Omaha sits on the nation's largest residential lead cleanup site — a 27-square-mile Superfund area where a smelter deposited 400 million pounds of lead over a century — but fewer than half the children under 7 living there are tested for the toxic metal despite its known dangers to brain development. Thirteen states including neighboring Iowa have passed universal blood-testing requirements for children, each seeing increases in kids identified with dangerous lead exposure after doing so, but Nebraska abandoned its own testing bill in 2011 and health officials are only now planning a new ordinance. East Omaha still has higher rates of elevated blood lead in children than the national average even as cleanup efforts have reduced the percentage from 33% in 2000 to 2.4% in 2025, suggesting ongoing risk from both contaminated soil and lead pipes in older housing stock.