https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/what-att-and-verizon-knew-about-toxic-lead-cables/a288b7d4-28f3-470e-b6c4-72341c97b3a0 All Podcasts wsj.com The Journal. The Journal. The most important stories, explained through the lens of business. A podcast about money, business and power. Hosted by Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson. The Journal is a co-production from Gimlet Media and The Wall Street Journal. FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2023 7/14/2023 4:00:00 PM Share This Episode FacebookTwitterCopy LinkEmail What AT&T and Verizon Knew About Toxic Lead Cables For decades, telecom companies have known that lead in their networks posed risks to workers, and did little about it. Lead can cause a variety of ailments in adults, affecting the kidney, heart and reproductive systems, and it is classified as a probable human carcinogen. WSJ's Shalini Ramachandran explains the danger of lead cables -- and what telephone companies knew. Further Reading: - America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables - What AT&T and Verizon Knew About Toxic Lead Cables - Workers Exposed to Toxic Lead Cables Wrestle With the Aftermath - How the Journal Investigated Hidden Lead Cables Circling the U.S. Further Listening: - Part 1: America Is Wrapped in Toxic Lead Cables Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Kate Linebaugh: Tommy Steed lives in upstate New York. He has bees, a border collie named Pete and a pickup truck with a bumper sticker saying he's a member of the local Fish and Game Club. But before retiring, Tommy worked on the telephone lines. Tommy Steed: I started working for New York telephone in 1971. Neighborhoods like Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and the South Bronx. Kate Linebaugh: Tommy was hired as a cable splicer. In this job, he had to maintain and install telephone cables, sometimes 20 feet up in the air, sometimes underground. Tommy Steed: We would wipe the ends with molten solder and run a seam down the middle, make sure there was not one single bubble because that cable is going into a manhole for the next 100 years. Kate Linebaugh: Tommy enjoyed his job, the camaraderie of the crews and being outside all day. But after about 15 years of work, something unexpected happened. Tommy Steed: Maybe about 1987, 1988, I went down to our medical department in Manhattan. It was a routine annual examination, and about two weeks later, my boss came out and said, "You have to go back to medical department." I said, "What for?" He said, "They didn't tell me. They just said they need to draw blood." Kate Linebaugh: That afternoon, Tommy made his way downtown to the company's medical department. Tommy Steed: I went to the front desk and they gave me my file and they told me to walk down this long hallway, make a left at the end, and there'll be an open door with a nurse that'll take my blood. So, walking down the hall, I was curious like, "What the hell did he want my blood for?" I opened up my file and there was a yellow sticky note, "Test for lead only." Kate Linebaugh: Lead. The results of this test would show that Tommy's lead levels were off the charts. Tommy is one of tens of thousands of workers who've been exposed to lead through their work at AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom companies. The companies say they follow safety guidelines for workers dealing with lead. For the past 18 months, The Wall Street Journal's been investigating the impacts that lead covered cables have on people and on the environment. The team found that telecom companies have known about the health risks posed by these cables for decades. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Friday, July 14th. Coming up on the show, the potential danger of lead cables and what telecom companies knew about it. Lead covered cables have been connecting the country since the late 1800s. Our colleague, Shalini Ramachandran, is part of The Wall Street Journal team that's been investigating them. Shalini Ramachandran: The telephone companies wanted to keep the water out of the copper wires that were transmitting signals all over America. Lead is a very malleable metal, and it was something that kept water out. Kate Linebaugh: By 1940, the majority of the country's phones were connected with lead covered cables. The company behind this was the massive Bell system, a predecessor of AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom companies. Shalini Ramachandran: We saw that in a 1957 article published in the Bell Laboratory's Record, the entire system had used around 100 million pounds of lead in just the prior year alone. Kate Linebaugh: All that lead cable had to be installed and maintained. Work that was done by people like Tommy Steed. At the time, Tommy was working for a company called NYNEX that would eventually become part of Verizon. Tommy Steed: Working with the cables brand new wasn't too bad, but when I was a linesman and we removed thousands and thousands of feet of this old lead cable that was decommissioned, that's where the danger came in. Kate Linebaugh: Over time, newer technology replaced the need for lead covered cables. Tommy Steed: The removal of these cables that were now porous from being out in the weather for 50 years, hot and cold, snow, rain, sun, that's when they really started deteriorating. It was the removal of these lead cables that I feel was the most dangerous