{"id":68168,"date":"2025-11-24T21:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/68168\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T21:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:49:06","slug":"usc-dornsifes-post-wildfire-lead-testing-initiative-grows-in-and-beyond-l-a-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/68168\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Dornsife\u2019s post-wildfire lead testing initiative grows in and beyond L.A. County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An effort by USC Earth scientists to address potential health risks following January\u2019s devastating Los Angeles wildfires has grown into the largest program of its kind in the county.<\/p>\n<p>Hoping to fill a critical public health gap in the aftermath of the fires, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences invited concerned homeowners to <a href=\"https:\/\/public-exchange.org\/usc\/project\/soil-testing\/clean-submit-your-sample\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">submit soil samples<\/a> for lead analysis at no cost. This effort evolved into the <a href=\"https:\/\/public-exchange.org\/usc\/project\/soil-testing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">CLEAN<\/a> (Contaminant Level Evaluation and Analysis for Neighborhoods) project, led by USC Dornsife <a href=\"https:\/\/public-exchange.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Public Exchange<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For some of the scientists, the effort is personal. \u201cI have kids myself, and I\u2019m worried about their health,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/profile\/seth-john\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seth John<\/a>, associate professor of <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/earth\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Earth sciences<\/a>. \u201cI have colleagues in the department who have children and homes close by the burned areas. All of us were just personally concerned about lead contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fueled by <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/wildfire-soil-testing-boosted-by-fireaid-grant-to-public-exchange\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">grants<\/a> and widespread media coverage, the CLEAN program has dramatically increased its capacity. To date, the team has tested soil from more than 4,000 properties for lead. They\u2019ve also expanded testing for other contaminants in a limited capacity.<\/p>\n<p>To help make testing accessible, Public Exchange hosts community events where residents can speak to USC\u2019s soil experts, drop off samples and volunteer to collect samples at the homes of neighbors unable to collect samples themselves.<\/p>\n<p>The CLEAN program model has been so successful that it\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/today.usc.edu\/public-exchange-expands-from-usc-to-washington-university-in-st-louis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> being replicated<\/a> by Public Exchange at Washington University in St. Louis, which is testing soil and air for toxins resulting from damage caused by a devastating tornado in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An effort by USC Earth scientists to address potential health risks following January\u2019s devastating Los Angeles wildfires has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6922,3933,48,52,51,47,50,49,40448,3000],"class_list":["post-68168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-community-engagement","tag-earth-sciences","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-public-exchange","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}