Stakeholder Meeting with Dr. Peaslee (January 24, 2019)

Stakeholder Meeting with Dr. Peaslee (January 24, 2019)

On January 24, members of our team met with Dr. Graham Peaslee. Dr. Peaslee is a physicist on the Notre Dame Lead Project team. When we met with him, we were aiming to learn more about his research. During the meeting, he shared the history of lead in South Bend, specifically how testing has been conducted in the past and present. He impressed us with the fact that lead is in many places we might not think of, like brass sinks and the soil in residential areas. He mentioned some ways that people can keep their children safe. For example, instead of playing in the soil by the house, children can play in the lead-free environment of a mulched or tiled park.  Dr. Peaslee spoke of the Notre Dame Lead Project’s work of creating lead testing kits. He described the challenges of distributing the lead kits, since lead poisoning mainly affects young children, but reaching out to them at school is not effective since young children rarely get the information to their parents. We were surprised to hear how the main lead problem is in the soil, since our perspective was focused initially on the paint chips. After speaking with Dr. Peaslee, we will spend more time thinking of ways to mitigate the effects from lead in the soil.

He had some really innovative solutions to the lead problem, such as a sticky doormat that is used in his lab to ensure no contaminants that may have been under their shoes leave the room. This could be very useful in preventing the lead-contaminated soil from getting inside homes. Also, he left us wondering how was the best way to find approach the target audience, since the elementary school children could not fully be relied on to get the information to their parents.