NPR

Troubled By Flint Water Crisis, 11-Year-Old Girl Invents Lead-Detecting Device

The Colorado seventh-grader was unimpressed by the options her parents had to test water in their home. So she created a sensor-based device using chemically treated carbon nanotubes to do it faster.
Gitanjali Rao, 11, says she was appalled by the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. — so she designed a device to test for lead faster. She was named "America's Top Young Scientist" on Tuesday at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn.

When the drinking water in Flint, Mich., became contaminated with lead, causing a major public health crisis, 11-year-old Gitanjali Rao took notice.

"I had been following the Flint, Michigan, issue for about two years," the seventh-grader told ABC News. "I was appalled by the number of people affected by lead contamination in water."

She saw her parents testing the water in their own home in Lone Tree, Colo.,.

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