Geologists explore pesticides and their transformation products
In collaboration with Professors Scott Burdick and Mark Baskaran, the Lu Lab is exploring the 
occurrence of pesticides and their transformation products in lawn soils in Metro Detroit.
Special attention is paid to communities with different socioeconomic statuses. Meanwhile, the Lu Lab keeps working on plastic additives, with a recent publication on experimental observation and numeric modeling of the release of additives from agricultural plastic films in water.
Professor Zhijiang Lu just integrated lab components to environmental geochemistry in the 2023 fall semester, covering the alkalinity of natural waters, oxidation capacity of metal oxides, thermodynamics and kinetics of redox reactions, and sorption of organics to clay minerals.
He was also awarded a 2023-24 Educational Development Grant from Wayne State University. Lu will use this grant to improve students’ (primarily students enrolled in the ESG5150: Soil and Soil Pollution) understanding of soil pollution in metro Detroit via citizen science.