As for Tacoma, the city’s still not pretty, but there’s little of the age-old aroma. Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent to scrub its bloody hands clean. The Washington State Department of Ecology has set its ideal cleanup level for arsenic in soil at 20 ppm, for lead at 250 ppm.[61] Before ASARCO gave up, it sampled 2,800 properties and cleaned 1,600, but only those with arsenic measuring over 230 ppm.[62] The EPA and Ecology have done the rest, remediating more than seven hundred residential yards, parks, and school properties for arsenic over 100 ppm and for lead over 250 ppm.
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