The West Calumet Housing Complex was built in East Chicago in Northwest Indiana in the early 1970s, on the site of former plants that smelted, refined and salvaged lead. Even then, officials were unsure if the land previously zoned for heavy industry could be safe for residential housing. Research in the 1980s and \u201990s revealed many of the 90% Black or Latino residents, especially children, had elevated blood lead levels. In 2009, the complex was declared a Superfund site that is severely polluted and was added to the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA) National Priorities List. In 2016, approximately 1,100 residents were told they should move out of the complex for their safety \u2014 initially with only 60 days\u2019 notice.<\/p>\n
The resulting media coverage and public and community meetings attracted Ellen Wells\u2019 attention. Wells, a professor in the Purdue University College of Health and Human Sciences\u2019 Department of Public Health and School of Health Sciences, studies environmental epidemiology, or how environmental issues impact the distribution, patterns and effects of disease in a population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":48251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,13,19],"tags":[263,425,205,2639,132,2590,2640,2641,440,240,176,381],"class_list":["post-48245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-sciences","category-public-health","category-research","tag-college-of-health-and-human-sciences","tag-department-of-public-health","tag-ellen-wells","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-jennifer-freeman","tag-lake-county","tag-linda-lee","tag-northern-lake-county-environmental-partnership","tag-pfas","tag-purdue-university","tag-research","tag-school-of-health-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n