The Urban Environment and Children's Health: Soils as an Integrator of Lead, Zinc, and Cadmium in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

Relationships of video assessments of touching and mouthing behaviors during outdoor play in urban residential yards to parental perceptions of child behaviors and blood lead levels

“…Childrens' dermal contacts are of particular concern if they occur in contaminated environments, because dermal contacts can increase ingestion of contaminants through hand and mouthing behaviors that are routine developmental behaviors (Reed et al, 1999;Juberg et al, 2001). For some children, the outdoor environment may not be a healthy place for play due to invisible contaminants in the soil (Mielke et al, 1999;Cohen Hubal et al, 2000). Outdoor play experiences may be associated with peaks in exposure to such contaminants (Yiin et al, 2000).…”

Dorchester lead-safe yard project: a pilot program to demonstrate low-cost, on-site techniques to reduce exposure to lead-contaminated soil

“…The median is insensitive to extremes and offers a better aggregate measure of the data than the mean due to the influence of small paint chips on the mean value. 15 The results show that, although lead in soil levels fall off after 3 feet from the house foundation, the mean and median soil lead values remain elevated even at distances more than 7 feet in the pilot area. Only 4% of the lots tested did not require any form of soil abatement, having been relandscaped with new fill and soil amendments prior to the pilot program.…”

“…Preliminary discussions with researchers from the National Center for Lead-Safe Housing, who are conducting a nationwide comparative study funded by the US Housing and Urban Development Agency of lead in residential soil, suggest that the house perimeter soil lead values in Dorchester are among the highest in urban areas nationwide (P. McLaine, National Center for Lead-Safe Housing, Columbia, MD, oral communication, June 20, 1999). Comparisons with recent residential soil data from metropolitan New Orleans 15 show that soil lead contamination is significantly greater in Dorchester than in New Orleans.…”

“…The high lead content and wide range of variability found in North Dorchester soils were consistent with results reported in other studies of urban soils. 4,[15][16][17][18] Figure 2 is a plot of the median and mean values of soil lead in relation to distance from the building. The median is insensitive to extremes and offers a better aggregate measure of the data than the mean due to the influence of small paint chips on the mean value.…”

Geochemistry in the modern soil survey program

“…Knowledge of geochemistry is regarded as one of the most important issues facing urban land use, and trace element distribution has been an important facet of understanding the urban environment (Chirenje et al 2003;Murray et al 2004;Cattle et al 2002). Howard Mielke has been a pioneer in the effect on public health of elemental contamination of urban areas of both Baltimore (Mielke et al 1983) and New Orleans (Mielke et al 1999(Mielke et al , 2000Mielke 2005). He has conducted extensive sampling and trace element analyses for soils in these cities and established direct links of soil concentration to exposure and health affects.…”