Professors Marc Edwards and Simoni Triantafyllidou of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering, along with colleague Dr. Dana Best of Children’s National Medical Center, published a 2009 article in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) that demonstrated a major increase in childhood lead poisoning of Washington, D.C., children during the 2001-04 lead-in-water crisis.

In 2003-04, while investigating the Washington, D.C.-area’s water supply, Professor Edwards and his graduate students discovered that the addition of chloramine disinfectant in tap water increased the incidence of lead leaching in residential and commercial aqueducts. Later work linked several cases of lead poisoning, earlier thought to be caused by lead paint, to local tap water, in direct contradiction to sworn testimony by health department officials.

ES&T has recently selected the paper written by Professor Edwards of Blacksburg, Va.; Professor Triantafyllidou of Veria, Greece; and Dr. Best of Washington, D.C., as the Editor’s Choice Award for Best Science Paper of 2009.

Professor Edwards came to Virginia Tech in 1997 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Washington and earned his bachelor’s degree in bio-physics from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Professor Triantafyllidou joined Virginia Tech from the highly regarded Technical University of Crete (in Greece) and completed her Master of Science degree in 2006. She is continuing her Master of Science work on lead in drinking water with Edwards.

Additional information is at the Virginia Tech web site.