Urban Ecoist

If you are a city dweller, an Urban Ecoist if you will, you may have some stuff in your backyard of which you may not be aware.

Lead

Lead may be in your backyard, especially in older neighborhoods, as the houses at one point, more likely than not, had lead paint on the exterior. The lead paint may have flaked off and fallen into the soil around the house, and the lead from the paint on the exterior may have leached into the soil as well. Most lead contamination around residential homes are within a few feet of the house.

If your house is on a busy street, you may have lead in the yard from car’s long ago that ran on leaded gasoline. Even if you are a not-so-city-dweller, and instead opted for the ‘burbs, if your house is on former orchard land, the pesticides used in the past, in the form of lead arsenate, may be in your soil.

Born in the ’70’s? No wonder you don’t read so well.

Hmm. Lead. Doesn’t that cause developmental problems in children? Doesn’t severe lead poisoning lead to seizures and possibly death? Yeah, that’s lead. Heck, it even affects adults in the form of memory loss and hypertension.

The US Environmental Protection Agency considers garden soil contaminated if it has 400 parts lead per million parts of soil.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Lab, which charges $9 a sample, normally receives about 10,000 soil sample requests a year for soil to be tested for a suite of contaminants, including lead. This year, the lab is on track to get about 16,000. Lab director Steve Bodine said he does not know exactly why people are sending in more soil samples, but believes it is at least in part because of an increased interest in vegetable gardening. Typically, about 10 percent of the homes tested show unsafe levels of lead. — Boston Globe

First…what can you do about lead in your backyard?

Really, not much. If it is a major problem, you can have your soil dug up and replaced, which is pretty pricey. Hopefully, if you do have lead in your yard, it won’t be above the EPA limit for what is safe. Except if you grow vegetables. Read on.

A good number of urbanites rent their homes, and if that is the case, there is a regulation that if the house you will be renting has lead contamination, the landlord must notify you of that fact. The same disclosure rule is in effect if you plan on selling or buying a house. However, there is no regulation that landlords or sellers have to test their properties. Nice loophole, huh?

Not sure about lead in your rented backyard? If it is an older home, you may want to assume that there is some lead. You can have it tested, but just to be sure, plant all vegetables in pots or raised-bed gardens. Lead doesn’t usually leach up into soil, so a raised garden will alleviate even a small amount of lead contamination.

Oh, yeah, and avoid bare soil in your yard. Tracking it inside does no good for anyone. Also, pets tend to seek out soil, so give them few opportunities. Even a good, deep layer of mulch can help in that department.

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