{"id":5148,"date":"2017-01-10T10:40:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T15:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=5148"},"modified":"2017-01-10T11:01:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T16:01:37","slug":"right-thing-flint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2017\/01\/right-thing-flint\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing the Right Thing in Flint"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pan<\/a>
Pan Ji works in Marc Edwards\u2019 lab on Virginia Tech\u2019s Flint Water Study team.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pan Ji, MS \u201911, says she once believed that engineers needed to be \u201cemotionally unattached and isolated from the public.\u201d After preparing sampling kits and processing water samples from hundreds of Flint, Michigan, homes, however, her perspective has changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I read the lead concentration from a certain home, it\u2019s no longer simple numbers above or below the Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>\u2019s action level,\u201d says Ji, a PhD candidate in environmental engineering at Virginia Tech<\/a> and a lab team member of its Flint Water Study team.<\/p>\n

The team is one of the groups that sounded the alarm about Flint\u2019s lead contamination<\/a>. For Ji, the transforming moment came when she met Flint resident Lee-Anne Walters and her young sons after testing 30 samples from Walters\u2019 home. All the samples had lead concentration above 200 parts per billion, with the highest at 13,200 ppb.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy contrast, the EPA\u2019s action level for lead in water is 15 ppb, and any concentration above 5,000 ppb in water can classify it as a hazardous waste,\u201d says Ji. \u201cWhen I met the Walters, I saw how the research I am involved in is helping people. True concern for the public is the only way to guide engineers to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past year, Ji has worked with the Flint Water Study team to conduct several rounds of follow-up testing. In July, the team announced that lead and iron levels have decreased in Flint\u2014but that residents should continue to use lead filters or bottled water until further notice from the state or the EPA.<\/p>\n

Ji continues her work in the lab of Marc Edwards,<\/a> who visited Johns Hopkins University in the fall to deliver the Charles and Mary O\u2019Melia Lecture in Environmental Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pan Ji, MS \u201911, says she once believed that engineers needed to be \u201cemotionally unattached and isolated from the public.\u201d Her perspective changed after preparing sampling kits and processing water samples from hundreds of homes in Flint, Michigan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[379,504,508,512,516,520,524,528,532],"class_list":["post-5148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-pan-ji","tag-marc-edwards","tag-flint-water-crisis","tag-lead-contamination","tag-flint-water-study","tag-flint-water-study-team","tag-public-health-crises","tag-lee-anne-walters","issue-winter-2017"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoing the Right Thing in Flint - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2017\/01\/right-thing-flint\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doing the Right Thing in Flint - 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