Tests reveal Lead located elsewhere on campus

When 17 Keene State College students signed up to take "Investigating Environmental Problems" last fall, they weren't expecting to be digging in dirt or scraping paint chips from railings, windows or buildings.

Yet those efforts resulted in providing data on the health of many campus buildings and facilities when it comes to lead paint, a known environmental and public health hazard.

The students in the course taught by Timothy Allen collected samples of paint chips and soils around 11 selected buildings on campus built prior to the banning of lead paint for residential use in 1978.

The students conducted tests in the fall 2007 semester to determine the levels of metals, including lead in such areas. All paint chips collected were scanned for the presence of lead using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry while the soil samples were dried, pulverized, pressed into powder pellets and analyzed for lead concentration. The machine used to conduct such a test gives off the characteristic of fluorescent X-rays from a material that has been energized by bombarding it with high-energy X-rays. It is widely used for chemical analyses, normally in the investigation of metals, glass, ceramics and building materials.

"We were just students in the class … it kind of fell into our lap," said sophomore Anthony Daniels, one of the students who worked on the project. The student's findings were presented at the Eighth Annual Academic Excellence Conference on March 29, 2008.

Daniels said Allen heard about what was happening at the Child Development Center when he decided to have his class work on the project.

"We all thought it was timely and important from an environmental health and safety perspective," said Daniels.

According to the class' study, "lead exposure is known to cause severe health effects in children. We were engaged to determine how widespread this problem is across the rest of the campus."

The students found that all of the paint chip samples scanned had lead present. It was found that most of the buildings sampled have soil lead levels well above the United State Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recommended action levels of lead. The EPA states that high levels of lead which require action is 400 parts per million (ppm) for play areas and 1,200ppm for non-play areas. Levels of lead found outside the Elliot Hall Mansion which includes the CDC was 1,248ppm, well above the suggested action levels for a play area. An action level is when something should be done to correct the contaminated soil, typically done by spreading new clean soil over it.

Other areas around campus which include significantly high levels of lead content include Grafton House with 2,466ppm, Huntress Hall with 3,744ppm and Cheshire House with 13,299ppm.

One ppm is equal to one drop of water diluted into 50 liters which is roughly the fuel tank capacity of a compact car. Another example would be one ppm is equal to one second of time in approximately 11.5 days, according to Dictionary.com.

"I didn't really know what levels to expect," said Allen. "Many of the results were significantly higher than sort of what we knew to be background values. I think the students were a little surprised, and it provided motivation for them to, you know, go back out and resample and extend the sampling in other ways … 'cause the initial round of sampling was one sample."

"I had an idea there would be significant levels of lead," said Daniels.

Allen said the students went back out to sites that had high levels of lead in the results. He said they looked more into testing soil, but did collect paint chips from various buildings for testing as well.

"We also took actual paint chips from older buildings and tested the fronts and backs of those," said Daniels.

Allen said lead contamination is not typically widespread and is generally localized.

"For lead contamination it's not uniformly distributed. It's individual flakes of paint, or individual shot gun pellets, or bullets, or whatever the source of contamination is in soils in a sort of solid contaminant. And so if you got a paint flake here, that soil's gonna be contaminated. The soil right next to it doesn't have a paint flake in it, it's not contaminated. Over time as you accumulate paint flakes all over the place, the soil over a large area can be contaminated, but it's gonna be highly variable," said Allen.

Lead paint is typically found on older buildings built prior to its banning in 1978. KSC was established in 1909 as Keene Normal School before becoming Keene Teachers College in 1939, then Keene State College in 1963.

"The demographics of our buildings would suggest that a lot of these buildings has lead based paint applied to them in various times in their history," said Physical Plant Director Frank Mazzola.

The soil from the 11 buildings around campus tested by the environmental studies students were residence halls, classrooms and administrative offices.

As the EPA states high lead levels for play areas is 400ppm, Mazolla said the issue would also be addressed if certain areas of the campus were to have children around frequently.

"If we were to change the function of one of those buildings to a place where there was a lot of children around regularly playing in the soils and so forth, well, we would have to address it in a reasonable manner," said Mazzola.

Allen said an individual must actively put a lead-contaminated object into his or her body for there to be much of any affect.

"So you have to ingest it somehow or inhale it somehow. Just touching it doesn't really cause any harm. It's not absorbed through the body that I know of," said Allen.

According to the EPA Web site an individual can become contaminated with lead if they "put their hands or other objects covered with lead dust into their mouths, eat paint chips or soil that contains lead or breathe in lead dust, especially during renovations that disturb painted surfaces."

"It's definitely a very important thing," said Daniels. "It's only a concern when it's in the ground. The bottom line is there's lead of [concerning] amounts that's in the soil, but it won't hurt if you don't eat it. But you can't keep kids from putting things in their mouths."

Allen's students also found high lead concentration in the Ashuelot River sediment that runs through the KSC campus. The amount of lead present was "well above sediment quality guidelines," said Allen.

The students collected paint chips from bridges over the parts of the river which were found to have contaminated soil. Allen said the paint chips collected were "rich in lead" much like the buildings tested.

According to the student's research, "lead contamination of sediments in the Ashuelot River is of real concern. Most of the sample sites in Keene and downstream had Pb (lead) values exceeding the TEL (Threshold Effects Level), and several sites had samples with values exceeding the UET (Upper Effects Threshold), to significantly high values well outside our calibration range."

Besides lead, tests showed that Copper, Chromium and Nickel were all found at relatively high levels exceeding the UET, sometimes significantly, at one or more sampling sites.

"These sediments are presumably toxic to some organisms in the benthic community, which will in turn have an adverse impact on other aspects of the ecosystem," stated the students' study.

Allen's solution to avoiding lead contamination, "Don't eat the mud from the bottom of the Ashuelot River in Keene, and don't play in the dirt around old buildings on the Keene State College campus."