Smith Mini-Talk: François Tissot

In 1965, Caltech geochemist Clair Patterson published what was, at the time, a highly controversial finding: that leaded gasoline and other products like canned food solder, paints, and insecticide were exposing Americans to dangerously high levels of lead. His work helped galvanize the environmental movement, ultimately leading to the Clean Air Act of 1970. Fifty years later, Caltech researchers were once again at the center of investigations on environmental lead contamination when the Eaton fire devastated communities surrounding Caltech. A year on from the LA fires of 2025, I will discuss Patterson's legacy and its connections to the research my group and others are pursuing to study the presence of lead and other toxic metals in the aftermath of the fires. I will also share the impact of his findings to date—and how they can help communities prepare as fires at the wildland-urban interface grow increasingly common.