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Tacoma Smelter Plume Soil Sampling in Seattle

 

King County offers FREE soil testing

Soil testing involves digging small holes in your yard’s soil, removing small amounts of soil, and refilling the holes. It usually takes a few hours. The soil samples will then be sent to a lab for analyzing.

Before we can test the soil, the property owner must sign the Property Access Agreement and Survey form that gives us permission to access the yard and do the work.

If you are a renter and would like free home soil testing of the yard, you must contact your property owner. The property owner must sign the form to give us permission to access the yard and do the work. The form must be returned to us before any testing can be done.

The results will be mailed in approximately two weeks to property owners. For results that are below the yard cleanup levels, we will mail or email sample results and include tips on reducing your contact to lead and arsenic. Learn more about what you can do to protect your family with simple healthy actions.

We will contact you directly if the test results show you have higher levels of arsenic and lead in your soil to provide you with more information.

Learn how to test your own soil at home

Tacoma Smelter contamination is unpredictable from property to property. There is tremendous variation from one property to another, and even across parts of the same property. The only way to know for sure if your property is contaminated is to test the soil.

Whether or not you live outside of the TSP soil safety program service area, you can choose to do your own soil testing.