the pipe and not a major threat to the water within. Disturbing the pipes was said to be a larger hazard than leaving them in service.

quercusa 3y ago
The Flint water crisis was caused by failing to perform corrosion control: In April 2014, because of annual rate increases from the DWSD, the Flint City Council voted to join the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), which would be developing a raw water supply pipeline from Lake Huron. The water supply contract with DWSD was subsequently terminated, and the Flint water treatment plant began treating water from the Flint River on a full-time basis and distributing the treated water to residents and other customers. When the plant went into full-time operation, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) did not implement corrosion control, as mandated by the LCR. Instead, the Flint water treatment plant was allowed to complete two six-month monitoring periods without corrosion control and then the MDEQ would decide if corrosion control treatment was necessary. https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selection-design/2016/06/the-science-behind-it-corrosion-caused-lead-tainted-water-in-flint-michigan https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selec...

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

I encourage everyone to read this series. It's fantastic reporting from the last great newspaper, with beautiful site design and a well-woven narrative.

Solvency 3y ago

Can we start reporting on the fact that literally all small airplanes still fly using leaded gas? Live in SoCal? Cool, there are hundreds of small Cessna and similar planes flying overhead 24/7 just spewing it into the air above you.

eppp 3y ago
If I recall, the FAA recently approved unleaded for that use.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel. It won't stop the use of leaded fuel until the FAA bans it, which should have happened decades ago. Your airplane can't fly without unleaded fuel? Cool! You can stare at it in the hangar!
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel. Jet engines are completely different from the piston engines you'll find in general aviation (sans choppers, which mostly run on jet engines). Piston engines need leaded fuel for lubrication as well as knock resistance, and deviating from the original certification of the engine/plane requires a type-specific certification - every model of plane you want to fly that was certified with 100LL AvGas needs to be separately tested if it can fly safely with lead-free AvGas [1]. [1] https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/faa-approves-100-octane-unleaded-aviation-fuel-hastening-shift-from-leaded-gas/150065.article https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/faa-approves-100-octane...
    - andrewg 3y ago
      JetA-burning piston aircraft exist - almost all Diamonds for instance.

thomas_ma 3y ago

I've been following this series. It seems like the journalists are trying to make a scandal where there really isn't one. I don't see how buried cables if left undisturbed are really an issue at all. The ones in the water maybe, but even there how much lead can a single cable really leach into water such that it rises to an unhealthy level? Maybe the ones strung on poles are an issue, but even then--how much is lead really going to flake off an intact cable? Remember that in many parts of the country we still have lead water pipes and tons of lead-painted surfaces. What's the relative risk of these cables compared to, say, houses that kids live in that have accessible lead paint surfaces? It does seem reasonable to ask that if a lead cable is overhead on poles and not in use anymore it should be pulled down. In general we shouldn't leave a ton of abandoned infrastructure up in the air on poles. I can believe there are health issues for telco workers who historically worked with lead cables, and the telcos absolutely need to protect their current workforce from lead if they are regularly working around and disturbing this old infrastructure.

CPLX 3y ago
Fishing weights come to mind, as do tire/wheel balancing weights.
whatshisface 3y ago
Unless you're in the Mojave a buried cable is, so to speak, "in the water..." what do you think roots are there to do?
StrictDabbler 3y ago
On the topic of relative risk, millions of Americans spend time at firing ranges breathing in aerosolized lead and covering themselves in lead dust. They of course wash their clothing in the same washing machine that launders their family's clothing. Hunted meat contains a detectable level of lead, and pigs fed lead-hunted venison have a detectable rise in blood-lead levels within days. [1] So a sub-group of the population regularly and deliberately exposes itself to quite a bit of lead. It's the largest risk factor for high blood levels in children. [2] Seems like a potential problem. Might be worth switching to lead-free ammunition and considering what effect these decades of selective lead exposure may have had on our communities. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669501/ [2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-firearm-licensure-linked-with-higher-blood-lead-levels-in-children/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/higher-rates-of-f...

Aloha 3y ago

As someone who has spent a majority of his career in Telecom, I think the risk is wildly overstated. First - only 20-60% of the cable in the wild is lead (depending on the locality, and age of construction), from the mid to late 60's on, PIC (or other similar plastic covered cable) was installed. Also, as capacity was added in between 1980 and 2000, lead cable was removed from service over time. Second - Yes, You're gonna get exposed to lead working in the field on wired telecom, I have some measure of exposure, lead is not good - but its a risk to employees who work on the legacy wired plant. "Shalini Ramachandran: I talked to a number of women who worked in AT&T central offices doing lead soldering work, connecting lead sheathed cables from the outside with the internal central office machinery. They actually showed gloves with the fingertips cut off because they had to do sort of small, intricate work to melt the solder with a soldering iron. So, they describe breathing in those fumes. They're not being sort of fans or exhaust around and feeling headaches often every day coming home from work and gastrointestinal issues, nausea, constipation, infertility issues, miscarriages. One woman had developed kidney cancer and had to have a kidney removed." Though I see one glaring issue with the way the mention things here - by the time a cable reached the main frame of a CO, they were stripped from their sheath - yes they wore fingerless gloves because you needed to be able to wrap the fine copper wire around the lug on the frame, and then solder it with an iron who's tip is roughly the size of a human thumb. That wire though is copper, and the wire from the field was on the back side of the frame, not the front side where the regular work was done to run jumpers. That said, the solder users was lead based. I have no doubt AT&T studied blood lead levels among employees (AT&T had a how-to document on sweeping), they had a document for every purpose, and studied every aspect of their operations. Those studies were done just before we understood how harmful lead is, it was known to be not good, but not how bad even safe levels of lead could be for humans. Third - while there is a risk to the general public, its generally infinitesimally small - meaning there is probably more lead in the soil from cars going by for 40-50 years with leaded gasoline, than there is from the buried lead cable underground, or the areal lead cable overhead on the poles. Fourth - Most of this plant is either going to be abandoned or replaced within 20ish years. Copper last mile is a declining business, even AT&T (nee SBC) is moving to a FTTP from a FTTN architecture. Meaning outside of some remediation costs, removing it from the ground and/or poles will be enough to solve this.

