| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Ebyss |
Veg garden next to driveway - pollution?We're planning out our new veg garden, trouble is the only real space we have is the front garden, which is bordered by a busy country road (lots of trucks) and our driveway (which sees a fair amount of action, particularly at the weekends). We could use part of the horses' paddock, which is already conventiently fenced off into a lovely large veg-garden sized space - but it too is bordered on on side by the driveway.I'd say there's about two/three feet between the paddock space and the driveway, separated by post and rail. The front garden has a tall (5 foot) wooden fence on the road border, and a 4 ft picket fence on the driveway side. I'd dearly love to plant some apple trees, but the front garden is really the only site that would suit, but again I'm worried about all the fumes coming from the trucks on the road. Am I worrying unnecessarily? Is there a way to deal with exhaust fumes? What does everybody else do? |
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| dougal |
This came up for me in the context of mushrooms - which are generally rather good at collecting up any available nasty heavy metals like Cadmium and Lead...
IIRC, the conclusion was that fruit should be fine after being thoroughly washed, but that mushrooms within a very few metres of any trafficked road really wouldn't be the best choice for eating. So, I think that growing apples near your road shouldn't be a problem. You'd be able to wash them thoroughly, no problem. More thoroughly than you could brambles, anyway. I can't see your driveway as being any great problem, but then I don't know how much traffic you get! 
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| Went |
Do you have enough space to plant a 'buffer zone' such as a hedge?
I really don't think you will have too much of a problem as it is a country roadway and not a main motorway....the air quality should be much higher but I would wash produce before eating. |
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| Ebyss |
Thanks for the replies.
The traffic isn't terribly heavy. Usually one/two journeys a day - a few more at weekends due to regular visitors. So say anywhere between 20-30 trips in and out the drive per week (in equals one trip, out equals one trip). A buffer zone is something I had thought of, but of course I don't want to block out the sunlight either. As for washing the fruit and veg - well, I'm kind of of the mindset that if you have to wash off pollutants from car exhaust then something's gone quite wrong, but needs must I guess. (simple solution of course would be to get rid of the car, but we're not doing that just yet). |
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| kevin.vinke |
I wouldn´t think it would be a major issue, the roads here all have apple trees planted next to them. They are really strict about pollutants etc here so would imagine they´d be chopped down pretty quick if there was a problem. | ||||||||
| Slim |
washing dust and the pollutants in it off of the produce is the big thing. (and really not all that big of a deal, right?) The one thing you haven't brought up is whether or not your cars drip much oil or other nasty fluids onto the drive. Once again, just making sure there's a buffer strip would really help a lot (could even be a couple yards of lawn, in terms of ground pollutants).
Fruit is a really good idea because metals, etc will have to have worked their way through all of the plants' internal barriers. Root crops may not be such a great thing right by the road. In terms of where inside a plant pollutants may accumulate, it is almost always roots>shoots>greens>fruits. But ideally you've just got road dust and such to wash off. |
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| dougal |
Re: Veg garden next to driveway - pollution?
I'd be astonished if your driveway was of any real significance. Its only the "busy" road, if anything, that you should be bothering about. |
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| Jb |
How many allotments are next to dual carriageways, by industrial land, wedged between the railway and gasometer?
I wouldn't worry about it. |
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| cab |
Loads of major roads are flanked either side by farmland. Really, it isn't a problem for plants, and its scant concern for mushrooms either (unless its right on a really busy road). | ||||||||
| Jb |
Any trafficked road? How much traffic is too much? |
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| dougal |
We had this discussion before (summer 2005) -- and one of the problems with the data was that there was *no* measurement of traffic whatsoever. As far as that survey was concerned it was just "a road", whether lane or motorway was not specified in the data. Anyway, that discussion ended thus
If anyone wants to know about food pollution and roads, *please* read that thread and the references linked. My last comment on this matter is that if a "large proportion" of one's veg were coming from the *same* single site alongside a "busy" road, then my assessment would be that there might possibly be a problem with heavy metals. The argument about commercial crops being grown "right up to the roadside" is a bit bogus. If it was wheat being grown, the average pollution in flour from grain produced in that field and others could be fine, even if the roadside grain were, on its own, dangerous. If it was cauliflowers, you'd have to be damn unlucky to get two in a year from the roadside - *unless* all your cauliflowers came from the same roadside plot - when you might eat a couple of dozen! If it were my plot, and I wanted to grow lots of veg, AND I considered the road to be "busy" (as per the original post), then I'd be thinking of getting some soil samples analysed, just to be sure.
