GEOSPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF PB BETWEEN INTERIOR DUST AND EXTERIOR SOIL: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOURCES OF PB TO URBAN YOUTH

Lead (Pb) concentrations have been decreasing in children's blood for several decades due to the impact of policy and environmental interventions. Much research in the past decade has been focused on the legacy of Pb from gasoline and the degradation of Pb-based paint in older homes, with the re-suspension of Pb in soil being largely ignored. This latter factor may well explain why urban children are disproportionately at risk of having higher blood Pb levels (BLL) than their suburban counterparts. To examine the role that exterior soil and interior dust play in Pb exposure, we developed a novel technique for sampling interior Pb loading and potentially seasonal variations in Pb loading, and implemented this technique in a subset of homes in the WESCO community of Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana. This interior analysis was nested in a comprehensive neighborhood-wide analysis of soil Pb distributions in this area. Initial results indicate a spatial correlation between high soil Pb and high interior Pb loading. Intriguingly, one area that had been remediated by the EPA for Pb in soils does not display this correlation, and instead has the expected low soil Pb values resulting from the remediation but among the highest interior dust Pb values of the entire area. We interpret this mismatch as resulting from fugitive dust transported from the nearby shuttered Avanti Superfund site, with obvious human health and policy implications for remediation practices.