More than half of still-standing homes within the area the Eaton fire’s ash settled had significant lead contamination even after extensive indoor remediation efforts, according to new findings announced Thursday from the grassroots advocacy group Eaton Fire Residents United. Additionally, a third of remediated homes tested positive for asbestos.

The results from 50 homes within and downwind of the Eaton burn area provide the first widespread evidence that the remediation techniques pushed by insurance companies and public health officials have not sufficiently removed contaminants deposited by the fire.

Long-term exposure to asbestos increases the risk of developing mesothelioma and other cancers, and long-term exposure to lead can cause permanent brain damage, especially in children, that leads to developmental delays and behavioral problems. No level of exposure to lead and asbestos comes without risks of adverse health effects.

“This is a community-wide problem,” said Nicole Maccalla, who leads EFRU’s data science. “It doesn’t matter what remediation you’re using, one pass is not establishing clearance based on the data that we have, which means that it is not yet safe to return to your home.”

That’s an issue given that many residents who have been staying elsewhere are returning home — especially those whose insurance money for temporary housing is running dry. EFRU leaders are encouraging residents to test their homes after remediation work, and, if the results show contamination, to keep remediating and testing until the lab results come back clean.

EFRU — born in January out of a frustration that no level of government was adequately addressing Altadena residents’ environmental health concerns — started by asking owners of standing homes to share the results of testing they had commissioned from professional labs both before and after remediation.

In March, EFRU was the first to publish comprehensive results from inside homes that had not yet been remediated: Out of the 53 professional testing reports homeowners shared with the organization, every household that tested for lead had found it.

A similar process was employed for this latest, post-remediation report. Homeowners hired testing professionals to come collect samples and run tests at certified labs, then they shared those results with EFRU. The organization then collated them in a database to give a wider-scope view of contamination in standing homes than any one single test could show.

Of the 50 total homes included in EFRU’s report, 45 were tested for lead, and 43 of those had at least some level of lead contamination.

Out of the 18 homes where professionals tested for lead on windowsills specifically, nine exceeded the corresponding level at which the Environmental Protection Agency typically requires further remediation. And out of the 24 homes tested for lead on floors specifically, 15 exceeded the EPA’s remediation level.

There are no official EPA remediation levels for asbestos dust on surfaces. However, asbestos dust was found in nine of the 25 homes that were tested for it in the EFRU report. The average concentration within those homes was significantly above the ad-hoc remediation level the EPA used in New York after 9/11.

“The number of houses tested is still very low, but considering that most of the homes have been remediated by professional companies, we would expect that all the homes should go below the EPA level,” said François Tissot, a Caltech geochemistry professor who began testing standing homes after the Eaton fire damaged his own. “That’s the promise of professional remediation.”

Now, EFRU is calling on the California Department of Insurance to implore insurers to cover testing and, if needed, multiple rounds of remediation. The group is also asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare an “ash zone,” which would formally recognize the impact of the fire’s smoke and ash beyond the immediate burn zone.

An ash zone, EFRU says, would raise public awareness around health concerns and take some of the burden off individual residents to prove to insurance companies that their home was affected.

The Department of Insurance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tissot, who is not involved with EFRU but has been in communication with the group, previously found that wiped-down surfaces had about 90% less lead than those left untouched since the fire. It made EFRU’s findings particularly surprising.

“To see that we are not even breaking 50% with professional remediation is rather alarming,” he said.

While state and federal officials, in collaboration with researchers, have developed playbooks for addressing contamination in drinking water systems and in soil after wildfires, standing-home remediation is something of a Wild West.

Instead of a central government agency working to ensure indoor remediation follows a research-backed recovery approach, a revolving door of insurance adjusters and a hodgepodge of remediation specialists with wildly different levels of qualifications and expertise have set different policies and standards for each home.

EFRU reviews test results primarily from industrial hygienists, who specialize in identifying and evaluating environmental health hazards, most often in workplaces such as manufacturing facilities and hospitals.

In its review, EFRU found many tests did not even look for lead or asbestos — despite the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health clearly warning that the two contaminants are known issues in the post-fire area. Those that tested for asbestos often used less-sensitive methods that can under-report levels.

EFRU hopes to work with researchers and officials to develop an indoor contamination playbook, such as the ones that exist for drinking water and soil, designed to help residents both safely and quickly recover.

