SOIL LEAD CONTAMINATION IN MOBILE, ALABAMA: USING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TO ADDRESS ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Public parks and green spaces provide positive health effects and benefits early childhood development. Children in communities of color often use public parks to connect to the environment and to play outside. However, these communities are generally adjacent to environmental hazards from modern or historic sources of industrial or residential pollution. Lead is a common pollutant in urban environments due to historical industrial emissions and use of leaded gasoline and paints. Soils accumulate lead from all these sources and do not safely sequester lead away. Children in public parks can be exposed to this legacy lead byproduct and are particularly vulnerable due to higher frequency of hand to mouth contact. Lead poisoning in children can lead to decreased cognitive function, delayed development, seizures, and fatality; exposure prevention is key.

Here we quantify the distribution of soil lead in public parks and residential areas across Mobile, Alabama. We sampled 320 sites in parks and ~160 samples from community members across Mobile. Park samples were obtained from a surface depth of 0-10 cm from generally undisturbed soils, playground-adjacent soils, and picnic areas. After collection, all park soils were dried, sieved with 1 mm mesh, and analyzed using a Niton XL5 Plus XRF. Community samples were measured via XRF through various thin plastic bags without drying or sieving. Parks in Mobile have five categories from local planners: regional park, an area of open space, a neighborhood park, a downtown park, and a park within a community center. We measured lead concentrations of ~10 mg/kg to over 1,000 mg/kg in park samples and ~16 mg/kg to 8000 mg/kg in community-provided residential samples.

We find that some parks and community samples exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s permissible residential soil limit of 400 mg/kg. Generally, soil from parks within the downtown area showed elevated lead concentrations than soil collected elsewhere in Mobile. We recommend warning signs be posted in parks with high soil lead concentrations and rapid initiation of remediation efforts. Further high-resolution work to quantify soil lead is needed given the spatial heterogeneity seen here.