The Effect of Lead in Gasoline on the Environment Near Major Roadways

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to find out if any bacteria in the soil near roadways had developed resistance to lead. I hypothesized that the farther away from the road my samples were, the less lead resistant bacteria they would have. Methods/Materials To see if bacteria had developed lead resistance I tested the top 0-5cm of soil at 0.5, 5, 10, 20, and 50m away from a major road. Then I made agar plates with nutrient agar with and without lead nitrate, and diluted the soil samples with sterile deionized water. Then I plated different amounts of different dilutions onto the plates with and without lead, let the bacterial colonies grow, and counted them. Results Overall I found that there was a high percentage of lead resistant bacteria closest to the road, then the percent decreased, but at 20 and 50m, percentages rose again. Conclusions/Discussion My results partially supported my hypothesis, but I was able to find out that bacteria did grow lead resistance, which was my objective. As far as I know, I am the first person to test for lead resistant bacteria near roadways.

Competition history

• CSEF 2002 Microbiology · Entry S1315

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Microbiology projects
• CSEF Microbiology projects
• Every CSEF 2002 project