What LED scientists and neighbors to work together? LEAD!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
You can’t see or smell lead in soil. But for decades, lead from the former Exide battery smelter settled into L.A. neighborhood gardens. How much is left?
Enter Jill Johnston and team at University of California, Irvine. Together with residents, they collected more than a thousand soil samples near the superfund site.
And? After ten years and over a hundred million dollars in cleanup, contamination remains. Nearly seventy percent of “cleaned” properties still exceed California’s lead safety threshold. It also extends beyond the state’s official cleanup boundary.
Sometimes the most important scientific instrument isn’t a microscope. It’s a community asking questions.
Johnston, J. E., Lopez, M., Granillo, M., Flores, J., Morales, M., Garcia, E., & East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. (2026). Get the lead out: A community-driven approach to characterize urban soil lead levels near a battery smelter. Environmental Science & Technology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c14197