5 ms·

The Hidden Dangers of Lead in Urban Gardens

49 points by palidanx 12y ago

aaronbee 12y ago
This article from 2013 makes the argument that lead in the environment is responsible for violent crime. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- shas3 12y ago
  The problem with the lead-crime hypothesis is that the cause of lead and the effect of increased crime are 'too far apart' with many intervening links in the causal chain, to paraphrase Steven Pinker [1]. He calls the hypothesis 'provocative, but far from proven.' The intervening links in the causal chain involve a lot of sub-causal links and hypotheses that are as yet, unproven. [1] http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_o...
  - Shorel 12y ago
    Even if lead can't be directly related to crime, lead poisoning causes many bad things to the human body, including learning disabilities, and reducing adult brain size in children exposed.
trhway 12y ago
while at elementary school age we were extracting lead from the old navy batteries and cables and smelt it in tin cans over open fire and made various stuff out of it - i guess new generations of children will have such fun no more :)
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Kids can still have similar kinds of fun, they just have to pick a safer material. There are several low melting point metals which aren't known to be as harmful. Plus material like this: http://www.cooks.com/recipe/p149f8qz/salt-clay-dough.html http://www.cooks.com/recipe/p149f8qz/salt-clay-dough.html Which is harmless and if varnished can last years (a lot of people make Christmas decorations out of it).
- normloman 12y ago
  Future generations of children will also miss out on the "fun" of nerve damage and cognitive impairment linked to lead poisoning. I'm all for fun and experimentation, but it's adult's jobs to keep kids from making life threatening mistakes.
- CapitalistCartr 12y ago
  In science class, we played with mercury. After school we had BB gun battles. We stood up in the front seat of my dad's pickup truck; the one with the metal dash. Bicycle helmets hadn't been invented yet. I weep for the future of children now. //Edit: OK, people, the comment about weeping for the future of children was meant in jest! Nearly killing ourselves as kids wasn't helpful. The notion that we did all right is survivors bias.
  - sopooneo 12y ago
    To survive a hazard (as you, and to some extent I, did) is best of all. To suffer the constraints of protective encumbrances is next best. To die of the hazard as a child is worst. There is a balance to be met, sure. But in choosing safetely measures we are taking out insurance. We prevent the worst, at the cost of preventing the best.
  - trhway 12y ago
    > After school we had BB gun battles. reminded that nothing makes you run faster than an "enemy" with an air rifle with crafts-clay "bullet". Leaves nice haematoma even through wool pants :) I'm all for the progress, yet i think abolishing BB guns/air-rifle battles isn't the one. Making sure that everybody wears safety glasses would be the one (we didn't have the ones, and that i think was unnecessary risk) Lead of course has to go. Another - i see in the park children playing battles with "swords" which can't deliver any pain - foam wrapped by duct tape. We had "swords" we carved out of wood. They could deliver some pain, and that made the fight more lively i'd say :)
    - freehunter 12y ago
      I fought battles with metal BBs. I fought battles with airsoft plastic BBs. I've never had to dig an airsoft BB out of my leg, can't say the same about metal BBs.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    >I weep for the future of children now. Yeah, it's a shame we don't kill or permanently injure our children for the sake of our own nostalgia. Because the experiences I had as a kid are the only kind of experiences worth having.
jwess 12y ago
Over the last 25 years lead has been phased out of paint, automobile gas and plumbing fixtures, but aviation gasoline, or "Avgas" remains leaded and is the number one source of airborne lead in the United States [0]. It frustrates me that the primary source of airborne lead stems from a mostly recreational source. Most planes that use Avgas are privately owned piston-engine/prop planes. [0] http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/
- VLM 12y ago
  There has to be some level of scale involved... I googled for lead emissions and found a nice graph showing a quarter of a billion tons in 1972 dropping to basically nothing now, around 500 tons or so. The graph links from here http://faculty.cua.edu/forbes/environment.htm http://faculty.cua.edu/forbes/environment.htm
- Zigurd 12y ago
  Shell announced lead free avgas last year. Last I heard it was undergoing regulatory approvals.
- steven777400 12y ago
