The Project: What’s in the Air in Your House

The investigation of what’s in the air inside homes in Miami, OK in the far NE corner of Oklahoma is based on a discovery made 28 years ago. 

A family moved into a home in a nice neighborhood, moving from a state that required childhood blood lead testing, both testing negative. After living in their home only 6 months 2 of the children tested positive. Upon investigating the playroom, the air vent cover was lifted and the HVAC duct had deteriorated and what seemed like gravel was discovered inside. 

Check your vents

Home construction processes used for several decades by home builders for ranch style homes: after the stem wall was built the HVAC ducts were placed inside, the void filled with mine tailings, locally called chat, then the concrete slab was poured atop.

This becomes a problem to the residents when the chat, loaded with heavy metals and sulfur gets wet, the mixture becomes acidic and is destroying the HVAC metal ducts. The HVAC units continue to operate and can produce dust the residents might breathe.

The Project

The Project: What’s in the Air in Your House will identify what is in that dust. The decision was made to limit the sampling to 30 homes, 3 from 10 distinct neighborhoods.

With a group of diverse scientists brought together by Bob Alexander worked, with the Thriving Earth Exchange and LEAD Agency staff to put together the protocol for collecting samples. The next step was to develop the residential consent form. The form aimed to be clear, concise and provide wording to give the participant confidence their information and identity and the home’s address would be held confidential to protect their privacy.

The fear of knowing held some people back from signing consent. Knowing and living with the harm was chosen over learning the truth. 

The evening the What’s in the Air in Your House? Project was announced at the city council meeting a member of the community revealed he felt he had this problem in his own home. The problem was his home was in a totally separate neighborhood that we had not considered to include in the project. After examination and sample collection, it was obvious he was correct.

Our project What’s in the Air in Your House goal to collect dust samples from 30 homes has made progress toward reaching that number but have not finished the project’s sampling phase.

Samples will be sent to be analyzed to a university laboratory, but the agreement was made, that all the samples must be sent at one time and we have not finished the collection phase of our project.

We will continue the project with Purple Air instruments placed in a number of homes for 2 week periods. All of the project homes will be given a radon kit provided by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and will be the only radon information the state has from our county.

LEAD has received funding from 2 organizations to conduct pilot projects on homes that have high levels of dust loaded with the metals associated with the lead and zinc mining that occurred in our county for 60 years. Our intension is to remediate a small number of homes with these funds and use the varied methods and costs as information for a wider remediation effort we believe EPA will want to conduct on seeing the data we will be able to provide to them. We have received additional assistance in developing an instrument to share with federal and state agencies as well as other funding sources.

This is the most important research that has been conducted in Miami, OK in over 30 years. We have been abandoned by federal, state and health agencies. Progress has been made in reducing lead exposure in yards and we are grateful for this but it has been a voluntary program and few are signing up for the service. Very few children are receiving lead screenings which is the method to identify places that need to be investigated so the sources of lead can be removed. 

We are extremely grateful for the guidance and clear directions we received throughout the project from our scientific supporters. But we are even more grateful for the residents who are opening their doors and allowing us in to take dust samples from their homes. We believe it will make a difference. Knowing what’s in the air in your home is important to protecting yourself and your family.

If you are interested in learning more about this project please contact us at 918-542-9399 or leave us a message on our website: www.leadagency.org.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim