Illinois Finds Beautiful Way to Get the Lead Out.

• Position: Plants that remove lead from soil - Brief Article

They grow on stalks as high as 10 feet, and turn huge golden faces to the sun each day. But now sunflowers are doing more than brightening fields and producing seeds. They're becoming instrumental in saving the lives and intelligence of young children.

Sunflowers, goldenrod, fescue and corn are leading dual lives in a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-funded study on how best to remove lead from residential soil as cheaply as possible.

Phytoremediation--growing plants such as sunflowers that suck lead from soil--has been used for many years at contaminated industrial sites. Now researchers are using HUD money to test its usefulness in Chicago neighborhoods with old homes, dirty yards and young children.

The city has identified more than 20,000 children under age 6 with high enough levels of lead in their blood to cause permanent brain damage. Nearly 500,000 American children, ages 1 to 5, have such dangerous lead blood levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Soil is contaminated when dust from old lead-based paints--windblown or rain-washed--lands in yards. Leaded gasoline and factory emissions also contributed to lead-heavy soil before regulations were imposed.

"I'm very impressed that something as natural as flowers can remove lead from the soil," says Representative Mary...