Dr. Ramirez-Andreotta spent a Saturday afternoon this April talking about environmental health justice and community gardening at the UA Biosphere II in Oracle, Arizona.
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Julio 20, 2022
soilSHOP in Superior, AZ was a success!
Image Caption: Top row L-R: Henry Muñoz (Concerned Citizens), Carmen Tirdea (AZDHS), Kunal Palawat (UArizona), Ruth Pannill (UArizona), Jessika Mesa (UArizona), Sylvia Degado-Barrett (Concerned Citizens), Bottom Row L to R: Jamica Dillard (AZDHS), Alex Trahan (UArizona), Kore Redden (Pinal County Public Health Services District), Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta (UArizona).
On June 4, 2022 a group of academic, government, and community organizations conducted a soilSHOP for the residents of Superior, AZ. Community members brought in 34 soil samples for lead and arsenic screening. Individual one-on-one heath education consultations were conducted with participants. There were presentations on past soil contamination studies in the area and on how to reduce arsenic and lead exposures. Pamphlets were also passed out with additional information and contact details, such as:
- Garden Preparation: Reduce Arsenic Absorption by Vegetables
- Safe Gardening: Reduce Incidental Soil Ingestion and Inhalation
- Safe Consumption of Homegrown Vegetables: Reduce Dietary Arsenic and Lead Ingestion
- Childhood Lead Poisoning
- Adult Lead Poisoning
- Arsenic in the Garden
- What are Mine Tailings?
- What is Outdoor Dust?
The event was spearheaded by Associate Professor, Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta, and coordinated by Masters student, Alex Trahan from the University of Arizona (UArizona) Department of Environmental Sciences’ Integrated Environmental Science and Health Risk Laboratory and NIEHS Superfund Research Program. Partners included the Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition of Superior, Arizona, Arizona Department of Health Services, Pinal County Public Health Services District, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
In 2018, at the request of, and in collaboration with the Concerned Citizens Retired Miners Coalition, Dr. Ramírez-Andreotta brought a series of public meetings regarding mining and the environment and her co-created community science program, Gardenroots to Superior. Gardenroots, a federally funded program, was initiated in 2010 and has been implemented in mining communities throughout Arizona.
A special thanks to the Town of Superior for the use of their facilities and Los Hermanos Restaurant for catering the luncheon.
More News
Marzo 31, 2016
University of Arizona Superfund Research Program (UA SRP) Research Translation Core (RTC) investigator, Dr. Monica Ramirez-Andreotta, has been making waves since returning home to take a faculty position at her alma mater, the University of Arizona, last year. Ramirez-Andreotta is a transdisciplinary environmental health scientist who specializes in the fate and transport of contaminants in plant-soil systems, research translation, and community engagement efforts. Within this last year, she has received a number of city, state, international, and foundation grants to support her burgeoning research program.
Enero 31, 2016
Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta has been a part of the University of Arizona Superfund Research Program (UA SRP) since 2005, first as Research Translation Core Coordinator, and then as a Training Core Fellow earning her PhD in 2012. She then left to train as a post-doc and become Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, MA working in the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute there. In 2015 Ramírez-Andreotta returned to the UA as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science, and she continues to collaborate with UA SRP with seed funding from the Center for Environmentally Sustainable Mining. Following the success of her dissertation project, Gardenroots: The Dewey-Humboldt AZ Garden Project, Ramírez-Andreotta has continued her work investigating the uptake of metals by edible plants.