“We need coordinated effort from all the different agencies with the elected officials — either through legislation or pressure,” said Dawn Fanning, who leads EFRU’s advocacy work. “We can come up with the answers for these residents and for future wildfires.”

Last week, Bill Gates published a 17-page memo on his personal website that critics said pitted climate and public health efforts against each other, when they should instead be working in tandem.

Monday night, speaking at Caltech in Pasadena, Gates doubled down, brushing off the critiques that came from across the ideological spectrum, including from climate scientists and President Trump.

Stressing that philanthropic resources are finite, Gates said he’s shifted some of his efforts from preventing climate change to reducing human disease and malnutrition in a world that he said will undoubtedly become warmer.

The United Nations’ 2025 Emissions Gap Report, published on Tuesday, says it’s likely that by 2100, global temperatures will have increased between 2.0 and 2.4 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Gates said he believes that number will be closer to 3 degrees Celsius.

“The real measure there is all the things we’re doing to help the most vulnerable people on the planet,” he said. He went on to say that he wants to refocus on scientific innovation that will remove climate-change-related costs — what he called a “green premium” — from technology to address hunger and sickness in the poorest countries in the world.

Climate scientists raised concerns about Gates’ memo released last week, arguing it inaccurately isolated the challenges of disease and hunger from climate change. “They are not separate problems, they are problems being exacerbated by this very issue,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a leading atmospheric scientist who studies climate change, in a forum Tuesday afternoon with other scientists.

At Caltech, in front of over 1,000 people — a mix of mostly students and professors — Gates expressed frustration with climate scientists who critiqued his memo as erroneously downplaying the potential impacts of climate change.

“What world do they live in?” he asked at one point, arguing that his critics were not taking into account that you could do more to save lives by spending money to address disease and other issues than by investing in reducing carbon emissions.

“It’s a numeric game in a world with very finite resources,” Gates said on Monday night. “More finite than they should be.”

Gates also rebuked Trump, who he said made a “gigantic misreading” of the memo in a Truth Social post last Wednesday that suggested Gates was no longer a climate change believer.

“I’m a climate activist, but I’m also a child survival activist, and I hope you will be too,” Gates told the crowd at Caltech. “That’s the best way to make sure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy life, no matter where they’re born or what climate they’re born into.”

The billionaire said that his shift in focus to human health is intended to support poor countries that typically receive aid from the U.S. and other rich nations, at a time when the U.S. has backed away from such largesse. The Trump administration in July paused most foreign aid payments, which make up just about 1% of the national budget, but which researchers at the nonprofit Center for Global Development have found save some 3.3 million lives worldwide.

At Caltech, Gates also discussed technologies he supports to mitigate climate change, including nuclear fusion reactors and geo-engineering.

Gates’ critics within the climate science world say he is focusing on the wrong things. “He’s sort of perpetually downplayed the importance of the clean energy transition with the technology we have in favor of promoting some future tech,” said Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. It could take decades for some of those technologies to be implemented at scale, said Mann. “We don’t have decades to address the climate crisis.”

A new report based on government inspection documents shows salmonella is widespread in U.S. grocery store chicken and turkey products. But because of how the pathogen is classified, the federal government has no authority to do much about it.

Farm Forward, an organization that advocates for farmworker rights and humane farm practices, released a report this week that examined five years of monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections at major U.S. poultry plants. It found that at many plants, including those that process and sell poultry under brand names such as Foster Farms, Costco and Perdue, levels of salmonella routinely exceeded maximum standards set by the federal government.

“The USDA is knowingly allowing millions of packages of chicken contaminated with salmonella to be sold in stores from major brands,” said Andrew deCoriolis, the organization’s executive director.

Some 1.3 million Americans are sickened each year by eating salmonella-contaminated food, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people have only mild symptoms, but others suffer diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Roughly 19,000 people are hospitalized annually, and an estimated 420 die from the infected food.

Chicken and turkey account for nearly a quarter of all salmonella infections, according to a 2021 government report on food illness.

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects poultry plants monthly. The new report shows that five U.S. poultry plants exceeded maximum allowable salmonella contamination every month from 2020 to 2024. These included a Carthage, Mo., turkey plant owned by Butterball, a Dayton, Va., turkey plant owned by Cargill Meat Solutions, and a chicken plant located in Cunning, Ga., that is owned by Koch Foods. A Costco chicken producer, Lincoln Premium Poultry, exceeded the standard in 54 of 59 inspections.

