Making a Difference at the Tar Creek Superfund Site: Community Efforts to Reduce Risk

The Tar Creek area of northeastern Oklahoma is the site of one of the nation's worst Superfund sites, a product of the more than 300 lead and zinc mines that once flourished there. Although the area was declared a Superfund site in 1983, cleanup progress was minimal and area residents suffered many ill health effects. Close to half of the children six years and under had elevated lead levels in their blood, indicating lead poisoning. Through combined work of Tribal Efforts Against Lead (TEAL) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a community effort was launched to clean up the soil and inform residents of how to minimize their exposure to toxins in their area.
The six small towns of the area are home to ten Indian tribes: the Quapaw, Seneca-Cayuga, Miami, Modoc, Wyandotte, Ottawa, Peoria, Shawnee, Eastern Shawnee, and Cherokee. Through a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) initiative to establish community-based participatory research (CBPR), the TEAL project was funded from 1996 to 2006. Community members participated in the research, intervention effort, and information dissemination. As a result of the project, approximately 2330 residential properties have been cleaned up to remove lead, and now very few children have abnormally high blood lead levels. This book describes the communities and the project in the voices of participants from every area: the community members, the tribal leaders, the scientists involved with the health of the people and the state of the land, and Learn and Serve America participants from Miami High School who were members of the Cherokee Volunteer Society working to make their community safer.