  As a recreational pilot, this bugs me too. Every time I fuel the aircraft, or check fuel samples, or stick the tanks, I'm interacting with lead. I'm sure that the amount is small enough that I'll never notice any difference, but, I'd really rather not have the lead. I'm hoping for a lead-free Avgas sooner rather than later.
  - amenghra 12y ago
    Keep in mind that for lead there is no minimum safe exposure limit.
- sokoloff 12y ago
  It frustrates pilots as well. However, the sticking point is not the mostly recreational usage. Most of the pure recreational fleet could burn an unleaded version of the current 100LL. That wouldn't "solve" the problem though. I'd love nothing more than to see a safe, usable, unleaded aviation fuel emerge from the morass that is the FAA approval process. I want an unleaded replacement fuel as much for the sustainability of the necessary part that general aviation plays in the economy as for the ecological issues. There is only one chemical plant in the world that makes TEL today. We are quite possibly one significant industrial accident away from having the fuel supply disrupted. I believe 9 candidate unleaded fuels were submitted to 1 testing avenue, though I think that the most promising fuel, G100UL, was not submitted to that testing process. Presumably GAMI (the creator of the G100UL) has some alternative certification process that they're intending. I do know that the Shell, Swift, and GAMI fuels have flown a fair amount in experimental airplanes already. That's a technical categorization. The airplane itself was probably mechanically indistinguishable from the certified airplane, but was placed into the experimental category specifically in order to test its flight characteristics with the new fuel. A certified airplane cannot legally fly on non-certified fuel (or with non-certified radios, autopilot, non-certified diesel engine, etc). Convert that same certified airplane to experimental, put the required placards on it, and you can fly it with the non-certified fuel. To address the "why don't you just burn car gas?" question: the high-compression and/or turbo-charged engines typical in the working airplanes require an octane rating higher than currently available car gas or unleaded aviation fuel. Most (some estimates are over 80%), of the low and mid-performance piston engined airplanes could burn 94UL (the current ASTM D910 standard 100LL just without the lead added at the end of the process). The relatively low percentage of the fleet which cannot burn 94UL is unfortunately the portion of the fleet that flies the most hours and burns the most fuel. Estimates are that this 20-25% of the fleet burns 60% or more of the fuel. These are the freight haulers, charter operators, CapeAir and other island hoppers, Alaska mail/grocery/fish/charter ops, firefighting water bombers, small business aircraft, and high-performance family airplanes. (That last category doesn't burn near as much as the planes that fly everyday on working missions, of course.) I sympathize with the FAA a lot, as the standard (ASTM D910) for the fuel they're looking to replace is a chemical makeup standard and not a performance standard. The standard literally dictates that it contains a certain amount of tetraethyl lead (TEL), rather than dictating certain performance characteristics. Therefore, it's just as impossible to create a "standards conforming fuel without lead" as it would be to create "water without the wetness". So, why can't we just have airports start selling the 94UL at least to those planes that can use it? Two reasons: 1. Aviation fuel is already a low-volume fuel, and requires special handling all the way from refinery to dispensing station. If you believe that 94UL sales would only be 1/3rd of the current fuel sales, you now need a duplicative system of trucks, tanks, and dispensers for a volume of sales that's 1/3rd of the current, already low volume. The economics of that are daunting to say the least, on a per-gallon-dispensed basis. Airplanes are, by definition, mobile. If 94UL costs more than 100LL due to low-volume of sales, airplanes will fly to a field that sells 100LL. You can't readily (practically) ban the sales of 100LL to airplanes that could use 94UL, because you don't want airplanes taking off from airports that only sell 100LL with inadequate fuel and crashing from fuel exhaustion. 2. If an airport were to decide to take their existing single avgas storage tank and switch it over to 94UL, they'd be turning away 2/3rds of their business. If they decide to keep the single dispenser selling 100LL, they can sell to everyone. Again, the economics are compelling in favor of a single fuel solution for all piston airplanes. I happen to believe in G100UL, but I'm not sure I see the clear path to getting any of them approved.
coldpie 12y ago
Interesting article. I bought a CSA share with a local urban farm in St Paul and Minneapolis. I thought about soil and air contaminants when we made the purchase, but eventually decided to do it anyway. This article reassures me a bit that it's fine, especially since we always wash our veggies well.
