
Tony Briscoe
Reporter at Los Angeles Times
air quality and environmental health reporter @LATimes | past bylines @ProPublica and @ChicagoTribune | Michigan State alum | email ➡️ [email protected]
Articles
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5 days ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Hayley Smith
New soil testing by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has found high levels of lead and other toxic metals at homes destroyed by January’s catastrophic wildfires and cleared by federal cleanup crews. The county health department hired Roux Associates Inc. to conduct soil sampling at 30 homesites that had been cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the federal agency leading debris-removal operations for the Eaton and Palisades wildfires.
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1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
Over three days in late March, four Los Angeles Times environment reporters and an editor fanned out across the Eaton and Palisades burn scars to collect 40 soil samples from residential properties: 10 in each burn area from properties where debris removal was completed by the Army Corps of Engineers and 10 in each burn area from the yards of standing homes.
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1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
On the heels of the Eaton and Palisades fires, among the most destructive urban wildfires in U.S. history, federal and state disaster agencies have refused to pay for soil testing to ensure fire-related contamination no longer remains in thousands of now-empty dirt lots across Los Angeles County.
The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxins in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks
1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe |Noah Haggerty |Hayley Smith
The Eaton and Palisades fires released mountains of hazardous material as flames chewed through old homes layered with lead paint and asbestos, kitchen cabinets filled with cleaning solutions, and cars, microwaves and other electronic devices filled with heavy metals. In the wake of the fires, federal officials broke from the decades-long tradition of testing soil in wildfire burn areas in California to determine whether and when it is safe for people to come home.
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1 week ago |
latimes.com | Tony Briscoe
One morning shortly before Easter, Lupe Sanchez kicked through a plot of dirt on her property in Altadena.By some miracle, her house had survived the that blew through the once-cozy corner of Los Angeles County in January, but flames had razed a backhouse on her property where Sanchez hoped her daughter might live some day.“All of these 50 years, going and raising my kids, grandkids and great grandbabies — this is their inheritance,” Sanchez said.Like many Altadenans, she wanted answers.
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RT @NarroVictor: New soil testing by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has found high levels of lead and other toxic metal…

RT @Sammy_Roth: After the Eaton & Palisades fires, federal agencies refused to test for toxic metals in the soil of burned homes. So a team…

RT @latimes: When FEMA failed to test soil for toxic substances after the L.A. fires, The Times had it done. The results were alarming http…