On February 19, a student team from Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County was awarded a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency P3 Student Design Competition Program grant to create a paper test to detect lead in drinking water.
A total of 18 teams throughout the United States were awarded $447,000 in funding through EPA's People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Design Competition.
“The innovative ideas that these P3 teams are bringing out of the classroom and into the real world will help solve some of our nation’s most pressing environmental challenges,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “From creating a simple at-home test for consumers to detect lead in tap water to designing a system to remove toxic chemicals from landfill gas, the fresh thinking behind these projects will result in tangible products that will help Americans for generations to come.”
Elizabethtown students will use the initial $23,811 grant to develop a simple, inexpensive paper test for lead using polymer nanoparticles, which encapsulate a molecular probe that has a colorimetric response to lead.
As a tap water sample flows down the strip, signal will result from the interaction of the lead ions with the molecular probe. This signal can be visually observed by the user, giving communities which fall victim to contaminated water the opportunity to test their water and have control over their health.
The teams will showcase their projects at EPA’s National Student Design Expo on June 29-30 at the TechConnect World Innovation Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Following the Expo, the P3 teams may compete for Phase II awards of up to $100,000 to further implement their designs.
For more information on this issue, visit DEP’s Lead In Drinking Water webpage.
[Posted: February 19, 2020] PA Environment Digest
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