In concert with the North Carolina Lead and Healthy Homes Task Force, this Bass Connections project produced the first city soil-lead map in the state. These maps served as tools to identify lead hotspots and guide management of aging construction and new developments. In addition to generating the first soil maps in this region, this study also helped guide city managers in identifying and assessing new sites for greenways, recreational areas and tree planting.

The team sampled urban soils in public spaces, parks, streetside right of ways, and in and around private homes across the city. They have also mapped Duke University’s East campus using a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer. The team has analyzed nearly 1000 soil samples for lead and other chemicals and can report that although it has been nearly 50 years since lead was phased out of gasoline and fresh paint, the legacy of that lead is still found in the city’s surface soils with highest concentrations around foundations of homes older than 1980, and along streetsides of streets with historically high traffic. The work supports a hypothesis that urban soil lead is decreasing in concentration over the decades but that lead hotspots remain behind because of the chemical immobility of lead in most soils.

Timing

Spring 2019 - Fall 2019

Team Outputs

Anna Wade, Daniel Richter, Christopher Craft, Nancy Bao, Paul Heine, Mary Osteen, Kevin Tan. 2021. "Urban-soil pedogenesis drives contrasting legacies of lead from paint and gasoline in city soil," Environmental Science & Technology.

Video

Legacy of Lead in the Soils of Durham

This Team in the News

Lead Levels in Urban Soil are Declining but Hotspots Persist

These Ph.D. Graduates Incorporated Bass Connections into Their Doctoral Education

Summer Research Snapshots 2019

Every City Needs a Soil Lead Map!

Image: Contaminated Soil, by Joey Rozier, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0