At the Senior Environment Corps (SEC), we are dedicated to protecting and improving the quality of our environment through rigorous testing and community engagement. Our initiatives focus on water, air, and soil testing, aiming to safeguard public health and ensure a sustainable future.

Water:

Since its inception in 1992, the SEC has tested the waters of local tributaries that feed the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers which supply Philadelphia with its drinking water. We assess water quality in three different ways: chemical analysis, macroinvertebrate analysis, and bacterial analysis.
Chemical analysis uses field kits and meters, monitors waterways for evidence of organic pollutants that may enter via agricultural and domestic runoff, sewage contamination, and industrial effluents. For more details look here. [link]
Macroinvertebrate analysis helps indicate water quality by studying the invertebrate organisms that live in streams and utilizing their sensitivity or tolerance to pollution to generate a water quality score for that waterway. For more details look here. [link]
Bacterial analysis looks for evidence of fecal contamination from sewage or runoff by determining the level of coliform and specifically E.coli bacteria in the water. For more details look here. [link]

Air:

In 2024, the SEC received a grant from Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability to purchase air monitoring equipment for the purpose of determining levels of airborne particulates in the northwestern environs of Philadelphia. These air monitors continually download to a national database, that is freely available to the public. For more details look here. [link]

Soil:

In 2023 the SEC partnered with Center of Excellence in Environmental Technology (CEET) at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine to take part in a city-wide assessment of lead contamination in soil. Soil samples collected by the SEC and many others are assayed for lead levels by CEET and contribute to a large database maintained by CEET. For more details look here. [link]