I'm happy picking sloes and brambles in hedges alongside quiet lanes. But I'd want to be 50/100 yards from a motorway before gathering mushrooms. But its a matter of an individual's risk profile... |
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| cab |
I'd have hilighted a different part of that post:
The only thing I'd add is don't worry about it too much. You are more likely to make yourself sick with worry than sick with pollution on your wild food, unless you're really dumb and pick from a heavily contaminated site. As luck would have it, I've been talking to a chap involved in monitoring pollutants, specifically heavy metals and particulates near to different category roads. The stats are looking good, but they're far from ready for publication. Looking at the curves he's got, its looking very like the concentration of metal ions goes down with the cube of distance from the road, and of course the concentration of such metal ions in modern fuels is really very, very low to begin with. You're exposed to and absorbing higher concentrations of many pollutants while sitting inside a vehicle than when eating any kind of food picked even relatively close to the road. |
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| dougal |
Sorry, should have highlighted your entire response.
In terms of *air* pollution, fuel cleanliness (absence of added lead) is very important. However, regarding growing things, isn't that largely going to be about *soil* concentrations, rather than air concentrations, and so not quite so quickly improved by the recent changing fuel specs? I think that the busyness of the road must be very important - not just now, but also in the past when leaded fuel was standard, because of the persistence of these things in the soil. Its also important to remember that leaded fuel is but one source of long term contaminants. Cars wear out, and the bits that wear are spread along the roadside. Thinly, very thinly by each one, but throw in a few million vehicles and it adds up. I found it quite shocking to discover just how filthy the inside of a computer could get after a year in an immaculately clean London office. I must say that while I am aware that eating specifically roadside mushrooms can place an adult at risk of excessive heavy metal ingestion, I have never before heard it suggested that one was routinely absorbing more heavy metals by sitting in a vehicle (other than in the most exceptionally congested and smoggy conditions) than the accepted international guidelines permit - which was shown to be possible with foraged roadside mushrooms. The matter of children needs to be pointed up too. Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of heavy metals. If it was a case of deliberately growing vegetables for a large part of my children's diet (rather than foraging a small proportion) alongside what I considered a "busy country road (lots of trucks)", the site mentioned in the original question here, then I'd be exercising even more prudence. As has been shown many times before, Cab's attitude to his own eating (let alone cycling style!) looks positively cavalier against my caution. I wonder what he would advise for other people's children, and (putatively) his own? |
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| cab |
Heavy metal contaminants can indeed accumulate in the soil, and that is important. But if I remember correctly (and I rarely remember correctly...) the concentration of such contaminants even quite close to most roads isn't that much greater than you get further away, and it isn't greater at all than in, say, allotment soils (which are richly manured every year). Either way, the risks associated with such, unless you're regularly gorging in roadside forage, are likely to be low.
Shown to be possible but rather unlikely unless you went to town on it. I'm struggling to remember where I encountered it, but there was work that demonstrated that the lead you were exposed to pre-unleaded, from the waste pipe from the car in front, was far greater than you'd be exposed to in the open air on the road. That has of course been replaced with benzene, which is similarly elevated in-car. Is it dangerous? Well, yes. Is it dangerous at that concentration? Probably, over a long enough time.
True.
My own attitude to eating, cycling, drinking, walking around is to minimise my own risk as far as possible, to deal with risk in proportion. Hence when I eat wild foods I refrain from picking in heavily contaminated sites, but that doesn't mean I won't pick the odd blackberry from next to a road to munch on as I walk. When I cycle I do so mostly in primary position, not 'cos its most convenient for others (it isn't) but because is has been conclusively shown to be much safer than being in secondary or sub-secondary, etc. It isn't that there is no risk in eating wild foods, home grown foods, or anything else for that matter, its just that it is important to keep such things in proportion. |
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| Ebyss |
First off - thank you everyone for your responses! I'm going back to read the thread suggested by Dougal.
I don't have children - yet. That children would be at more risk was a definite concern for me. I do like the idea of my kids being able to run out, pick an apple from the tree and munch away without worrying about washing etc. But one can't have everything - better they eat washed apples than none at all. The root veg I will plant about 15-20 feet away from the driveway, and I shall plant a buffer hedge on either side of the drive, and maybe one along the road. The apple trees can go down and we'll see how they fare, it's be a good few years before we have a decent crop - who knows, maybe peak oil will have hit and no-one will have cars 
I do have one bit of space that's shady and right inside the entrance to the drive way....I'm thinking a large crop of hostas might be useful there to occupy the slugs (we have more slugs in one sqaure foot of garden than I've ever seen in my whole life  ). Hopefully slugs are afftected by exhaust fumes too.
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