part of our jobs because it created dust that we had to breathe. Kate Linebaugh: At any point did the company talk to you about how toxic lead is? Tommy Steed: No. Kate Linebaugh: Or give you protective gear? Tommy Steed: No, they gave me... Excuse me. Let me go back. When I wiped lead sleeves with molten solder, they did give me protective gloves so I didn't get burnt because I couldn't do it if I got burnt. Kate Linebaugh: Shalini talked to a number of former and current employees who also described inadequate protection. Shalini Ramachandran: When talking to a lot of the workers who've worked with the stuff over decades, most of them said they were never provided a mask. They said they were never provided respirators. There were no danger signs. Many said they learned lead work on the job. There was no safety training that they heard of. Kate Linebaugh: How have the telecom companies responded to your reporting? Shalini Ramachandran: In response to our reporting, the companies and USTelecom, a group that represents the broader telecom industry, they have defended their practices and say that they offer safety training and a lot of protective gear and masks and equipment to help workers handle lead properly. They also said that they follow regulatory safety guidelines for workers dealing with lead and offer training, and also offer blood lead testing for people who wish to get their blood lead levels checked. Kate Linebaugh: Stories from workers like Tommy prompted Shalini and the team to go back to see what Bell Systems knew about lead and risks to employees. They found an old study done by medical staff at Bell. Shalini Ramachandran: A 1977 Bell study showed a snapshot of just how high lead levels were among female lead soldering workers at a unit of AT&T. The workers had blood lead levels in the range of 25 to 45 micrograms per deciliter, which is very high. It was very known to AT &T that there were high blood lead levels among workers. Kate Linebaugh: Around the same time, Bell partnered with Mount Sinai Hospital System on a second study of 90 cable splicers, the job Tommy had. This one also came back showing high lead content in their blood. Shalini says the companies didn't necessarily act on that information. Shalini Ramachandran: From what we understand, there wasn't any sort of widespread reckoning in the Bell system that, "Oh my goodness, workers are exposed. This is a major problem. We have to deal with it." That didn't happen from our understanding and from the documents that we have seen. What we know is that they did publish safety manuals from time to time, but many of the workers we talked to said they never saw any kind of lead training. They kind of said that the safety manuals weren't really widely read and weren't really well known. It's not clear to us that they took major action after getting that knowledge from that study in the late seventies. Kate Linebaugh: Did you try to find out why not? Shalini Ramachandran: It wasn't considered a big deal from the former executives we talked to. It didn't seem like people thought twice about it. It was just an old part of the network. We've moved on to fiber, we've moved on to other stuff, cell phones. It's just some old stuff out there, it's not a big deal. Kate Linebaugh: Right. To find out more about how companies thought about lead, we called up Brad Allenby, a former AT&T executive. Brad Allenby: We had lead in a lot of uses. Kate Linebaugh: 20 years ago, brad was a vice president of environment health and safety for AT&T. Our colleagues have done a major investigation and found all kinds of lead sheathed cables across the country. When you were working for AT&T, were you aware of these cables? Brad Allenby: Sure. Because it was part of the infrastructure. But it's important to note that that lead was a ubiquitous material in telecom. Kate Linebaugh: We've spoken with telecom workers who said they regularly came into contact with lead cables. Was that something you were aware of happening at AT&T? Brad Allenby: Not particularly aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised, you'd expect it. They were working with the infrastructure, so sure. But the question is that lead in a form that is liable to cause damage? Once you use a soldering iron and you begin to melt it, then you begin to get gaseous lead and that can be inhaled and that's more of an exposure problem. So the question would be, in a case like that, are they properly protected when and if that lead is mobilized? Kate Linebaugh: Right, and we spoke with cable splicers and they did say they soldered lead and then their blood was tested, they had high lead levels. At your time at AT&T, was this on your mind in terms of putting in place safety protocols and monitoring lead exposure for workers? Brad Allenby: Yeah, I can't speak to what the practices were at that time because that's 20 years ago. I can say generally that if there were exposure issues and we knew about it, we would've addressed it because among other things, that would've been an OSHA requirement and it would've been the right thing to do for our employees. If there's something like that that's causing potential problems, then of course you address it. Kate Linebaugh: OSHA oversees worker safety for the federal government. In a statement to The Journal, AT&T said, "The legacy cables that remain in our network are maintained in compliance with applicable environmental, health, and