“Lincoln Premium Poultry treats the safety of its products as an utmost concern,” Jessica Kolterman, the company’s director of administration, said in an email. “When the United State Department of Agriculture reports are updated and published, they will show that we have enhanced our standing. … We will continue to improve our processes.”

A spokesperson for Butterball said the company “takes food safety very seriously and follows all USDA and FSIS regulations and inspection protocols.” The spokesperson said facilities are subject to rigorous, continuous oversight, and they are “constantly reviewing and improving our food safety programs to ensure we meet or exceed government standards.”

Cargill, Perdue and Koch Foods did not reply to requests for comment. Foster Farms directed questions to the National Chicken Council, the industry’s trade group.

“Consumers should not be concerned,” said Tom Super, a spokesman for the chicken council. He said the report was “unscientific” and described Farm Forward as an “activist organization whose stated goal is to end commercial chicken farming.”

Both Super and Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, said poultry is safe when cooked to 160 degrees, and knives, cutting boards and other items that may have come into contact with raw meat are disinfected and cleaned.

“All chicken is safe to eat when properly handled and cooked,” said Mattos, noting that annually “Californians eat more chicken than any other state … 110 pounds per person!”

The report also suggests that the federal government’s standards for acceptable levels of salmonella are unduly high, and potentially put American poultry consumers at risk.

For ground chicken, the USDA allows 25% of samples at a plant to be contaminated. For ground turkey, 13.5%. Chicken parts should not exceed 15.4% of samples contaminated, while the number is 9.8% for whole chickens.

“I don’t know, but seems common sense to me that if you allow for a lot of salmonella, a lot of people are going to get sick,” said Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a national food safety law firm.

When inspectors visit a plant, they do not assess the meat’s bacterial load, nor do they determine the strain of bacteria found on the product. They just test for the presence of the bacterium — it’s either there or it’s not.

According to Marler and Maurice Pitesky, a poultry science expert at UC Davis, there are hundreds of strains — or serotypes — of Salmonella. Most are considered harmless, but roughly 30 are known to be potentially lethal to people.

As a result, the USDA inspections don’t give a clear picture about what’s there, Pitesky said.

“When I hear something has salmonella, I’m like, ‘OK, first question: I want to know its serotype. What kind of serotype is it?’ Because that that’s really the relevant piece of information,” he said.

When inspectors find a plant has exceeded the salmonella standard, there is very little they can do except note it. The agency has no authority to enforce the standards.

Marler said in the 1990s, after four children died and hundreds of people got sick eating ground beef contaminated with E. coli sold at Jack in the Box restaurants, the agency decided to classify the bacterium as an adulterant. That designation meant the USDA could stop the sale of contaminated products, or shut down a plant that failed inspections.

He said the beef industry initially pushed back, fearing it would lose money — which it did, at first.

He said the USDA started doing retail testing, “and for a while, it felt like there was a recall a week — you know … 50, 100, a thousand pounds here, a million pounds there, even 10 million pounds.” Eventually, however, companies started testing their products “and coming up with interventions to get rid of it. And you know what? The number of E. coli cases linked to hamburger plummeted.”

He said now he sees a case only once in a while.

“I kind of look at that and think, well, if you get salmonella out of chicken, you’ll probably reduce those cases too,” he said.

Pitesky said that salmonella is notoriously difficult to get rid of. It can be introduced to flocks from wild animals, such as birds, rats, mice and other wildlife. It’s also found in the intestines of chickens, on their skin, feathers and feet, and it spreads among them when they poop, urinate and walk around in shared bedding, etc.

However, Marler thinks it can be controlled.

“Yeah, it’s difficult,” he said. “But you can do a lot of things. And this might piss people off, but you could eradicate flocks with salmonella. They do it in the EU all the freaking time.”

The European Union considers salmonella an adulterant, and require producers to reduce and control it via biosecurity, testing, vaccinations, recalls and occasionally depopulation.

“The fact is, if you make salmonella contamination expensive, if recalls exist and people feel embarrassed that they’re producing food that is making people sick or killing them, they’ll want to change their behavior,” he said.