Lead in Backyard Eggs: Don’t Freak Out But Don’t Ignore the Issue

...of lead. I was eager to participate in this study since we found elevated lead levels in our soil when we did a series of soil tests back in 2011. Thankfully our egg results came in at 1.02 ug, just under the average level in the study. You’d have to eat a lot of eggs as an adult to go beyond the Federal Drug Administration’s maximum recommended lead intake level, though you could bump up against it if a child ate more than three eggs a day. I’d...

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Best Practices for Gardening in Contaminated Soil

...blood. Adding phosphorus fertilizers will decrease the bioavailability of lead. In general root vegetables uptake the most lead, leafy greens less and fruit almost none. The most conservative approach is to grow in raised beds. The main concern is for children under 5 years old. If your soil tests high in lead and you have young ones you should consider doing your edible gardening in raised beds and limit their exposure to garden soils to a few t...

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Is Lead Poisoning a Risk in Urban Gardens?

...in raised beds because of this issue. But if the results of a University of Washington study on lead and urban agriculture are to be believed, we might not need to be as concerned. The researchers note that most vegetables don’t take up lead and that improving soil with compost greatly reduces the bioavailability of lead. You can read a summary of the results of this research paper here. Thanks to Joanne Poyourow of Environmental Change Makers for...

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Making It

...ctions for a wide range of projects, from building a 99-cent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to provide really stripped down, simple projects that use only inexpensive, easy to source materials. We also tried to use the same materials and ingredients over and over a...

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