This is that I never knew about this.
A very interesting article published by our newspaper here.
Wanted to share this with you.
Please take the time to read this.

Editorial


The evidence can be seen in the blank spaces in the seed racks at garden stores and the long waiting lists for space in community gardens. Some 43 million households will plant a garden this year, 7 million more than in 2008. Credit hard times, the new victory garden mentality and a desire for healthy, locally grown food for the gardening explosion.

Unfortunately, in their eagerness "to put another season's promise in the ground," some gardeners may put off a soil test that can not only tell you whether you need to add a bit more phosphorus or lime, but also prevent growers from inadvertently poisoning themselves and their families with lead.

Soil near buildings built before 1978, when lead-based paint could no longer be sold, is almost certainly contaminated with some amount of the toxic metal. Lead was also deposited by vehicles that, for a half century or more, burned leaded gasoline. People who garden in contaminated soil are unwittingly adding a little lead to their salad and mashed potatoes.

Some soil samples sent for testing to the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension Service have many times the EPA's lead limit of 400 parts per million for children's play areas and 1,200 ppm elsewhere in the yard. In garden areas, soil with a lead level between 50 and 100 ppm presents a medium risk for gardening; above that, risks are high up to 270 ppm and very high above that.

New England has been settled for a long time, and spots that might look like virgin soil may have once been owned by someone whose craft or hobby involved the use of lead. Lead pipes, which most old homes had, are also a source of lead, as are discarded batteries. A soil test, courtesy of your local extension service, is cheap - $12 for a basic soil nutrients plus lead test and $17 for a test to meet most organic gardening standards.

Oregon's extension service advises not growing leafy vegetables - think lettuce, spinach, kale and the like - or root vegetables such as potatoes or carrots in soil with more than 400 ppm of lead. Michelle Obama's White House garden, by the way, came in at 93 ppm.

Above 1,200 ppm, the recommendation is to forget about vegetable gardening, at least in the soil that's there, and think about alternatives such as container gardening or raised beds. As an alternative, plant only fruiting plants such as tomatoes, squash and beans, which do not readily take up lead. Leafy greens and root vegetables are champs at doing that, and spinach, for example, can be used to lower soil lead levels so dramatically that the adult plants must be disposed of as hazardous waste. A New Hampshire geologist put it this way: "Lead makes you stupid." So don't plant garden vegetables where they will absorb it.