normloman 12y ago
Urban gardening is a great example of faux-environmentalism. It feels good, but it's not an efficient or safe way to farm. Lead contamination is one reason. Another is pure logistics. While advocates claim local food reduces "food miles" and saves resources, the amount of miles food travels to get to your plate is just a fraction of it's carbon footprint. It's much more efficient to grow food where it grows best and ship it across the world compared to growing it locally and using excess resources to grow plants in poor conditions. If you have time, read this: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf Otherwise, get the short version: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles That said, gardening is a great hobby that shouldn't be limited to rural communities. But we need to do this safely - perhaps raised beds and a green house. And we shouldn't expect urban farming to magically solve our food needs. Even if everyone had a garden in their back yard, it wouldn't substitute the amount we grow in large farms.
- bluthru 12y ago
  The associated benefits cannot be overstated: education, beauty, community, a connection to nature, health, and most assuredly tasting better. Urban community gardens are a very worthwhile pursuit. People should be encouraged to garden with their lawns instead of using so much wasteful, non-native grass. Long term I hope to see LED-powered warehouses for urban produce production: http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partners_with_ge_to_develop_world_largest_led_indoor_farm http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partner... Fresh, local, efficient, and no need for pesticides.
  - sirseal 12y ago
    Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. LED powered farmhouses would be nice. But going back to the person that you commented on, now we're making energy to give to plants, instead of using the sun directly to make plants. This has the potential (especially in today's economy) to increase the carbon footprint of urban growing. Certainly local. Fresh most likely. Efficient? Not so simple, probably not as efficient. And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).
logfromblammo 12y ago
Some plants, such as ragweed, mustard, oilseed rape, sunflower, cabbage, and duckweed (for semi-aquatic gardens) are metal hyperaccumulators. If you have contaminated soil, you can grow these plants in the contaminated soil, then remove the plants and dispose of them safely. This will take several growing seasons to bring toxic metals levels down to acceptable parameters, but it has the advantage of being extremely inexpensive. Urban soils polluted by leaded paints and vehicle exhaust will likely be usable after one or two seasons of phytoremediation, but extremely polluted waste sites could take decades, starting with a narrower range of hyperaccumulator plants that can survive the initial high levels of contamination. Adding mustard to your regular crop rotation is also useful for pest and weed control.
peterwwillis 12y ago
http://dge.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_31/SCOPE_31_2.05_Chapter10_119-146.pdf http://dge.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_31/SCOPE_31_2.05_Chapter... Read the summary at the bottom for the goods. Basically, different plants absorb different amounts of cadmium, and different soils have different levels of it, and it's all influenced by whether large human developments are churning Cd into the soils nearby. Nothing that hasn't been covered in studies for the past 30 or 40 years...
jqm 12y ago
This kind of issue is why the food safety and modernization act (or some version thereof in US) is a necessary evil. http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ People on the internet (including HN) often consider this act a conspiracy by Monsanto and friends to seize control of the worlds food supply, but the simple fact is that people are regularly endangered by food they eat and there haven't been proper controls in place to address many easily preventable hazards. Just like restaurants, there needs to be some regulation and inspection of food production. No, before you can even think it.... I'm not a paid Monsanto shill (was accused of this multiple times last time this came up here on HN) nor am I fan of big centralized seed/chemical companies. I am however a fan of safety and good sense. Just because a small producer does it doesn't mean it is necessarily better or more natural.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hoprocker 12y ago
Gardens aren't the only potential vector; when we were raising chickens in out backyard in Oakland, we had an egg tested and found that its lead content was quite high. Still, visitors seemed to love that we had them, and we never received any commentary from the hens themselves.

