by Matteo Cavallito<\/p>\n
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City soils that have hosted waste<\/strong> incineration plants in the past may still be contaminated, even decades after operations have closed. This is suggested by research<\/a> from Duke University<\/strong> in Durham, North Carolina. Used for many decades of the last century in many cities in the United States and Canada, municipal incinerators<\/strong> were largely shut down in the 1970s in the face of growing concerns about air pollution.<\/p>\n The consequences of their presence, however, would still be visible today. “We found that city parks and playgrounds built on the site of a former waste incinerator can still have greatly elevated levels of lead in their surface soils many decades after the incinerator was closed,” said Daniel Richter<\/strong>, a Duke professor who collaborated on the research, in a note released by the university.<\/p>\n