Susan Pulliam

The Environmental Protection Agency sent letters requesting telecommunications companies to meet with the agency about their lead-sheathed phone cables, in a new phase of an investigation in the EPA’s efforts to protect the public from potential lead hazards.

For decades, AT&T, Verizon, and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment. They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show.