dboreham 3y ago

I read the article. This seems to be about a former lineman who had a high blood lead level in the 1980s, and also a study where line workers doing soldering were found to have high lead levels in their blood. Reading this, my first and biggest question is : how did the lead get into their blood? Having spent ~20 years soldering in the electronics industry on a daily basis I had always assumed that lead isn't getting into your body unless you ingest it. There are ways to ingest lead that we know about : flaking lead paint becomes dust and can be breathed in; lead compounds from burned gasoline can be breathed in; lead in water that has traveled through lead pipes (and possibly copper pipes soldered with lead) can be drunk. But how do you ingest solid or liquid lead? Disappointing the article never addressed this. It seems the authors heard "worked with lead" and "lead in blood" and just said "yeah that seems obvious". Wouldn't we see very high levels of lead poisoning in plumbers? (before the move away from lead solder they were heating the stuff with a blowtorch, often in cramped unventilated conditions). Were studies done to eliminate the possibility that the people above ingested lead in some other way?

light_hue_1 3y ago
Lead solder turns into lead oxide fumes which get absorbed into your blood through your lungs. https://warwick.ac.uk/services/healthsafetywellbeing/guidance/leadpolicy/soldering https://warwick.ac.uk/services/healthsafetywellbeing/guidanc... Plumbers don't do much soldering and use very little solder when they do. And lead solder has been banned in any pipe that carries drinking water since the 80s.
- huthuthike 3y ago
  I think this is unlikely to happen at typical soldering temperatures. The lead vaporization point is over 3000 degrees F. https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    You don't need to vaporize lead to form lead oxide. > https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf The first page of this link you shared mentions lead oxide: > During the soldering process in the form of lead filler metals, lead oxide fumes are formed and excessive exposure to lead oxide fumes can result in lead poisoning.

rastapasta42 3y ago

Time to buy telecom stocks?

josh_carterPDX 3y ago

One only needs to go into a Central Office to know how at risk you are for any number of toxic chemicals. The more shocking part of this is that there aren't more studies that link cancer among telecom engineers that work closely in Central Offices and around legacy telecom infrastructure. Having been a former lineman at PacBell (yes, I'm old), I can tell you that there should be no surprise when you're working in old buildings, with old legacy systems, in a building with zero windows.

Aloha 3y ago
Most of the old phone people I'm aware of lived long, healthy, productive lives, often living many decades beyond retirement. Those who did not, in my own personal experience, dont really have a single cause of death.

beerandt 3y ago

Lead tends to stabilize in-situ in most installations over time to be fairly safe and non-reactive. Messing with it or changing the environmental equilibrium is often what what increases risk / makes it a non-negligible risk. See also: EPA's embarrassing DC screw-up where replacing chlorine with a "safer" alternative caused lead chemical pathways to reverse and lead levels to spike: years of deposits into non-lead infrastructure -from (previously removed) lead pipes- suddenly became unstable and began leaching back into water due to the chemistry change. The leadfree water system suddenly had a lead problem, because some one at the EPA decided that the chlorine system was a bigger problem than it really was. Especially when it comes to these types of (potential) remediation projects, never assume that the unknown unknowns will be harmless, or even less risky than the no-build alternative.

beerandt 3y ago
Separately, the US has a problem in that activism has largely become its own industry, existing for the sake of itself more than for its founding causes. When an industry depends on problems to exist, problems will be always be found. When goals and reasons-to-be are accomplished, very few seem willing to 'admit' their victory - and give up their self-important justification for whatever selfimage they've built on top their cause. So the cause is extended or a new one is invented. "In conclusion, further study - and more research funds - is needed."
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > When an industry depends on problems to exist, problems will be always be found. If your "industry" is finding the poisons that we human are putting into the Earth, then I think it is true that problems will always be found.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    If by no other means than adding things to the list constitutes a poison or how much of a given supposed poison is safe.

Animats 3y ago

Lead cable splicing was pretty bad. Here's the process of splicing an underwater cable being installed between San Francisco and ... Oakland. This was a big project at the time. Watch the cable splicers pouring molten lead over a cable while catching the extra lead by holding an asbestos pad underneath, around 2:30 into [1]. [1] https://archive.org/details/0840_Underwater_Cable_and_Other_Communication_News_and_Views_An_12_30_58_00 https://archive.org/details/0840_Underwater_Cable_and_Other_...

dahfizz 3y ago

In related news: ATT stock is seriously on sale right now

bob1029 3y ago
I've been taking really big scoops out of the free ice cream bucket all day. Bad news is the best news when you are in it for the long haul.

tamaharbor 3y ago

Aren’t there similar problems with lead covered underground electrical cables throughout the US, particularly within large city networks?

RecycledEle 3y ago

I worked in telecom in the 1990's. A politician made a big deal of lead from old home cables back then. My boss explained that the lead had leeched out already, and pulling up the cabled just disturbed / unearthed lead contaminated soil that was better left in place. There is no non-manual-labor way to remove the lead contaminated soil with the cables. Any effective remediation will kill many workers. The same was true of asbestos remediation. It was better to leave it in place, but that never stopped a well meaning idiot from contaminating a whole building pulling out perfectly safe and effective insulation.