ALTADENA, Calif. — “DANGER: Lead Work Area” reads a sign on a front door of an Alt­adena home. “May dam­age fer­til­ity or the unborn child. Causes dam­age to the cent­ral nervous sys­tem.”

Block after block there are remind­ers that con­tam­in­ants still linger.

House clean­ers, haz­ard­ous waste work­ers and homeown­ers alike come and go wear­ing masks, res­pir­at­ors, gloves and hazmat suits as they wipe, vacuum and power-wash homes that­weren’t burnt to ash.

It has been a year of heart­break and worry since the most destruct­ive wild­fires in the Los Angeles area’s his­tory scorched neigh­bor­hoods and dis­placed tens of thou­sands of people. Two wind-whipped blazes that ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 31 people and des­troyed nearly 17,000 struc­tures, includ­ing homes, schools, busi­nesses and places of wor­ship. Rebuild­ing­will take years.

The dis­aster has brought another wave of trauma for people afraid of what still lurks inside their homes.

Indoor air qual­ity after wild­fires remains under­stud­ied, and sci­ent­ists still don’t know the long-term health impacts of expos­ure to massive urban fires like last year’s in Los Angeles. But some chem­ic­als released are known to be linked to heart dis­ease and lung issues, and expos­ure to min­er­als like mag­netite has been asso­ci­ated with Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

Ash in the area is a toxic soup of incin­er­ated cars, elec­tron­ics, paints, fur­niture and every other kind of per­sonal belong­ing. It can con­tain pesti­cides, asbes­tos, plastics, lead or other heavy metals.

Many with homes still stand­ing are liv­ing with the haz­ards left by the fires.

People forced back into con­tam­in­ated homes

Nina and Billy Malone con­sidered their home of 20 years a safe haven before smoke, ash and soot seeped inside, leav­ing behind harm­ful levels of lead even after pro­fes­sional clean­ing. Recent test­ing found the toxin is still on the wooden floors of their liv­ing room and bed­room.

They were forced to move back home in August any­way, after insur­ance cut off their rental assist­ance.

Since then, Nina wakes up almost daily with a sore throat and head­aches. Billy had to get an inhaler for his worsen­ing wheez­ing and con­ges­tion. And their bed­room, Nina said, smells “like an ash­tray has been sit­ting around for a long time.” She wor­ries most about expos­ure to unreg­u­lated con­tam­in­ants that insur­ance com­pan­ies aren’t required to test.

“I don’t feel com­fort­able in the space,” said Nina, whose neigh­bors’ homes burned down across the street.

They’re not alone.

Data shows dan­ger­ous lead levels still in homes

Accord­ing to a report released in Novem­ber by the Eaton Fire Res­id­ents United, a volun­teer group formed by res­id­ents, six out of 10 homes dam­aged from smoke from the Eaton Fire still have dan­ger­ous levels of can­cer-caus­ing asbes­tos, brain-dam­aging lead or both. That’s based on self-sub­mit­ted data from 50 homeown­ers who have cleaned their homes, with 78% hir­ing pro­fes­sional clean­ers.

Of the 50 homes, 63% have lead levels above the Envir­on­mental Pro­tec­tion Agency’s stand­ard, accord­ing to the report. The aver­age lead levels were almost 60 times higher than the EPA’s rule.

Even after fires were extin­guished, volat­ile organic com­pounds from smoke, some known to cause can­cer, lingered inside of people’s homes, accord­ing to a recent study. To mit­ig­ate these risks, res­id­ents return­ing home should vent­il­ate and fil­ter indoor air by open­ing win­dows or run­ning high-effi­ciency par­tic­u­late air (HEPA) pur­i­fi­ers with char­coal fil­ters.

Zoe Gonza­lez Izquierdo said she can’t get her insur­ance com­pany to pay for an adequate cleanup of her fam­ily’s Alt­adena home, which tested pos­it­ive for dan­ger­ous levels of lead and other toxic com­pounds.

“They can’t just send a com­pany that’s not cer­ti­fied to just wipe things down so that then we can go back to a still con­tam­in­ated home,” Ms. Gonza­lez Izquierdo said, who has chil­dren ages 2 and 4.

Experts believe the lead, which can linger in dust on floors and win­dowsills, comes from burned lead paint. The Uni­versity of South­ern Cali­for­nia repor­ted that more than 70% of homes within the Eaton Fire were built before 1979, when­lead paint was com­mon.

“For indi­vidu­als that are preg­nant, for young chil­dren, it’s par­tic­u­larly import­ant that we do everything we can to elim­in­ate expos­ure to lead,” said pedi­at­ri­cian Dr. Lisa Patel, exec­ut­ive dir­ector for the Med­ical Soci­ety Con­sor­tium on Cli­mate and Health and a mem­ber of the cli­mate group Sci­ence Moms.

The same goes for asbes­tos, she added, because there is no safe level of expos­ure.

‘We have to live in the scar’

People who lived in the Pacific Pal­is­ades, which was also scorched, face sim­ilar chal­lenges.

Res­id­ents are at the mercy of their insur­ance com­pan­ies, who decide on what they cover and how much. It’s a gruel­ing, con­stant battle for many. The state’s insurer of last resort, known as the Cali­for­nia Fair Access to Insur­ance Require­ments Plan, has been scru­tin­ized for years over its hand­lingof fire dam­age claims.

Homeown­ers want state agen­cies to enforce a require­ment that insur­ance com­pan­ies return a prop­erty to pre­fire con­di­tion.

Julie Lawson won’t take any risks. Her fam­ily paid about $7,000 out of pocket to test the soil in their Alt­adena home, even though their insur­ance com­pany had already agreed to pay to replace the grass in their front yard. They planned to test for con­tam­in­ants again once they fin­ished remedi­at­ing the inside, the pro­cess of mak­ing a home con­tam­in­ant-free after a fire. If insur­ance won’t cover it, they’ll pay for it them­selves.

Even if their home is liv­able again, they still face other losses — includ­ing equity and the com­munity they once had.

“We have to live in the scar,“she said. “We’re all still really strug­gling.”

They will be liv­ing in a con­struc­tion zone for years. “This isn’t over for us.”

Chal­lenges and men­tal health toll

Annie

Bar­bour with the non­profit United Poli­cy­hold­ers has been help­ing people nav­ig­ate the chal­lenges, which include insur­ance com­pan­ies res­ist­ing to pay for con­tam­in­a­tion test­ing and indus­trial hygien­ists dis­agree­ing on what to test for.

She sees the men­tal health toll it’s hav­ing on people — and as a sur­vivor her­self of the 2017 Tubbs Fire in North­ern Cali­for­nia, she under­stands it.

Many were at first joy­ful to see their houses still stand­ing.

“But they’ve been in their own spe­cial kind of hell ever since,” Ms. Bar­bour said.

Now res­id­ents like the Malones are inspect­ing their belong­ings, one by one, fear­ing they may have absorbed tox­ins.

Boxes, bags and bins stuffed with clothes, chinaware and everything in between fill the couple’s car, base­ment, gar­age and home.

They have been painstak­ingly going through their things, assess­ing what they think can be adequately cleaned. In the pro­cess, Nina is clean­ing cab­in­ets, draw­ers, floors and still find­ing soot and ash. She wears gloves and a res­pir­ator, or some­times just an N-95 mask.