ALTADENA, Calif. — An Altadena mother started chelation therapy to remove lead from her son’s blood. Geochemists cannot enter a home without wearing a respirator and a full body suit. A filmmaker spent thousands of dollars testing and remediating the property that once housed his home for heavy metals, work that was not part of a government cleanup program.
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Sixteen months after the Eaton Fire, these are the extreme measures Altadena residents are taking to deal with a host of toxic compounds, including arsenic and asbestos, plaguing their families and property. This pollution is a result of the unprecedented nature of this urban firestorm, which set thousands of homes and cars on fire and released heavy metals in the smoke.
Even after charred debris was removed from the site of the fire and the remaining home repaired, tests found high levels of lead, enough to make children sick.
The Eaton fire destroyed a vehicle in the driveway, leaving behind metal contamination. Evan Bush/NBC News
“I got a lead test from Amazon for $75, and after a few tests, I found lead everywhere,” said Jennifer Rochlin, a potter and single mother of two sons. She said her insurance company didn’t approve a lead test at her Altadena home until she discovered the metal herself, including in the HVAC system.
Rochlin has moved twice and had to replace absorbent items, including her mattress, twice.
Whether their homes burned or not, situations like hers are largely why so many residents of Altadena, a northeastern suburb of Los Angeles, still haven’t returned. Thousands of people, nearly two-thirds of the residents who lost their homes or suffered smoke damage in the Eaton fire, remain evacuated and stranded in temporary housing, often at great cost to their insurance companies and themselves as their coverage lapses, according to one report.
Uncertainty about when they will be able to return or rebuild has prompted a patchwork of academics, independent scientists, and grassroots advocacy groups to conduct their own research into the contamination. What follows is the story of these discoveries and the ensuing conflict, based on interviews with more than a dozen Altadena residents, six scientists working on the pollution problem, workers involved in debris removal, local politicians, and insurance industry representatives.
Collectively, their experiences make it clear that the systems designed to respond to fire disasters (insurance companies, restoration companies, local governments, environmental agencies) were not built for such disasters.
“This was an urban fire, and the contamination we were dealing with was different than what we normally see,” said Dawn Fanning, managing director of nonprofit advocacy group Eaton Fire Residents United.
Dawn Fanning, managing director of Eaton Fire Residents United, said about 70% of residents in smoke-damaged homes have not yet returned. Evan Bush/NBC News
California has no safety standards for indoor residential contamination from many of the hazardous substances found in Altadena, other than lead and asbestos. This makes it difficult for both homeowners and insurance companies to determine when the risk is low enough to relocate again. Even companies that test for contaminants do not use consistent methods. Meanwhile, at properties where homes were hit by fires, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not require soil testing, leaving residents in the dark about the potential danger.
Two whistleblowers involved in the Corps’ cleanup said they feared communities would be dealing with soil contamination for a long time.
Both men, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said the work was rushed and inconsistent. One person said they saw more debris left behind than previous wildfires.
“It’s very incomplete. We’re dealing with other fires, going fence to fence, scraping everything,” he said. But not this time. “Contaminants are still present.”
A Corps spokesperson said the scope of the cleanup effort, including decisions about what to remove, was determined by FEMA and agreed to in advance by the state of California and Los Angeles County.
“The assigned mission covered the removal of structural ash and debris, as well as ash remains and soil in the top six inches of the structural foundation,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Soil testing was not part of the USACE mission mandate from FEMA.”
The threat hidden in the soil
Altadena is where nature meets the city.
The area is surrounded by the San Gabriel Mountains and glows in warm terracotta colors at dusk. From here, the silhouettes of downtown Los Angeles’ skyscrapers can be seen abstractly in the distance in the haze.
The Eaton Fire in Altadena in January 2025 destroyed 9,400 homes and structures, and the smoke contained lithium in electric car batteries, arsenic in old wood, and asbestos in attic insulation. The swirling winds that spread the flames exceeded 90 mph.
During the fire, Alireza Namayande, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, collected samples of smoke within the Pasadena Park plume using a device that filters and separates particles. Namayande said further research revealed that most of the particles were actually nanoparticles, about one-thousandth the width of a human hair, a size that could easily enter the lungs, bloodstream and brain.
