Chemical Coastline: Reconstructing a Century of Lead and Arsenic Releases in Carteret, New Jersey
By Paul E. Rosenfeld, M.S., Ph.D., Principal Environmental Chemist, RoseyFields LLC, Santa Monica, California
A waterfront smelter’s eighty-three-year legacy
From 1903 to 1986, United States Metals Refining Co. (USMR) operated a smelting and metals-refining facility on the Carteret, New Jersey waterfront, an area residents later nicknamed the “Chemical Coastline.” Dr. Paul E. Rosenfeld, M.S., Ph.D. of RoseyFields LLC provided expert testimony in the resulting class-action litigation, Juan Duarte et al. v. United States Metals Refining Co., which alleged that decades of smelting released lead, arsenic, and other toxic metals into surrounding soils and properties.
The class-action resolution
The litigation, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, resulted in a $42 million class-action settlement approved in 2023, benefiting more than 1,000 current and former property owners in the affected Carteret neighborhood, with individual compensation based on duration of property ownership within the identified impact area.
Why metals require a different reconstruction approach than volatile chemicals
Unlike benzene or PFAS, lead and arsenic do not degrade or volatilize away; once deposited in soil, they persist essentially indefinitely absent remediation. This changes the reconstruction task: rather than modeling how a plume dispersed and dissipated over time, the analysis instead characterizes the spatial distribution and depth profile of metals that have accumulated in soil over more than eight decades of operations.
Source apportionment in a historically industrial waterfront
Carteret’s waterfront hosted multiple industrial operations over the twentieth century, making source apportionment, determining which contaminants came specifically from USMR’s smelting operations versus other nearby industrial sources, a central technical question, addressed through facility-specific process history, metals fingerprinting, and spatial gradient analysis radiating from the smelter site.
The regulatory framework for lead and arsenic in soil
EPA has established residential soil screening levels for both lead and arsenic under its Superfund risk-assessment framework, with lead evaluated against a 400 parts-per-million residential screening level for bare soil in high-exposure scenarios and arsenic evaluated against site-specific background-adjusted concentrations, given its natural occurrence in many soils (US EPA, Regional Screening Levels).
The toxicological classification of the two metals
IARC classifies arsenic and inorganic arsenic compounds as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), while lead compounds are classified as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A), with lead additionally recognized for well-documented neurodevelopmental effects in children even at low blood-lead concentrations (IARC, Arsenic and Arsenic Compounds; CDC, Lead).
Why children’s exposure pathways receive special attention
Because young children exhibit greater hand-to-mouth soil ingestion behavior and greater physiological sensitivity to lead’s neurodevelopmental effects, residential metals contamination cases typically require an age-specific exposure and dose analysis rather than an adult-only assessment, consistent with EPA’s Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic (IEUBK) modeling approach for childhood lead exposure (US EPA, IEUBK Model).
Property value as an independent harm pathway
As in refinery and other industrial-emissions litigation, the Carteret plaintiffs alleged that inadequate investigation and remediation diminished property values independent of any individual health effect, a damages theory requiring the same kind of hedonic property-value methodology applied in other environmental-stigma litigation (Simons et al., 2015).
Investigation and remediation adequacy as a distinct claim
A notable feature of the Duarte litigation was the allegation that USMR’s own testing and remediation of the contamination was itself inadequate, a claim that requires evaluating not just what was released historically but whether subsequent investigation and cleanup activities met the standard of care reflected in EPA and state remediation guidance.
Why waterfront industrial sites recur nationally
Carteret’s pattern, decades of unregulated or lightly regulated heavy-industry operation directly on a waterfront, followed by residential development or continued residential proximity, followed decades later by contamination discovery, recurs at industrial waterfronts nationwide, making the Carteret reconstruction methodology broadly transferable.
The continuing relevance of historical metals reconstruction
As more historically industrial waterfront and urban sites undergo redevelopment and associated environmental due diligence, the combination of historical operations research, soil metals characterization, source apportionment, and childhood exposure modeling demonstrated in the Carteret litigation remains directly applicable to future metals-contamination claims. Readers interested in Dr. Rosenfeld’s soil and metals contamination work can find more detail at RoseyFields.com.
References
1. Duarte J, et al. v United States Metals Refining Company, et al. Civil Action No. 2:17-cv-01624 (ES)(SCM), US District Court, District of New Jersey; class settlement approved 2023.
2. RoseyFields LLC. $42 Million Settlement — Heavy-Metal Soil Contamination (U.S. Metals Refining Co., Carteret, NJ). Santa Monica, CA: RoseyFields LLC; 2026.
3. US Environmental Protection Agency. Regional Screening Levels for Chemical Contaminants at Superfund Sites. Washington, DC: US EPA.
4. IARC Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Arsenic and Arsenic Compounds. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Vol 100C. Lyon, France: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2012.
5. IARC Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Inorganic and Organic Lead Compounds. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Vol 87. Lyon, France: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2006.
6. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead: Health Effects of Lead Exposure. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services.
7. US Environmental Protection Agency. A Guide to the Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic Model (IEUBK) for Lead in Children. Washington, DC: US EPA.
8. Simons RA, Seo Y, Rosenfeld P. Modeling the effect of refinery emission on residential property value. J Real Estate Res. 2015;27(3):321-342.
9. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Toxicological Profile for Arsenic. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services; 2007.
10. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Toxicological Profile for Lead. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services; 2020.
11. US Environmental Protection Agency. Superfund Remedy Report. Washington, DC: US EPA.
12. Rosenfeld PE. RoseyFields LLC: Soil and Metals Contamination Assessment. Santa Monica, CA: RoseyFields LLC; 2026.
13. Gonzalez J, Feng L, Sutherland A, Waller C, Sok H, Hesse R, Rosenfeld P. PCBs and dioxins/furans in attic dust collected near former PCB production and secondary copper facilities in Sauget, IL. Procedia Environ Sci. 2010:113-125.
14. US Environmental Protection Agency. Revisions to the Guideline on Air Quality Models. 40 CFR Part 51, Appendix W. Fed Regist. 2017;82(10):5182-5235.