Dear Editor: I don’t want to be the skunk at the Hoboken “Secret Gardens” party, now in progress as I write, but: – I too have a backyard. For years I have gardened – haphazardly and lazily, I’m afraid; hardly a showplace. Nevertheless, every June there was always a leaf to pick for a salad, in July some basil, tomatoes in August, peppers in September. I composted everything and even buried the fertilizing guts and heads and bones of every sardine and mackerel and squid I cleaned and ate from the great (now defunct) Apicellas on First St.
Waste not, was my motto. As a result it was good soil, dark with a good smell and plenty of earthworms digesting organic matter. No bug or blight could get a foothold on my healthy plants, although many a blushing tomato was wasted when a vandal squirrel took one bite and left in on the ground to rot.
Yet when I would read about the tons of lead and mercury and other toxic metals we spew into our air from power plants and exhaust pipes, I’d remind myself to get that soil tested, just in case. But years went by and I never got around to it until this Spring, when a friend handed me a soil sample bag with Rutgers University’s return address. So I scooped up a few tablespoons of my garden and sent it off.
I just got the results. My eye scanned it like a proud parent with his kid’s first report card: pH: 6.85, in the desired range. Potassium, “above optimum”; Phosphorus, above optimum. Magnesium and Calcium, both above optimum (probably formal those fish heads). Wow, those are all A-pluses; Zinc was “high”, Copper high, Iron high, Manganese “adequate”, Boron adequate. Okay, three A-minuses and two C’s. Pretty good. Better than George Bush’s grade average (Or mine, for that matter.) But right at the end, under Lead, my dirt got a big F, with a warning: “Vegetables for consumption should not be grown on this soil. Take precautions to prevent exposure, especially to children.”
After I’d absorbed this shock, the Report explained how lead got into my soil: either from peeling lead-based paint chips, or leaded anti-knock gasoline that was not prohibited until 1986. Well, it wasn’t paint. When I first stuck a spade into the little piece of backyard that I own – more than I deserve, I’m sure – there was no such lead-paint debris. “Some soils were polluted long ago. Lead from automobile emissions is estimated to have resulted in 4 million metric tons of lead falling onto the ground.” (In children, with growing brains, exposure to lead can lower IQ. It can’t do adults any good either. Every ossified brain that I encounter in City Hall can’t afford to lose even a single IQ point).
The Report wasn’t totally bleak, however. Yes, it did say, “Do not eat the oldest and outer leaves of vegetables, particularly in leafy vegetables such as lettuce or Swiss chard. High lead concentrations are most likely to be found in leafy vegetables.” But then it says, “Grow vegetables that pose low risk from lead contamination including fruiting crops such as tomato, sweet corn, squash, eggplant or pepper.”
So I’m not giving up. I want a second opinion. Labs are fallible (except when passing out A’s and B’s, of course). If a second sample comes up similar, I’ll import some topsoil from a less toxic place and grow leafy things in pots. But that’s not like the good solid earth under your feet that you can dig all the way to China, is it.
T. Weed