Northern Lake County Environmental Partnership

Working to learn more about how the environment affects health in Northern Lake County in order to promote clean environments and good health

Northern Lake County

Northern Lake County includes the communities in Whiting, Hammond, East Chicago, and Gary, Indiana with Lake Michigan to the north and Chicago to the northwest.

Environmental injustice

Environmental injustice refers to the unequal distribution of environmental hazards; specifically, low income and minority communities often face more pollution than others. Northern Lake County faces environmental injustice.

About the project

The Northern Lake County Environmental Partnership
includes local community members as well as researchers and students from local universities. We also work with community organizations and leaders. We are working together to learn more about pollution and health in Northern Lake County, IN. We are studying many pollutants including particles in the air (soot), gas or fumes (similar to gasoline), metals (including lead), and more.
We are going to compare these with rates of general health, cognition or thinking, and mental health.

Project updates

Results of soil testing near Federated Metals Superfund Site

Thank you to everyone who brought in soil samples. Overall results and individual kit results can be found here.

Whiting-Hammond-Soil-Testing-1 Download

Thanks to our community advisory board!

We want to thank our dedicated community advisory board members for their advice and support!

Juan Andrade
Suzanne Chick
David Dabertin
Susan Duncan
Kimmie Gordon
Freida Graves
Grace Tafolla

Contamination in Lake George

Our team members recently published work about microplastic pollution in George Lake. Read more about this in the Northwest Indiana Times and the research paper.