Abby, Dan, and Sarah doorknocked on the blocks surrounding NATURE Lab to announce the Soil Justice Fellowship at NATURE Lab in August. We handed out over 100 “Soil in the City” comic books and informational brochures about the Fellowship. We spoke to many neighbors of the NATURE Lab about how soil can be a pathway of exposure to lead, and what measures we can take collectively to protect community health.

Abby, Dan, and Sarah posted flyers on telephone poles and in corner store windows throughout North Central to announce the Soil Justice Fellowship at NATURE Lab in August. We are hoping to train 10-15 Soil Justice Fellows in testing soil for lead and arsenic, beginning with soils in the places most important to the Fellows! Fellows will need to commit nine hours (1 hour sampling + 2×4 hour workshops) to complete the training, and will be paid $225 for their time.

Abby was interviewed by Sina Hickey of The Sanctuary for Independent Media on WOOC 105.3 about the Our Soil project. Abby announced that the Our Soil project and NATURE Lab are looking for Soil Justice Fellows who would like to learn, think, and act collectively about local urban soils through a series of collaborative workshops in August 2021.

The NSF grant will support research of soil lead in the US, Chile, UK, and Australia, four regions with distinctive roles in the lead industry. The main goal is to understand how people in each area create knowledge about soil lead, develop and promote methods to reduce exposures, and change the social and economic circumstances in which lead exposures occur.

“Soil in the City” is a comic about living and gardening safely with city soils that may contain lead residues from past uses of leaded gasoline and lead-based paint. The Our Soil team wrote the script and partnered with Kaitlyn Briscoe, Angela Duras, and Madeline Montero for the illustrations. Kaitlyn and Angela are currently undergraduates at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Madeline is an alumni.

Abby and Sebastián joined a panel discussion for the film screening of “Arica: A Toxic Waste Scandal” hosted by The Sanctuary for Independent Media. Arica, Chile, is one of the two cities where Our Soil/Nuestros Suelos will hold workshops with residents to test local soils for lead and arsenic this year. The people of Arica have a long history dealing with the health consequences of lead and arsenic contamination of city soils.

Colorado State’s Master Gardener program has a guide for estimating soil texture in a variety of ways. One of those ways is a jar method on the last page of the guide.

One of the bulletin boards in the hallway outside of the Ramírez-Andreotta laboratory at the University of Arizona had the following poster that describes how to use red cabbage for measuring pH:

Dan left the Ramírez-Andreotta laboratory on January 22 to return to the northeast in preparation for the next stage of the project: collaborative workshops with Troy residents using the Community Soil Study Toolkit in order to identify and address any arsenic, copper, and lead that may be found.

But not before completing the necessary laboratory work to support the Community Soil Study Toolkit and one moonless night in December at the Chiricahua National Monument:

Today Dan visited the Arizona Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants (ALEC) at the University of Arizona where the Troy soil samples prepared in the Ramírez-Andreotta laboratory were sent for analysis using their inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). The director of ALEC, Mary Kay Amistadi, walked Dan through the process of how the Troy soil samples were prepared and analyzed with the ICP-MS to measure the amount of arsenic, copper, and lead in the samples.