Students from Trenton Elementary School in Trenton, Maine (IMAGE)
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Students from Trenton Elementary School in Trenton, Maine, participated in a federally funded SEPA (Science Education Partnership Award) program, which teaches data literacy to secondary school students by analyzing data from well water collected from their homes. A new grant from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention will fund the testing of 500 wells from student households in Maine in coordination with the SEPA program. Previous testing conducted under the SEPA program has found that water from private wells in Maine is frequently contaminated with high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, which can have serious adverse health effects, including cancer, heart disease and developmental and reproductive problems. The program has also found that a large proportion of homeowners have not had their wells tested for arsenic. The grant will also fund a pilot project to develop tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the program at reducing environmental health hazards with the goal of using it as a model for other school- and community-based programs in Maine and the country. Since the inception of the SEPA program in 2018, students from 17 Maine and 10 New Hampshire schools working one-on-one with 18 scientist partners from Maine and New Hampshire colleges and universities have analyzed more than 1,500 well water samples in collaboration with the Trace Element Analysis Core at Dartmouth College. Results are shared with the Maine CDC and the N.H. Department of Environmental Services to help them monitor public health implications.
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MDI Biological Laboratory
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