Is Princeton the new Flint Michigan?
Most of campus is rated 8/10 for lead exposure and Flint is 10/10
Vox has teamed up with the Washington State Department of Health to track the risk for lead exposure in the US.
They ranked each area on a scale from one to ten, with ten being assigned to the areas with the highest risk, using housing and poverty data from the census.
Princeton was of course included, and most of campus received a score of eight, which means that most of campus is colored red instead of the nice blues that color the rest of Mercer County on the map.
The entire north end of campus, including nearly all residential buildings, is rated three to four points higher than the surrounding areas.
Because the age of buildings was a prime consideration in the study (due to a higher likelihood of lead paint), it’s no surprise that the part of campus with buildings which are centuries old is rated higher than the southern end of campus with newer buildings, such as Jadwin Gymnasium.
Look, we’re not saying you’ll get lead poisoning if you set foot on the north end of campus, but let’s just say that I’ll be getting a lot more of my water from Jadwin.