Best practices for managing soil contaminants
Did you catch this New York Time article about soil contaminants?
For those of you who are interested the link to the NYT article “For Urban Gardeners, Lead is a Concern” is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14lead.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Jonathan Russell-Anelli in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences (CSS) reports on the article:
Murray McBride of CSS and the Cornell Waste Management Institute was quoted. A little alarmist, with some significant misquotes – we are not in fact offering free soil testing, though we have gotten four calls as of yesterday inquiring about such a service… but generally not quite as sensational or inaccurate as we feared, but a bit too much for our taste. We are in the process of writing a letter to the editor with hope that we could turn this into a learning moment.
It turns out that the gardener (Frank Meuschke) interviewed at the beginning of the story had some factual issues with the article. See his blog here: http://nycgarden.blogspot.com/2009/05/extra-extra-read-all-about-it.html…
Further as to an update from what we are in fact doing here at CU, Hannah Schayler at CWMI and Véronique Lambert at NYC-CUCE sent this out to our NYC collaborators…
This article is a reminder of the importance of this issue and the need for consistent, comprehensive information about soil contaminants. We encourage you to refer to our resources at http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/soilquality.htm. Additionally, we’d like to provide more information here about a few issues raised in this article, as well as an update about our Urban Soils efforts.
Soil testing
The article included the following quote from Murray McBride: “You won’t know if you’re at risk unless you test your soil,” said Murray McBride, a professor of soil chemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., which because of concerns about lead in community gardens began a free soil-testing program last month in cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.”
We’d like to clarify that this statement about a “free soil-testing program” is misleading. Although Cornell is working with GreenThumb to test soils from the raised beds of 100 community gardens for lead and other metals, the participating gardens will be carefully selected by GreenThumb to meet certain criteria. We hope to secure additional resources for more soil testing in the future, but at this time we’re not able to provide “a free soil-testing program” to the public as the article implies. We are also not aware of any opportunities for free soil testing from other organizations, but will continue to share any new information in the future and are happy to help you find a lab that meets your needs.
Best practices for managing soil contaminants
The article gives some key steps to manage lead in soils (e.g., through soil amendments, container gardening or building raised beds), but please see our fact sheet “Soil Contaminants and Best Practices for Healthy Gardens” (http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/soil%20contaminants.pdf) for more comprehensive information. We’d also like to note that scientific research and practical limitations largely do not support using phytoremediation to remove lead from soils, as is proposed by the University of Southern Maine study described in the article. Extraction of a substantial fraction of the total lead from soils by plants has proven to be difficult, if not impossible, because of the very low solubility of lead in almost all soils.
We hope that this article and our resources leave you with the take-home message that contaminants in garden soils can be effectively managed. Edie Stone summarized this nicely on the final page: “It isn’t that you shouldn’t garden if you find lead in the soil, you just have to manage the space,” said Edie Stone, executive director of GreenThumb, a division of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department that supports urban gardening. “You can’t assume what you buy at the grocery store is any safer.”
Update on Urban Soils activities
Since our initial New York City meeting in September, we have developed a first round of web resources intended to help people interested in soil testing, interpreting test results, and best practices for healthy soils (see web link above). We will continue to update these materials and welcome any comments or suggestions (contact Hannah Shayler We are also working to address additional topics of concern, such as comparisons of different testing methods and services provided by various laboratories, resources specifically for arsenic and lead, and other concerns noted by communities.
We hope to secure funds to strengthen existing collaborations among Cornell researchers and extension educators, government agencies, non-profit organizations, gardeners, and others to expand our research and outreach efforts related to soil quality. In particular, we hope to: 1) create more comprehensive, interactive web resources and education programs; 2) assess soil and vegetable contaminant levels and exposures to soil contaminants through gardening activities; and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of different management strategies in addressing soil contamination issues.
We encourage all of you to keep in touch with your questions and concerns.
The Cornell Team
Hannah Shayler, Murray McBride, Jonathan Russell-Anelli, Gretchen Ferenz, Véronique Lambert
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