The Environmental Protection Agency planned to check for high lead levels Monday after a deadly tornado blew through a heavily polluted former mining town where lead-filled waste is piled into giant mounds.
The tornado was one of several that combined to kill 22 people in the Midwest and the South over the weekend, raising the nation’s 2008 total to about 100, the worst toll in a decade.
In Picher, the devastation was complicated by the town’s status as one of the most polluted Superfund sites in the nation. But Miles Tolbert, the Oklahoma secretary of the environment, said he did not think there was an immediate public health hazard to the 800 residents. He did say more testing is needed to be certain.
Long-term exposure to lead dust poses a health risk, particularly to young children.
On Saturday, a tornado killed six people, destroyed a 20-block area and blew dust off mountains of mining waste, or chat piles.
“You can look at the chat piles and see that a lot of the material has blown off,” said John Sparkman, head of the Picher housing authority. “We went up on a chat pile an hour and a half after the tornado hit, and you could see dust blowing fine material all over the place from that vantage point.”
Meanwhile, law enforcement officers and the Oklahoma National Guard patrolled Picher overnight into Monday to prevent looting, said Michelann Ooten, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.
National Weather Service assessment teams determined the twister that hit Picher had an EF-4 rating, the second highest rating, and was 1 mile wide at its widest point, meteorologist Mike Teague said.
