Towards Iodine and Lead Determination in Field Settings

Field testing has several advantages including the elimination of sample
transportation time and cost, opportunity to educate participants, and rapid determination
of remedial action on site. Iodine, an essential micronutrient that is required to be
determined at the population level, lacks a field test. The Sandell-Kolthoff urinary iodine
reaction is the gold-standard laboratory test whose pretreatment step is not field-friendly.
To aid the development of a field test, I completed an interference study, identifying most
significant interference from urobilin.
Lead is a neurotoxin with major exposure pathways through dust and water but
lacks sensitive field screening tests for these matrices. The portable X-ray fluorescence
analyzer (XRF) is currently used in the health department gold-standard lead risk
assessment (LRA) for determining lead in paint. I have built upon previous work from
our lab for deploying the XRF as a screening tool for lead in dust and water, with
increased sensitivity and robustness.