{"id":13265,"date":"2020-06-09T13:26:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T17:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/?page_id=13265"},"modified":"2024-08-15T13:07:12","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T17:07:12","slug":"whats-in-your-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/whats-in-your-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Whats in your Water?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Riley Mulhern is developing a model that calculates the characteristics of households and locations with a higher chance of lead contamination in drinking water.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As household plumbing and water pipes age, lead \u2014 an infamously potent neurotoxin \u2014 contaminates drinking water. With support from his North Carolina Sea Grant \u2013 Water Resources Research Institute Graduate Research Fellowship<\/em>, Riley Mulhern hopes to predict where such contaminated waters are more likely to occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mulhern, a Ph.D. candidate in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, uses machine learning software, feeding large data sets into computers with the help of two undergraduate students. These data sets pair drinking water quality and characteristics of water utility infrastructure with child blood-lead measurements. Mulhern\u2019s team then can identify patterns between blood-lead occurrences in children and characteristics of their water system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n