Do You Live Near Enough to a Small Airport to Have Lead Exposure?

General Aviation Airports May Rival Flint, Michigan

"In 2021, Santa Clara County released a study of blood lead levels of children living near the airport. The results were unequivocal: the closer a child lived to the airport, the higher the lead levels, even after accounting for other variables. On average, the blood lead levels of children living within half a mile of the airport rose by 0.2 micrograms per deciliter, equivalent to half the surge in children's lead levels seen during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, in which as many as 12,000 were exposed to lead in their drinking water. The children living downwind of Reid-Hillview within half a mile of the airport were found to have blood lead levels nearing those in Flint.

But unlike Flint, where lead levels surged over 18 months, the exposure to airborne lead for children living near airports persists, year after year, during the most vulnerable period of their lives. While the levels found around Reid-Hillview are below the 3.5-microgram threshold signaling "elevated" levels, according to guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they can nevertheless leave a lasting impact on children's brains. As the CDC itself says (pdf), no safe amount of lead exists. Even at the lowest recordable levels, researchers have found evidence of long-term mental harm, ranging from lower IQs to higher rates of ADHD and aggression, with social spillovers that depress lifetime incomes and graduation rates.

"Aviation gasoline exposure is a daily, unabated barrage of lead," says Sammy Zahran, the professor of demography and epidemiology at Colorado State University who conducted the study at Reid-Hillview for Santa Clara County. "We can say that the observed increase here will have a detrimental effect on the cognitive performance of children living nearby."

Mapping the Flight Paths

To reveal the scope of the problem, Quartz created maps for 95 of the top lead-emitting airports in the US, and the location of nearby schools, parks, and dense residential neighborhoods.

Reid-Hillview ranks 34th among US airports for annual lead emissions, according to the EPA's annual National Emissions Inventory. The biggest annual emitter, at nearly one ton of lead, is Phoenix Deer Valley in Arizona, with about 400,000 takeoffs and landings each year (pdf)."