Houston’s Floodwaters Are Tainted, Testing Shows<br />In the Clayton Homes public housing development downtown, along the Buffalo Bayou, scientists found what they considered astonishingly high levels of E. coli in standing water in one family’s living room — levels 135 times those considered safe — as well as elevated levels of lead, arsenic<br />and other heavy metals in sediment from the floodwaters in the kitchen.<br />HOUSTON — Floodwaters in two Houston neighborhoods have been contaminated with bacteria and toxins<br />that can make people sick, testing organized by has found.<br />“There’s pretty clearly sewage contamination, and it’s more concentrated inside the home than outside the home,” said Lauren Stadler, an assistant professor of civil<br />and environmental engineering at Rice University who participated in The Times’s research.<br />Beau Briese, an emergency room physician at Houston Methodist Hospital, said he had seen a doubling<br />in the number of cases of cellulitis — reddened skin infections — since the storm.<br />Dr. David Persse, the chief medical officer of Houston, said residents caring for children, the elderly<br />and those with immune disorders should try to keep them out of homes until they have been cleaned.<br />Water flowing down Briarhills Parkway in the Houston Energy Corridor contained Escherichia coli,<br />a measure of fecal contamination, at a level more than four times that considered safe.<br />But some families in inundated neighborhoods in west Houston said they had developed staph infections and other health problems after wading through waters released from reservoirs<br />that swamped their homes long after other parts of the city had dried out.