safety rules." I asked Shalini if she spoke with any workers who are currently maintaining lead covered cables. Shalini Ramachandran: I talked to a cable splicer out in LA who talked about how when there're heavy rains, there's a lot of these lead sheathed cables that fail and they have to go into the manhole, cut them open with a lead chipping knife. He described even as of recently, a few months ago, opening up a big lead sheathed cable under ground and then repairing the copper wires inside. Kate Linebaugh: But importantly, and what you're saying is this isn't all just in the past. Workers today are still interacting with lead cables and having potential lead exposure? Shalini Ramachandran: That's correct. When actually I set out to understand this issue, I thought it was probably mostly a decades ago exposure. But in reality, with all of these lead sheathed cables still around, workers are still exposed to it. Kate Linebaugh: Coming up, the potential health consequences of lead exposure. Around two years before Tommy Steed got his blood tested for lead, he was really ill. Tommy Steed: I was in the prime of my life. I couldn't understand it, but the most significant marker was I would leave the garage in the morning, go for my morning breakfast, and as soon as I ate my bacon and eggs, I would vomit it all up so I knew something was significantly wrong. I went to this physician, this medical doctor in Riverdale, and I went back a few times because she performed so many different tests. But the one test we missed, which is a specific test, was for lead poisoning. We missed out, both of us missed out. Kate Linebaugh: Eventually, Tommy ended up in his company medical office, walking down that long hallway about to get his blood tested for lead. Tommy Steed: I went into the room and the nurse started drawing my blood. I asked her, I said, "Look, am I going to get the results of this test?" She said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "When?" She said, "Oh, about two weeks." I said, "Good, 'cause I'm going to call you." Two weeks went by, three weeks went by, nothing. I called her and she still would not tell me my results, but she said, "I'll give you a number to call, but it's a long distance number." I said, "Lady, I'll call Singapore. I work for the phone company, it's not going to cost me anything." It was a 518 area code, which is Albany, New York. I called the phone number, the lady picked up the phone. I identified myself, "Thomas Steed calling. I was given this number to call." She said, "Oh yeah, Mr. Steed, I have your file right on my desk in front of me. Do you know where you're calling?" I said, "No, I don't." She says, "We are the New York State Department of Health and your employer was mandated to report your lead levels to us, and I have your file right here in front of me." That's how I found out I had lead poisoning, the New York State Department of Health. Now, by this time, I wasn't sick anymore because I was away from working with lead cable and I was doing new plastic polyethylene, brand new cable. I wasn't ill anymore and I still had lead poisoning, but I didn't know. Kate Linebaugh: Shalini saw Tommy's blood test and it showed he had 43 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, well above the average for the US population at the time of 2.8 micrograms. Verizon, which took over the company Tommy worked for said, "It has a robust health and safety program and that workers can get lead testing at any time at no cost." The company said, "Its work practices on lead cables are based on available science, legal requirements and guidance from medical and work safety organizations." I asked Shalini if Tommy Steed should have been told by his employer that he'd been exposed to lead when he was tested in 1988. She said yes. Shalini Ramachandran: Tommy Steed was working in the 1980s, which was after the first lead standard from OSHA was published. His blood lead test ended up over 40 micrograms per deciliter, which under OSHA standards, even at that time, he should have been informed. And for him, that never happened and that was as of the late eighties. Kate Linebaugh: What kind of problems can lead exposure cause? Shalini Ramachandran: Lead exposure can cause kidney, heart, and reproductive problems in adults, and it's classified as a probable carcinogen. The risks that people worry most about with lead is that it is a neurotoxin, so that means that it attacks the central nervous system and Parkinson's disease has been linked recently to lead exposure. Kate Linebaugh: Shalini spoke with other former and current telecom employees who'd worked with lead and had health issues. Shalini Ramachandran: I talked to a number of women who worked in AT& T central offices doing lead soldering work, connecting lead sheathed cables from the outside with the internal central office machinery. They actually showed gloves with the fingertips cut off because they had to do sort of small, intricate work to melt the solder with a soldering iron. So, they describe breathing in those fumes. They're not being sort of fans or exhaust around and feeling headaches often every day coming home from work and gastrointestinal issues, nausea, constipation, infertility issues, miscarriages. One woman had developed kidney cancer and had to have a kidney removed. Kate Linebaugh: AT&T dismissed what it called anecdotal, non-evidence based linkages to individuals health