Our Soil Team Publishes Paper on Soil Lead!

Dan, Abby, Tal, Mónica, and Saed published a paper entitled “Confronting Legacy Lead in Soils in the United States: Community-engaged Researchers Doing Undone Science” in Environmental Science and Policy. You can find the article here.

The study detailed in the paper is an investigation into public policies regarding soil lead and examines the contributions and perspectives of community-engaged soil researchers (people working with communities to analyze soil) with respect to lead governance in the United States. In the paper, we contend that community-engaged researchers not only fill knowledge gaps about soil lead; they are also a valuable source of insight about environmental policy and governance.

Abby and Dan’s qualitative analysis of the in-depth interviews that they conducted in 2020 revealed several characteristics of U.S. soil lead governance and its shortcomings in meeting the needs of people facing soil pollution, which we discuss in the paper. For example, interviews revealed the limitations of a regulatory strategy focused on identifiable polluters, when faced with a widely distributed pollutant like lead from gasoline and paint.