Investigative Report  |  Environmental Justice  |  St. Louis, Missouri

A Pittance for Poisoning a Neighborhood

American Junkers, LLC tore apart a 119-year-old house, unleashed a cloud of lead dust, broke six federal laws, and paid less than the cost of a used car to make it all go away.

American Junkers, LLC demolished the lead-painted walls of a 119-year-old St. Louis home with zero certifications, zero trained workers, and zero warning signs, and the federal government settled for $7,610.70 (roughly what you’d spend on two months of rent in a mid-sized American city).

The house at 2920 Michigan Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri, was built in 1906. That’s not a footnote. That date is the entire story. Any structure built before 1978 is classified as “target housing” under federal law, because the paint inside those walls almost certainly contains lead. Lead paint wasn’t banned from residential use in the United States until 1978, which means tens of millions of American homes are still coated in a neurotoxin that can permanently destroy a child’s brain development at even microscopic exposure levels.

When a renovation crew tears into those walls without containment, without training, and without warning anyone nearby, they turn a construction site into a toxic event. Dust carrying lead particles drifts through open windows. It settles on floors where kids crawl. It coats countertops where families prepare food. It gets tracked out to sidewalks where people walk. The law requiring specific safety protocols for exactly this situation has existed since 1992 and the specific work-practice rules have been in place since 2008. American Junkers ignored all of it.

Six Violations. Zero Excuses.

The EPA’s investigation, triggered by an inspection attempt on November 13, 2024 and followed by a formal subpoena on December 2, 2024, returned documentation of six distinct federal violations. These aren’t technicalities. Each one represents a specific layer of protection that was stripped away from the people in and around that building.

Count 1: American Junkers never applied for EPA certification to perform lead-disturbing renovations. This certification requires training and a demonstrated understanding of lead hazard protocols. They skipped it entirely. Count 2: The company never assigned a certified renovator to oversee the job. A certified renovator is the designated responsible party whose job is to ensure the work doesn’t poison people. There was none.

Count 3: American Junkers never provided the property owner with the EPA’s mandatory lead hazard information pamphlet before work began. That pamphlet exists so that people can make informed decisions about the risks happening in their home. Count 4: Photographs taken during the inspection revealed zero warning signs posted around the work area. Federal law requires clear signs telling anyone not involved in the renovation to stay out of the hazardous zone. There were none.

Count 5: EPA inspectors photographed uncontained renovation waste stored in front of the property, exposed to open air, wind, and foot traffic. Lead-contaminated debris sitting loose on a city sidewalk is not a metaphor. It is a documented, photographed public health hazard. Count 6: The photographs also showed windows and doors left open during interior demolition work, the precise opposite of what the law requires. Open windows and doors during lead-disturbing work are the primary pathway for contamination to spread beyond the building’s walls.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What Lead Actually Does to a Child’s Body

There is no safe level of lead exposure for children. That is not an opinion from an advocacy group. That is the documented scientific consensus of the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and decades of peer-reviewed research. Lead attacks the developing nervous system directly, causing permanent reductions in IQ, lifelong attention and behavioral disorders, and irreversible damage to the kidneys and cardiovascular system. The harm doesn’t announce itself. A child doesn’t collapse on the floor. Instead, a child quietly becomes slightly less able to concentrate, slightly less able to learn, slightly more prone to impulsivity, for the rest of their life.

The house on Michigan Avenue was built in 1906. That means over a century of paint layers, all applied before lead restrictions existed, covered those walls. When American Junkers demolished lath and plaster from those walls without containment, without sealed doors, without covered windows, and without barriers, those layers became airborne particulate. Lead dust is invisible to the naked eye. You cannot see it. You cannot smell it. You cannot taste it. A child playing on a floor or a parent cooking in a kitchen nearby would have had no way of knowing the air around them had changed.

The six violations documented in this case were not minor procedural oversights. They collectively represent the complete dismantling of every barrier the law erected between renovation work and human bodies. No warning signs means neighbors and passersby had no idea anything dangerous was happening. No containment on waste means lead-laced debris sat on a public sidewalk, exposed to wind, rain, and foot traffic. Open windows and doors during interior demolition means the dust plume generated inside the building had a direct pathway to the surrounding neighborhood. Each violation reinforces the others. Together, they describe a worksite designed as if lead were not a factor at all.

The people most at risk from this kind of exposure are the people least able to fight back. Low-income renters, often Black and brown families in older urban housing stock, are the most likely residents of pre-1978 homes. St. Louis has some of the highest documented lead poisoning rates in the United States, a legacy of decades of discriminatory housing policy that concentrated Black families in the oldest, most deteriorated housing in the city. A renovation company operating in that environment without certification, without trained workers, and without any of the legally required safeguards wasn’t just breaking rules. It was treating an already-vulnerable community as if its health didn’t matter enough to spend a few hundred dollars on proper training and containment materials.

Legal Receipts: In Their Own Words

The Documents Don’t Lie

“The information EPA received from Respondent’s Subpoena responses revealed that Respondent failed to assign a certified renovator to the renovation performed at the Property.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Count 2, Paragraph 30

“The photographs taken on the day of the attempted inspection revealed that Respondent was storing uncontained waste produced from the renovation in front of the property.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Count 5, Paragraph 41

“The photographs taken on the day of the attempted inspection revealed that Respondent failed to close windows and doors in the interior renovation of the work area.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Count 6, Paragraph 44

“The information EPA received through Respondent’s Subpoena responses revealed that Respondent failed to apply for and obtain EPA certification prior to commencing the renovation for compensation on the Properties.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Count 1, Paragraph 26

“Respondent: (b) neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations stated herein.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 47(b) — American Junkers agreed to pay but refused to admit wrongdoing

“This Consent Agreement and Final Order constitutes a ‘prior such violation’ as that term is used in EPA’s Interim Final Consolidated Enforcement Response and Penalty Policy… to determine Respondent’s ‘history of prior such violations.'” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 59 — This settlement is now on record. If they do it again, the next penalty calculation starts higher.

