Team DeadWeight in nation’s capital

Posted on Oct 07, 2009 by Meredith Hines-Dochterman.

(from left) Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Dr. John P. Holdren; Jathan Kron; Justin Roth; Brennan Nelson; U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Team DeadWeight’s work toward a state ban of lead tire weights takes another step forward this week.

Team members Brennan Nelson, Justin Roth and Jathan Kron, and their teacher, Hector Ibarra, will meet with Sen. Senator Grassley while they are in Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The students will discuss their research project which analyzes the replacement of lead wheel weights with steel wheel weights.

Wheel weights are clipped to tire rims to balance the tires and prevent vibration at high speeds. Lead weights are favored, because they are cheap, heavy and easy to work with. However, lead weights falling off tire rims are one of the largest ongoing sources of lead released into the environment.

Team DeadWeight encourages motorists and tire dealerships to switch to steel wheel weights. Their research prompted the ban of lead wheel weights on city and school vehicles in West Branch. Mike Brown, owner of Iowa City Tire, was the first tire business in the state to make the switch from lead to steel. Brown’s decision was based on Team DeadWeight’s research.

Team DeadWeight won the first Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge in May. They also visited the United Nations headquarters in New York City this summer to present its research to U.N. scientists. When the Environmental Protection Agency accepted a petition from environmental and public health organizations that urged the EPA to ban lead wheel weights, reversing a 2005 decision, Team DeadWeight was among those credited for igniting the effort.

“It’s exciting to know that our project has gone as far as the national level,” Nelson said in an interview with The Gazette last month.

The students hope their work, and the national attention the project has garnered, will lead to a state ban of lead wheel weights. To date, four states — Washington, Vermont, Maine and California — have passed bills banning lead wheel weights.

Roth and Kron, both 13, are eighth graders at West Branch Middle School. Nelson, 13, is in eighth grade at South East Junior High in Iowa City.