In 2011, I completed a regional study of 19 sites across the northeastern United States. The study was designed to investigate changes in gasoline-derived lead concentrations and inventories from 1980 to 2011 by resampling sites originally investigated by my Adviser Dr. Andrew J. Friedland during his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.
See a write up on our study by the SSSA!
We observed lead from gasoline deposited in the forests during the combustion of leaded-gasoline has been moving from the organic horizons into the mineral soil horizons. Although lead in the upper layers of the soil is primarily from human pollution, a significant portion we attribute to rock weathering sources. This was determined using stable lead isotopes.