As you know from this past year of emails, workshops, events and educational material– North Brooklyn has an excess of lead in our soil. We are thankful to the Greenpoint Community Environmental Foundation who awarded us the grant and made all of our work possible. As Allison Currier, NAG’s Environmental Community Organizer, ends her time with NAG, she’s excited to announce the work will continue to test soils for lead in North Brooklyn.
We know that the lead issue is still strong here in North Brooklyn (North Brooklyn has 4x the average blood lead levels). For that reason, we’ve connected with a PhD student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Franziska Landes (click her name to read her bio and background).
This new partnership is exciting because Franziska and her team are trying to better describe the soil lead levels in our community, and they are also the team that created a new way to test soil for lead – the field kit we’ve emailed about earlier. She needs more data, and that’s where YOU come in. If you live anywhere in Greenpoint or Williamsburg, you can email Franziska at lead.study@ldeo.columbia.edu or check out their
project website www.columbia.edu/leadstudy.
They’re looking for people with access to backyard soils who are interested in participating in this confidential study. Sign up on their website or send them an e-mail to set up a time for her and the team to stop by and collect around 5 soil samples from different areas of your yard (or you may be selected to try the new field kit!).
Specifically, they are looking at comparing soils in private backyards vs public spaces. We have noticed through our workshops and soil testing that backyard ground soil is much more contaminated than public parks. Please consider helping her gather more data to support this work (and get your soil tested for free!).
