Locating Toxic Lead in City Soils with Online Archives (2024-2025)
A recent study found lead contamination in the soil of several of Durham’s city parks, with some instances of contamination beginning 70 to 80 years ago. Digitized city records, maps, aerial photographs and newspapers contained in online archives can be used to efficiently and accurately locate sites of potential city-soil contamination based on incinerator information. Given recent advances in chemical analysis, such as portable x-ray fluorescence instrumentation, city officials can rapidly screen potentially contaminated soils that reside near sites of former incinerators. They can also use incinerator and contamination data to link children’s blood lead concentrations with proximity to former incinerator sites. This information will help raise awareness of continued public health threats from contaminated soil as well as help cities and communities engage with legacies of environmental racism and inequality.
This project team identified and mapped potential soil contamination in city parks in over two hundred cities in the U.S. and Canada. Team members identified U.S. and Canadian cities that incinerated garbage and trash from the early 1900s through the 1960s and worked with specialty librarians to investigate their city's waste history to locate precise sites of incinerators, as well as histories of incinerator operation and conversions to other land uses.
Team members used collected information to build a geospatial database linked to public health information regarding children’s blood lead concentrations. Team members communicated with each investigated city to raise awareness and encourage soil screening for contaminants.
Timing
Summer 2024 – Summer 2025
Team Outputs
Peer-reviewed publications
Conference presentations
Formal communications with local stakeholders and state and federal agencies
See earlier related team Mapping Legacy Lead in Urban Soils to Help Improve Children's Health (2019-2020).
Image: Grange Park Revitalized, by wyliepoon, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0