Despite Remediation 15 Years Ago, Dozens Of City Parks And Playgrounds In New Orleans Contaminated With Lead
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When the soil at Markey was tested in late 2010, it too was found to have dangerously high levels of lead. But the city took no meaningful action to inform Markey’s users or make the park safe. Parents started posting warning signs at the park and flooded City Hall with outraged calls and emails. Holding Josie in her arms, Hess made an impassioned speech to the City Council. In short order, the city had hired a company to test Markey and other parks, and pledged to fix the lead problem wherever it was found.
“I couldn’t have been more pleased,” Hess said. “They were totally into it. My impression was they were going to make them all lead-free parks.” But a Verite News investigation conducted over four months in 2025 found that lead pollution in New Orleans parks not only persists, it is more widespread than previously known. Dozens of city parks with playgrounds remain unsafe, including Markey and others that underwent city-sponsored lead remediation in 2011. The city does not appear to have conducted any major remediation or lead testing of parks since that time.
The findings indicate that city officials fell short in their cleanup efforts then, and that a very large number of New Orleans children are exposed to excessive amounts of lead now, said Howard Mielke, a retired Tulane University toxicologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on lead contamination. “It’s a failed program,” he said. “They didn’t do what they needed to do to bring the lead levels down in a single park.”
Verite News reporters tested hundreds of soil samples from 84 city parks with playgrounds in fall 2025. Adrienne Katner, a lead contamination researcher with Louisiana State University, verified the results. The testing found that about half the parks had lead concentrations that exceed a federal hazard level established in 2024 for soil in urban areas. “I am surprised they haven’t been tested and mitigated,” said Gabriel Filippelli, an Indiana University biochemist who studies lead exposure. “If there’s evidence of kids playing in soils that are as high as [Verite’s testing] described, that’s kind of horrifying.”
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https://grist.org/accountability/poison-at-play-unsafe-lead-levels-found-in-half-of-new-orleans-playgrounds/
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https://grist.org/accountability/poison-at-play-unsafe-lead-levels-found-in-half-of-new-orleans-playgrounds/
