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COPYRIGHT 2002 Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
By Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 31--HERCULANEUM, Mo.--Dozens of 18-wheelers rumble down the street every day, dumping their load from southern Missouri lead mines at the Doe Run Co. smelter. Back-and-forth, load-and-dump. That's the routine.
It's also the problem here in Herculaneum, a hardscrabble town on the scenic bluffs of the Mississippi River whose nearly 200-year-old existence is rooted in the production of lead. Now the future of the town, home of the nation's largest lead smelter, hinges on dealing with lead's legacy, spilled from the truck beds, spewed from the smelter's towering 550-ft. smokestack and buried in the soil.
In the wake of recent government health studies that reported sharply elevated blood lead levels in children 6 and under, Herculaneum is mired in environmental and political turmoil. Medical research has repeatedly linked lead poisoning to developmental problems in children, and a February study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said 45 percent of the children living closest to the smelter have blood lead levels high enough to be harmful.
The study called Herculaneum an "urgent public health hazard."
That warning has a ring of familiarity to the late Times Beach, the floodplain community west of St. Louis that was...
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