Day 34, Mat115H

• Exams are returned.
  • Results are disappointing for some, fine for others.
  • While this is only one part of your grade, it's an important part: 20%.
  • While some of you appear to be trying hard, those who did most poorly on the exam clearly could have used some help -- yet no one darkened my door to ask for help. I can't read your minds. If you need help, ask for it.

    Much of the material on the exam was simply a regurgitation of what we'd done in class or on homework. Some of you need to pay better attention in class. For example, I assured you before the exam that you would need to do a Moran's I calculation.

  • While everyone is doing fine on the in-class presentations, and most of you (but not all of you) are doing fine on the homework, some of you will want to up your game for the final exam. Begin working harder on the mathematics now. The stuff we're doing now (and the analysis of the survey results) will be the focus of the final.

  • Any particular questions on the exam?

• Reminder that you have homework due: Monday and Wednesday
  • For Monday:

    Your Moran's I calculations can be done using my example code for doing Moran's I calculation for Newport, within xlispstat.

    Just paste the Newport info into the window for using your own commands in xlispstat, and hit submit. You'll need to change the data values, of course. You have several to do, and you have to gather the data, so get on it!

  • For Wednesday: Finish the work we started last time and submit your data set -- physical locations and your estimated lead levels for the Newport Foundry location (due Wednesday, 11/11). Please submit these in electronic as well as paper form.

    We'll talk more about estimated lead levels today.

From these locations and samples, we seek to estimate at neighboring locations. How should one do this? This is the fundamental question which we wish to consider.

1. We need to get physical coordinates for the lead data in the vicinity of the smelter (Newport Foundry Inc) from the EPA study. (Why is the "1 inch = approximately 25 feet" a bad idea on this map?) We need to estimate corresponding lead levels at each location.
3. We need to get physical coordinates for the lead data in the Newport vicinity of the smelter from the USA Today study. We need to estimate corresponding lead levels at each location.
4. We can construct a soil lead profile, based on the tests at different soil levels.
5. We can construct distributions of lead levels in different ways (by soil depth, say, and for Newport as a whole).
6. Finally we need to consolidate this into a summary report. You will either report on this problem or on the survey results for your final project.

• The USA Today website has some limited data which we can use for the Newport area (via their "dig deeper" link).
• The Superfund Final Report (KY EPA), which examined lead levels specifically around the smelter (Newport Foundry) is what we are currently examining.
  

  Last time we began using a grid to get coordinates for data locations we have. Let's check a few -- I suggested that you look at these:

  • LH-01
  • LH-02
  • LH-03
  We'll need to get coordinates for the USA Today study, too, so let's get some reference points for that one, too, before we go on.

  Now: we'll use the KY EPA lead data to

  1. map the yard around the former smelter, and determine a "lead load" in the immediate vicinity of the smelter, and to
  2. get a "soil lead profile" -- since we have multiple lead levels at each site. So let's talk about this one today. It will help us to get an answer to the previous problem.

• I did a search of lead pollution patterns, and found this interesting study and the associated graphic:
  

  

  The dashed curve is suburban males; the solid curve is urban males.

• I also did a little further study of the USAToday report. There were smelters nearby in Cincinnati, upwind from Newport. They, too, could have contributed to Newport's lead load.
  • USAToday report tipped me off
  • to this site in Cincinnati (by the way, Certified Metals also owned the Newport Foundry site at one time).

• It is important that we determine prevailing winds for Newport.

This report contains a couple of graphs which show off the data values, the way I would like to for our data. Some quotes from their study:

• Most homes in St. Paul and Minneapolis are old enough to once have had substantial concentrations of lead in exterior and interior paint. The 2000 Census documented that 89% of the homes in Minneapolis and St. Paul were built before 1978, which is the year lead was banned in residential paint. The City of Minneapolis reports that levels of 350 ppm in soil collected near house foundations are typical throughout Minneapolis. Elevated lead is also found in residential areas from past emissions of leaded gasoline, especially near busy neighborhood streets.
• There are sites in Minnesota where it has been possible to attribute lead in the soil to emissions from former lead smelters. However, in this case it would be difficult, if not impossible to attribute lead concentrations in those two residential neighborhoods to the former smelters in the USA Today story. The heterogeneity of the lead soil sampling results reported in the neighborhoods surrounding the former smelter sites suggests that the lead is likely not due to area-wide contamination from air emissions from a former smelter stack. Determining the source of lead in soil may be possible through expensive lead isotope laboratory analyses, but such a project would take time, may not produce definitive results, and would not lead to different public health conclusions and recommendations.