Buffalo, NY

Built environment, Climate and environment | 2025

Measured lead contamination in soil to reduce risks of exposure and help residents advocate for remediation.

Buffalo’s East Side, a predominantly African American community, bears the burden of systemic environmental injustices, including exposure to lead-contaminated soil. The neighborhood is downwind of a lead smelter that operated in the first half of the 20th century. Soil testing and remediation have been conducted upwind of the smelter, though not downwind. Yet preliminary testing revealed that over 80 percent of sampled properties on the East Side contain more than double the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lead-screening threshold of 200 ppm in the soil. This demonstrated a need for expanded soil testing to better understand the scale of lead and other potential metal contamination in the soil in East Side neighborhoods, so that strategies to mitigate exposure could be developed along with longer-term advocacy to remediate lead contamination. 

To address this need, Open Buffalo, a civic initiative focused on improving equity and justice, partnered with Citizen Science Community Resources and the University at Buffalo to conduct soil sampling in East Side neighborhoods. Using EPA-approved testing methods, staff and trained resident volunteers collected 240 soil samples which they tested for lead and other metals associated with lead smelting, such as cadmium. The testing showed that 92 percent of properties had lead levels higher than the EPA’s 200 ppm threshold, and that the average lead level among tested properties was 705 ppm. While conducting testing the staff and volunteers also distributed educational materials to more than 3,500 East Side residential properties.

Open Buffalo created a zine with a concise and engaging summary of the findings from testing the soil, information on why lead is harmful, and potential actions and next steps to address the problem. The project team presented the findings at a community meeting at the Delavan Grider Community Center on the East Side. Community members shared feedback on which actions to prioritize, which included more soil testing, identifying additional causes and sources of lead contamination, and creating a community board to monitor and engage with soil testing and remediation strategies. 

Open Buffalo shared the soil testing results with the Buffalo and Erie County Lead Safe Task Force, a regional interagency stakeholder group, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The findings prompted the state to request that the EPA conduct more testing in Buffalo, and the task force is now funding Open Buffalo to conduct more testing in West Side neighborhoods. Open Buffalo has also convened a group of community members called Eco Ambassadors to help guide its work amid this new energy and attention around unsafe lead levels in the soil from local, state, and federal agencies.