AT&T and Verizon Knew About Toxic Lead Cables—and Did Little

livemint.com:

At a gathering of telecom officials more than a decade ago, John Malone, a senior AT&T manager, cautioned the group about a little-known danger crisscrossing the nation. His topic was lead-covered cables, which once carried phone service and had long been obsolete. Weren’t these ancient cables gone? “NO," his slide presentation said.

“Some older metropolitan areas may still have over 50% lead cable," the slide said. In some places, they posed risks for phone-company workers and the surrounding environment, Malone concluded. For decades, AT&T, Verizon and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment, according to documents and interviews with former employees.

They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show. Environmental records from an AT&T smelting unit in the 1980s show contamination in the soil. Government agencies have conducted inspections, prompted by worker complaints, that led to citations for violations involving lead exposure and other hazardous materials more than a dozen times over four decades, records show.

Over the years, AT&T officials themselves expressed concern about possible worker exposure to lead. Risks include kidney issues, heart disease and reproductive problems in adults, according to U.S. health agencies.