News

Students in Abby’s class at RPI—“Food, Farms, and Famine”—used color-based lead tests today to screen soil in the Vasudha garden. The samples were taken last Monday, August 2, from the raised garden beds, around the compost, and along the base of the dormitory wall. Dan set the samples to dry and sieved them to remove particles larger than 2 mm in preparation for today. We did not detect lead in any of the samples that were taken, which means that samples had less than 200 parts per million lead.

Photo by Bucky Stanton.

Dan has been providing sampling kits to the Fellows over the past week and helping some in collecting their samples for the soil workshops on August 14th and 15th. Once Fellows collected their samples, they returned them to Dan so that he could set them to dry before sieving them to remove stones and debris larger than 2 millimeters. The dried and sieved soils will be used in the testing at the workshops, and this preparation is important for the consistency of the testing.

Mónica was interviewed by McKenna Conners of The Sanctuary for Independent Media on WOOC 105.3 about the Our Soil project. Mónica discussed her role in the Our Soil project and how the team is working towards greater awareness and safety with soil contamination. You can listen to the radio interview here.

Abby, Kathy, Saed, Mónica, and Dan held a rehearsal in NATURE Lab to prepare for the upcoming soil workshops! We are getting closer!

Abby, Dan, and Hannah joined the Uptown Summer teens on the fourth Wednesday of Uptown Summer to screen the soil samples taken in the prior week for lead. We did not detect lead in the samples taken from the Collard City Garden and Troy Little League, meaning that the samples contain less than 200 parts per million of lead.

While we were doing the testing, The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s radio team recorded some of our group discussion that you can listen to here.

Photos by Tara Bryan.

The Our Soil team held a virtual community meeting tonight with the Soil Justice Fellows and other residents in Troy to give an overview about the soil workshops at NATURE Lab in August, collectively set expectations for those workshops, and answer questions.

You can watch a recording of the meeting here.