A photo from today's UNSW Earth and Environmental Sciences class. 100+ students brought in 100+ soil samples for analysis for lead concentration. Thanks to the speed and ease of use of portable x-ray fluorescence analysers, 100+ samples is no problem.

Next week the students will develop hypotheses and start to analyse the data, before writing a report on Sydney soil lead concentrations.

Historically, lead in city soil comes from traffic pollution, lead paint and lead solder, and this persists in the environment today.

Some samples had high lead concentrations, we will retest those and offer advice.

#environment #earthscience #xray #envionmentalscience #geoscience #SciComms #science #academia #HigherEd #UNSW #lead #soilscience #soils #pollution #citylife #GEOS1211 @unsw