Green group finds some New Orleans playgrounds contaminated with arsenic
Some playgrounds and schoolyards in New Orleans may be contaminated with high levels of arsenic swept in by Hurricane Katrina, according to soil samples taken by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Government agencies, which have taken about 2,000 soil and sediment samples in the city, have continually insisted that the floodwaters were not toxic. NRDC hopes to spur the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to do more testing, but we’ll see how well that goes over; a toxicologist for the LDEQ says NRDC’s report “isn’t science, it’s science fiction” and that the group is “absolutely fear mongering.”