Societal Impact: Who Pays the Real Cost

Public Health: The Invisible Contamination Event

The EPA’s own regulatory framework describes exactly why every one of these six violations matters in terms of public health outcomes. The Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule, codified after years of documented lead poisoning cases linked to renovation work, requires containment, certification, and warning protocols precisely because uncertified renovation of pre-1978 housing is one of the primary documented pathways for childhood lead exposure in the United States. American Junkers removed every single one of those protections simultaneously.

Uncontained renovation waste stored in front of a property, photographed by EPA inspectors, represents a direct exposure pathway for anyone who walked past that house. Children playing on the sidewalk, pedestrians, and residents of neighboring properties all had potential contact with lead-contaminated debris. Open windows and doors during interior demolition meant the dust generated inside the building moved freely into shared air. These are the documented mechanics of how lead contamination spreads from a single work site to an entire block.

The public health cost of lead exposure is not theoretical. Lead poisoning in children generates lifetime costs in special education services, reduced lifetime earnings, increased healthcare utilization, and documented increases in behavioral and criminal justice involvement. Researchers estimate the societal cost of a single child’s lead poisoning runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. American Junkers paid $7,514 (approximately what it costs to buy a decent used car) in civil penalties. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between what the corporation paid and what the surrounding community may absorb for decades.

Environmental Degradation: Lead on the Sidewalk

The photographs taken during the EPA’s inspection documented construction waste, generated from the demolition of lath and plaster walls inside a 119-year-old building, stored uncontained in front of the property. This isn’t an abstract violation. Lath and plaster from a 1906 building carries lead in every layer of paint ever applied to it. Storing that material loose and exposed on a city sidewalk exposes it to wind, rain, and physical disturbance, each of which spreads lead particulate into the surrounding soil and environment.

Lead in soil is persistent. Unlike many other contaminants, it doesn’t break down. It accumulates. Children who play in lead-contaminated soil have documented rates of elevated blood lead levels. Urban neighborhoods with a history of older housing demolition and renovation without proper containment carry generational lead soil contamination that continues to affect residents long after the original renovation crew has been paid and moved on. The one afternoon American Junkers left that uncontained waste on the curb could mean elevated soil lead readings on that block for years.

Economic Inequality: Who Gets the Dangerous House

Pre-1978 housing in the United States is not distributed randomly across income levels. It is concentrated in lower-income, often majority-Black urban neighborhoods, the direct product of decades of redlining, discriminatory lending, and disinvestment policies that prevented Black families from purchasing homes in newer suburban developments. St. Louis is among the American cities with the most documented histories of exactly this pattern. The house at 2920 Michigan Avenue sits in that context.

Renovation companies that operate without certification, without trained workers, and without safety protocols frequently do so in these neighborhoods because enforcement is historically lighter and residents have less political power to demand accountability. The federal fine structure reinforces this dynamic. The maximum per-day penalty of $49,772 (enough to cover more than a year of rent for a working family) sounds substantial on paper. In practice, the EPA’s graduated penalty approach produced a total settlement of $7,514 (roughly two months of car payments on a new vehicle), which a renovation company can absorb as a minor operating cost and continue operating without meaningful disruption.

The economic message that settlement sends to other uncertified renovation operators is clear: the expected cost of getting caught is manageable. For the families in the surrounding neighborhood, the expected cost of someone else’s corner-cutting is measured in neurological damage, medical bills, and reduced opportunity for their children. The asymmetry between those two sets of consequences is not an accident of the system. It is the system.

The Cost of a Life: Running the Numbers

What Now: Don’t Let This Disappear

The People Responsible

The EPA’s settlement document names John Lauber as the representative of American Junkers, LLC, located at 8770 Glenwood Drive, Crestwood, MO 63126. The company’s contact email on record with the EPA is jack@amjremoval.com. The settlement is now a matter of public record. The document explicitly states that this settlement constitutes a “prior such violation,” meaning any future enforcement action against American Junkers will factor this case into a higher penalty calculation.

The Regulatory Watchlist

• EPA Region 7 (Kansas City): The agency that investigated this case. Track their enforcement actions at epa.gov/enforcement.
• EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting Program: The specific program American Junkers violated. Verify whether firms you hire hold current certification before any work begins in a pre-1978 home.
• Missouri Department of Natural Resources: State-level environmental enforcement that may have parallel jurisdiction over lead contamination incidents.
• City of St. Louis Health Department: Local public health authority responsible for childhood lead screening and community exposure response.
• EPA’s Lead-Safe Certification Search: A public database where you can verify whether any renovation contractor holds a valid EPA certification before they touch a wall in your home.

Look up EPA’s public certification database before hiring any renovation company for work in a pre-1978 home. If you live in the St. Louis area and believe your property or your children may have been exposed to lead dust from renovation activity in your neighborhood, contact the St. Louis Health Department for free blood lead level testing. Know your right to request the EPA lead hazard pamphlet “Renovate Right” from any contractor before work begins. If a contractor can’t produce it, walk away and report them to EPA Region 7.

Mutual aid networks in St. Louis, particularly those working in environmental justice, have been documenting lead exposure in older neighborhoods for years. Connect with organizations doing that work locally. Collective pressure, public record requests, and community-level lead testing campaigns have forced accountability where fines of $7,514 (less than a month’s wages for a single full-time worker) have failed. The system priced this community’s safety at two months of car payments. The community can decide that price is unacceptable.