Rapid Methods to Determine Lead Levels in Urban Soils

The need to develop fast, affordable methods for total and bioaccessibile (absorbed by an organism) lead is driven by the observed high variability of lead in urban soils and the high variability in bioaccessibility. Our collaborative international team has proposed new approaches for low cost and rapid assessments of soil Pb bioaccessibility that can be conducted in the field using a portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) analyzer and in the lab using Vis-NIR diffuse reflection with a non-destructive method. We also contributed to the testing of field procedure developed by Columbia University on NYC urban soil.