Lead Is a Concern for Urban Gardens

Lead Is a Concern for Urban Gardens
Patrick Andrade
The New York Times
May 13, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14lead.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

His garden’s soil has over nine times the normal lead levels. Luckily, many edible crops were already in containers with nursery dirt.

Mr. Meuschke, an artist who specializes in landscape paintings, is well aware of the dangers of lead paint. “You know not to eat while you paint,” he said. And he had suspected that paint scraped off houses in his neighborhood might have left lead residue in the soil over the years. “But I really didn’t expect there to be that much,” he said.

Harmful even at very low doses, lead is surprisingly prevalent and persistent in urban and suburban soil. Dust from lead-tainted soil is toxic to inhale, and food grown in it is hazardous to eat.

Health officials, soil scientists and environmental engineers worry that the increasing popularity of gardening, particularly the urban kind, will put more people at risk for lead poisoning if they don’t protect themselves.

Thanks in part to the influence of the local-food movement and to economic considerations, more households in the United States plan, like the Obamas, to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs and berries this year — seven million more households, according to the National Gardening Association, a 19 percent increase over last year.

To read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14lead.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all