For Immediate Release
Trinity Students Using Mustard Plants Clean City Lot Contaminated With Lead
HARTFORD, Conn., Feb. 17 -- A vacant city lot that had been polluted with toxic levels of lead has been cleaned by a group of Trinity College students using an experimental technique, clearing the way for a local soup kitchen to use the land to plant a garden that will help feed Hartford's homeless.
The six undergraduate students and their two professors announced this week that the special breed of Indian mustard they planted at the lot over the past summer reduced lead from levels in excess of 1,000 parts per million (ppm) to fewer than 500 parts per million. The allowable level for soil that is to be used for residential or agricultural purposes is 500 ppm.
"The garden was an important demonstration because it shows that a poor neighborhood with limited resources can tackle environmental problems," said Hebe M. Guardiola-Diaz, a Trinity assistant professor of biology and neuroscience who guided the student research effort. "The project appealed to our students who are very interested in the environment and very interested in doing something to improve the quality of life in Hartford."
The student research was supported with funds Trinity received under a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and was conducted in association with a New Jersey-based biotechnology company that provided seeds and expertise for the project as part of its effort to explore the possible commercialization of the process known as phytoremediation, or the use of plants to remove pollutants from the environment or to render them harmless.
Phytoremediation promises potentially huge environmental and financial rewards because the use of plants poses a simple, safe, and cost-effective approach to the remediation of soils and water. The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 30,000 sites requiring hazardous waste treatment services throughout the United States. Lead contamination represents a particularly difficult problem because there are no permanent, low-cost solutions for heavy metal contamination.
"It is deeply gratifying to watch growth of a project that successfully engages community groups, the city, the state, and the federal government working together for a better urban environment," said Mindy S. Luber, acting regional director of EPA New England, adding that the EPA might export the project to other cities.
The idea for the research garden originated with Guardiola-Diaz and another Trinity professor, David E. Henderson, who were interested in creating summer projects for their students. Guardiola-Diaz and Henderson, a professor of chemistry, independently approached college administrators for ideas. Each professor was unaware of the other's effort until administrators got them together.
"It was just great timing," said Guardiola-Diaz, explaining that she got the idea for the project when she and a neighbor who works for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection met at a housewarming party and began to talk about ways in which they could collaborate and help the City of Hartford. Henderson, meanwhile, was looking for a project that would allow the chemistry department to use a newly acquired piece of equipment known as an inductively coupled plasma emissions spectrometer. The tool is used in trace metal analysis.
"Hebe said, 'Let's do this together.' And I said, 'OK, fine.' But I had no idea what this project was going to do to my schedule!" said Henderson.
The College agreed to finance the project, giving the professors $37,000 from its Kellogg Community Innovation Fund to hire students and purchase supplies. The fund was established in May 1998 when the Kellogg Foundation awarded Trinity a $5.1-million grant to support Trinity's strategic commitment to building academic- community connections that emphasize civic responsibility and educational innovation.
The lot selected for the garden project totals 1.2 acres and is adjacent to the House of Bread, a non-profit that operates a soup kitchen and temporary housing for the homeless on Chestnut and Edwards streets in Hartford. It is also across the street from the city's Quirk Middle School and within a short distance of the gold-domed state Capitol. The lot had formerly been the site of a paint store, accounting for the high levels of lead contamination in the soil. When the old paint store building was leveled several years ago, the debris was buried at the site, further contributing to the pollution problem.
The lot is owned by the City of Hartford, which had leased it to the Hartford-based Knox Foundation for use as a community garden. The foundation intended to create a community garden as it has done at 16 other locations in Hartford, but it was prohibited from going ahead with its plans once the pollution was discovered. Up until then, neighborhood children also had been allowed to play in the vacant lot.
Working with city and state officials, the two Trinity professors became involved, suggesting the site as the location for their remediation project. Guardiola-Diaz also involved EdenSpace, the biotechnology company based in Monmouth Junction, NJ, that provided seeds and valuable expertise for the research project. The company has tried its phytoremediation methods with some success in New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, and near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Ukraine.
The garden was planted in June after much difficult labor. Henderson and the students had to use 12-pound sledgehammers to break up old foundations and bricks so that a garden could be planted. The soil was so difficult to work with that the garden was limited in size to 60-feet by 80-feet. But once planted, the garden did well and the first harvest was completed in mid-July. A second planting was made and harvested in August.
The harvested plants included the roots, since the students and professors weren't sure which part of the plants best absorbed the lead. After testing and analysis, the plants were burned and the ash was disposed of as a hazardous waste.
"We used an electron microscope to look at the cells of the plants to see what happened and to test the amount of lead they absorbed," Henderson said.
Now that the lot on Chestnut Street has been cleaned, the House of Bread will plant a vegetable garden on the lot this spring. Meanwhile, Trinity and its students are studying other contaminated lots in the city as they look for a new location to plant their next experimental garden.
"This has been a great way to get our students learning and involved in the community," Guardiola-Diaz added. "The students have made presentations and they talk to neighbors who stop by the garden. It's been a really rich experience of being involved in the community, helping out our neighbors, and learning. To a large extent, that is what we were after."
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Contact: Dean Golembeski, Trinity Public Relations, (860) 297-2143, [email protected]
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