symptoms. The company said symptoms, "Could be associated with a vast number of potential causes." When you think back on it, what's been the hardest thing? Tommy Steed: That I was a loyal employee and my company was not loyal to me and not loyal to hundreds, maybe thousands of fellow craftsmen like myself. Kate Linebaugh: What do you say to them now? Tommy Steed: Well, it's a different corporation now, but what I would say to them is, "Hey, safety is number one. Your employees lives are number one." After that, we'll work our darnedest to make the company, nevermind a Fortune 500, a Fortune 1 or 2. We'll dedicate ourselves to that but you have to accept some responsibility. You have to accept some decency. We're not cattle. We're human beings just like you. Kate Linebaugh: So Shalini, this is the end of a really long reporting project? Shalini Ramachandran: Yes. It's the longest investigation I've ever worked on. Kate Linebaugh: After those, what, 18 months of reporting with a team that's traveled all over the country, what would you say you found out? Shalini Ramachandran: The highest level finding that the old American telephone and telegraph, which is known as a Bell System, laid thousands of lead sheathed cables across the country, and many of them were abandoned in place and still remain out aerially, above schools, above houses and underground, underneath waterways that are used for drinking water. We've gone out and seen them, and moreover, done our testing with experts and we found that some of them are leaching lead into the environment. Kate Linebaugh: Who's responsible? I mean, it's old industrial waste in the environment. Shalini Ramachandran: Basically, it's complicated. The question of whose responsible is complicated. On one hand, environmental law and precedent has held successor companies responsible for things that their predecessor companies did. That is well established in environmental law. However, if in the time these were laid, if it was okay and considered safe at the time, then cleanup could be a collective responsibility between the companies and the government. One of the things that this reporting opened my eyes to was that there is this old industrial detritus that we still continue to live around and they're here and they're potentially causing risks to our community. It just kind of opened our eyes to how much could be out there, we've only scratched the surface. And just the bigger picture that oftentimes things that we consider toxic now, might have been left in the environment years ago and not dealt with, and they're still out there. Kate Linebaugh: That's all for today, Friday, July 14th. Additional reporting in this episode by Thomas Gryta, Coulter Jones, Susan Pulliam, and John West. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Mahar Donny, Annie Baxter, Catherine Brewer, Maria Bern, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphreys, Ryan Knutson, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinoza, Heather Rogers, Jonathan Sanders, Pierce Singgih, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whelan, and me, Kate Linebaugh. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wylie. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapok, So Wylie, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact Checking by Nicole Pasulka. Thanks for listening. See ya Monday. Looking for more episodes? Find them wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsTuneInStitcherAlexaiHeartRadioRSS Amazon Music MORE WAYS TO LISTEN * Google Podcasts * TuneIn * Stitcher * Alexa * iHeartRadio * RSS * Amazon Music HOSTED BY Kate Linebaugh Co-host of The Journal., The Wall Street Journal Kate Linebaugh is the co-host of The Journal. She has worked at The Wall Street Journal for 15 years, most recently as the deputy U.S. news coverage chief. Kate started at the Journal in Hong Kong, stopping in Detroit and coming to New York in 2011. As a reporter, she covered everything from post-9/11 Afghanistan to the 2004 Asian tsunami, from Toyota's sudden acceleration recall to General Electric. She holds a bachelor degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and went back to campus in 2007 for a Knight-Wallace fellowship. Ryan Knutson Ryan Knutson Co-host and News Editor, The Journal Podcast, The Wall Street Journal Ryan Knutson is the co-host of The Journal, The Wall Street Journal's flagship daily podcast. He has worked at the Journal since 2013. Before joining the podcast, Ryan covered the wireless industry, and was responsible for a string of scoops including Verizon's $130 billion buyout of Vodafone's stake in their joint venture, Sprint and T-Mobile's never ending courtship, and a hack of the 911 emergency system that spread virally on Twitter. He also spent a year on the business side of Dow Jones, helping lead the company's strategic relations with tech companies like Apple and Google. Before WSJ, he reported for ProPublica, PBS Frontline and OPB, the NPR affiliate station in Portland, Ore. He grew up in Aloha, Ore. and graduated from the University of Oregon. Show Full Bio SHARE THIS PODCAST * * * Opinion: Potomac Watch From the award-winning opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot, Kim Strassel, Bill McGurn and Kyle Peterson discuss the latest from Washington. Get critical perspective and the analysis you need on developments from the nation's capital. 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