Q: Should I be worried about lead in my gardening tools?
A: Gardening season has officially begun, and, well, I’m totally behind. But green thumbs coast to coast have been getting their hoe on and diggin’ the dirt with a twinkle in their eye and a song in their heart. So after a day in the trenches, is there more than soil under those nails?
Forget snakes in the grass. A fresh report from the California-based Ecology Centre says we’re definitely getting more toxins than we bargained for from our gardening equipment. They tested nearly 200 hoses, gloves and tools for the presence of lead, cadmium, bromine (in brominated flame retardants), bisphenol A and more.
What’d they find? Well, 70 per cent of these things had high levels of one or more of the above. About a third contained over 100 parts per million of lead, which would violate standards for children’s products.
This nearly a decade after Consumer Reports outed popular hoses for containing lead and the Center for Environmental Health sued three hose makers for failing to warn consumers about toxic content.
These latest lab tests found PVC hoses don’t just leach lead they can also leach hormone-disrupting phthalates and BPA. Those BPA levels were 20 times higher than standards set for safe drinking water by the NSF. The phthalate DEHP, banned from kids’ toys, was found at levels four times higher than drinking water standards. Cadmium and brominated flame retardants were rarer but still present.
Next time you’re at the garden centre, check your labels for options marked “lead free,” “drinking-water safe,” “PVC-free” and “natural rubber.” Polyurethane hoses turned out to be safer than PVC, too, as did hoses free of brass fittings. Brass fittings tended to have higher lead levels. Stainless steel, nickel and aluminum are more often lead-free.
Healthystuff.org has a printable shoppers’ guide with tips: don’t drink from mysterious, unlabelled hoses make sure you flush water out of your hoses before you spray your cauliflower, carrots, etc and store your garden products out of the sun since heat increases leaching.
You might also think about getting your soil tested for heavy metals, especially if you fancy yourself a bit of an urban farmer. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do myself. For what it’s worth, soil testing in Halifax found elevated levels of lead and arsenic in 40 per cent of community and private gardens (levels higher than those accepted on agricultural land). The closer you live to former industrial sites, the higher the levels will usually be.
First line of defence: wash your hands well after handling soil or gardening supplies/tools, and wash your produce in diluted vinegar to help reduce potential lead exposure.
Adding compost and bagged soil to your garden every year the way most gardeners do has been shown to reduce the concentration and bioavailability of soil contaminants over the years, according to reports by both Toronto and Halifax. Ditto for turning over your soil at least twice a year. Seems aerating soil and exposing it to sunlight helps degrade contaminants.
If your soil is high in contaminants like lead, building raised beds and carting in outside soil or opting for container gardening is the safest approach.
To find out if there’s lead in your yard, order a kit from leadinspector.com.
Until the results are in or your beds are built, stick to growing edible-fruit-producing plants like tomatoes, cukes and peppers over root veggies or even lettuces.
If you want to be extra-cautious, keep rain-barrel water collected via downspout from asphalt shingle roofs away from veggies, too. Could be tainted with lead and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, though data on this isn’t as bountiful as your garden – fingers crossed – will be this summer.
Got a question?
Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/ecoholicnation
