Landlord Gets Hit With $1.3 Million Lawsuit After Tenants' Child Registers More Than Twice Acceptable Lead Level In Blood; Probe Reveals That Prior (& Now-Deceased) Property Owner Operated Illegal Auto-Scrapping Business On Premises Over Ten Years Ago, Leaching Hazardous Metal Into Soil; $534K Estimated Cost To Remediate Far Exceeds Home's Value

In Portland, Oregon, The Oregonian reports:

• A young family that rented a Southeast Portland home with 280 times the acceptable level of lead in at least one hotspot in the yard have filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against their former landlord.
  
  Several months after 10-month-old Silver Shaheed McIntosh and her parents moved into the home in 2015, the little girl's pediatrician had her tested and learned she was unknowingly being poisoned by lead -- registering more than twice the acceptable level in her blood, according to the girl's parents.
  
  Craig McIntosh and Naimah Shaheed filed the lawsuit earlier this month on behalf of their daughter.
  
  The suit lists both the entity that owns the property and the landlord -- the McKallip Trust and trustee Daniel Butler -- as defendants, claiming they knew or should have known that there were alarming levels of lead in the soil. An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that an illegal auto-scrapping business at the home had leached the hazardous metal into the soil. The business had been operated on the property by a previous owner -- now deceased -- until about 2005, according to the EPA.
  
  Butler, reached by The Oregonian/OregonLive [], said he knew of the auto-scrapping business but had no idea that lead had contaminated the soil.
  
  "The lead at the property came as an entire shock," Butler said, adding that he's never encountered such a problem in his 40 years of being a landlord of various properties.
  
  The EPA found that the lead content across the yard averaged about 2.5 times higher than the threshold for triggering an EPA-ordered cleanup. But in some spots the concentrations were much greater: The sample with the highest amount contained 112,000 parts per million. That's 280 times the 400 parts per million threshold that would trigger a cleanup, according to the EPA.
  
  The home is in the 2800 block of Southeast 115th Avenue, and its back yard borders West Powellhurst Elementary School. Environmental regulators tested the soil at the school and at neighboring properties but found no concerning levels of lead, according to the EPA.
  
  As the EPA formulated plans to scrape roughly 400 tons of surface soil from the yard and replace it with clean fill, the McIntosh-Shaheed family holed themselves up inside, McIntosh told The Oregonian/OregonLive this week.
  
  "We were sort of imprisoned from then on," McIntosh said. "We parked in the driveway and we walked straight inside the door, and there we'd stay. We didn't go out the back door."
  
  McIntosh said they were renting the home for $1,200 a month, plus $200 a month paid toward a lease-to-own option.
  
  McIntosh said it's tough to think about how much his family was exposed before the discovery -- which only was made because their astute pediatrician wanted the girl's blood tested after her weight and height appeared to be stagnating, he said.
  
  "Silver was out there playing in the dirt, and I was digging and roto-tilling," McIntosh said. "She was out there just doing her thing. Being a kid."
  
  The lead level in the girl's blood in September 2015 tested at 13 micrograms per deciliter -- 5 micrograms per deciliter is the threshold for lead poisoning, according to the family's Lake Oswego attorney, Robert Le.
  
  Medical professionals say lead can hurt people of any age, and even small amounts of lead can be very harmful to some children, especially those younger than 6. It can affect IQ and cause a host of mental and physical problems, sometimes that don't become apparent for years.
  
  McIntosh said he and his wife are concerned that their now 2-year-old daughter -- who as a baby seemed advanced -- is lagging behind in her ability to speak.
  
  "There is so much worry," McIntosh said.
  
  The family temporarily moved out of the home in the spring while workers spent about three weeks hauling away the contaminated soil and constantly sprayed the area so lead dust wouldn't drift over to neighbors, according to the EPA.
  
  The agency estimated the costs at $534,000, and a spokeswoman said the property owner bore the expense. Butler, the landlord, however, said he doesn't know who is footing the bill for the clean-up costs -- because they were far more than the property is worth.
  
  McIntosh said he, his wife and his daughter permanently moved out of the house at the beginning of September, after borrowing some money from a relative to buy a new home.

Source: Parents of baby discover rental home's yard saturated with lead, sue for $1.3 million.

For the lawsuit, see McIntosh v. Butler.