Serena Uhl, CSCR’s Environmental Health Promotions Intern
My name is Serena Uhl, and I’m an intern here at Citizen Science Community Resources. I’m currently a fourth-year Health Promotion student at Daemen College. I found CSCR through a different organization who introduced me to Jackie James and she welcomed me aboard! I am an Environmental Health/Business Administration Intern, which means I help out around here with creating educational and marketing materials, maintaining social media accounts, hosting webinars, maintaining various databases, and now, writing blog posts. I have a very diverse role here at CSCR and have been acquiring lots of different experiences as well as knowledge throughout my internship. CSCR is big on advocating for a community’s right to have clean air, clean soil, and a safe and healthy environment around them.
I’ve always been an advocate for having a healthy and safe environment, and here at CSCR I get to do that every day. I worked at a garden center for five years, so I have a background in digging around in the soil and planting. I’ve also always been interested in air pollution. I knew that there was air pollution around us every day but honestly never thought too much into soil contamination specifically until I got here, where I am fully involved in the soil contamination problems that are in our world today. Now I have the chance to educate others about soil contamination, why it’s harmful for our health, and how we can fix the problem. With my degree in Health Promotion, I want to spend my life advocating for others’ health and making communities healthier and safer, and that is something CSCR has helped me learn as an intern that I will take with me for the rest of my career.
Mike Rosenberg, CSCR’s Environmental Health Intern
My name is Michael Rosenberg and I am an intern at Citizen Science Community Resources while working on a Master of Public Health degree through the University at Albany. I am also a physician assistant and former paramedic. I learned about CSCR through my wife, who also interned here for her MPH and shared with me the impressive history of the organization. I had been vaguely aware of the closure of Tonawanda Coke due to heavy benzene emissions years before, but didn’t know how the effort was spearheaded by Jackie James and a group of concerned citizens who had used citizen science to learn about the potential causes of the health issues plaguing their communities. The mission of CSCR to empower communities by providing the tools to fight for public health and environmental justice was something I wanted to be a part of.
I grew up nearby in Lackawanna, NY, a city which has a long industrial history and exemplifies the term “rust belt”. My grandfather worked at Bethlehem Steel, once one of the world’s largest steel plants but shuttered when I was young. It is now a Superfund site. My father told me that growing up he could smell the smoke from their home miles away, and that when it snowed it would often be soot or pink colored. I heard stories about how the communities near the steel plant now had many health problems, and was always cautioned about playing in the creek and fields near my house because they weren’t clean. These experiences in my youth made me very conscious of environmental health issues later in life, and my coursework at Albany made me think more about how pollution can impact communities.
At CSCR I have been engaged in a number of projects, many related to the launch of our Envirobucket Soil Sampling Test Kit. I have worked on revising some of the documentation included with the Toolkit and in the development of soil testing technical guidance. I created a presentation regarding soil contamination and testing and the features of the Envirobucket that was given during a webinar with Public Lab, for which we received excellent participation and feedback. One of my main accomplishments so far has been the development of a comprehensive resource document outlining the soil contaminant screening guidelines for all 50 states, with links to all the relevant state agencies and policy documents. As we receive more soil testing results in the coming months, I will also be working on the uploading of data to FieldScope, an online interactive citizen science platform with mapping resources to enhance research into environmental issues such as soil contamination. My time at CSCR so far has been rewarding, and I have learned more about soil testing and environmental health policies than I ever thought I would. I’m looking forward to participating in more community engagement projects and educational activities as we get further into the spring and summer months.