In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added the Iron King Mine Humboldt Smelter Superfund site in Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona, to its National Priorities List. Concerned if they could safely eat vegetables grown in their gardens, local citizens met with EPA officials. To answer that question, the medically underserved and low-income community received help from Monìca Ramìrez-Andreotta — then a doctoral student and a Superfund Research Program training fellow at the University of Arizona. But instead of taking the matter entirely in her hands, Ramìrez-Andreotta coordinated and collaborated with residents to analyze local arsenic levels and the potential risk to the vegetable gardeners in what would become the Gardenroots project.

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