49 points by palidanx 12y ago

This article from 2013 makes the argument that lead in the environment is responsible for violent crime. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

shas3 12y ago
The problem with the lead-crime hypothesis is that the cause of lead and the effect of increased crime are 'too far apart' with many intervening links in the causal chain, to paraphrase Steven Pinker [1]. He calls the hypothesis 'provocative, but far from proven.' The intervening links in the causal chain involve a lot of sub-causal links and hypotheses that are as yet, unproven. [1] http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_o...
- Shorel 12y ago
  Even if lead can't be directly related to crime, lead poisoning causes many bad things to the human body, including learning disabilities, and reducing adult brain size in children exposed.

trhway 12y ago

while at elementary school age we were extracting lead from the old navy batteries and cables and smelt it in tin cans over open fire and made various stuff out of it - i guess new generations of children will have such fun no more :)

Someone1234 12y ago
Kids can still have similar kinds of fun, they just have to pick a safer material. There are several low melting point metals which aren't known to be as harmful. Plus material like this: http://www.cooks.com/recipe/p149f8qz/salt-clay-dough.html http://www.cooks.com/recipe/p149f8qz/salt-clay-dough.html Which is harmless and if varnished can last years (a lot of people make Christmas decorations out of it).
normloman 12y ago
Future generations of children will also miss out on the "fun" of nerve damage and cognitive impairment linked to lead poisoning. I'm all for fun and experimentation, but it's adult's jobs to keep kids from making life threatening mistakes.
CapitalistCartr 12y ago
In science class, we played with mercury. After school we had BB gun battles. We stood up in the front seat of my dad's pickup truck; the one with the metal dash. Bicycle helmets hadn't been invented yet. I weep for the future of children now. //Edit: OK, people, the comment about weeping for the future of children was meant in jest! Nearly killing ourselves as kids wasn't helpful. The notion that we did all right is survivors bias.
- sopooneo 12y ago
  To survive a hazard (as you, and to some extent I, did) is best of all. To suffer the constraints of protective encumbrances is next best. To die of the hazard as a child is worst. There is a balance to be met, sure. But in choosing safetely measures we are taking out insurance. We prevent the worst, at the cost of preventing the best.
- trhway 12y ago
  > After school we had BB gun battles. reminded that nothing makes you run faster than an "enemy" with an air rifle with crafts-clay "bullet". Leaves nice haematoma even through wool pants :) I'm all for the progress, yet i think abolishing BB guns/air-rifle battles isn't the one. Making sure that everybody wears safety glasses would be the one (we didn't have the ones, and that i think was unnecessary risk) Lead of course has to go. Another - i see in the park children playing battles with "swords" which can't deliver any pain - foam wrapped by duct tape. We had "swords" we carved out of wood. They could deliver some pain, and that made the fight more lively i'd say :)
  - freehunter 12y ago
    I fought battles with metal BBs. I fought battles with airsoft plastic BBs. I've never had to dig an airsoft BB out of my leg, can't say the same about metal BBs.
- freehunter 12y ago
  >I weep for the future of children now. Yeah, it's a shame we don't kill or permanently injure our children for the sake of our own nostalgia. Because the experiences I had as a kid are the only kind of experiences worth having.

jwess 12y ago

Over the last 25 years lead has been phased out of paint, automobile gas and plumbing fixtures, but aviation gasoline, or "Avgas" remains leaded and is the number one source of airborne lead in the United States [0]. It frustrates me that the primary source of airborne lead stems from a mostly recreational source. Most planes that use Avgas are privately owned piston-engine/prop planes. [0] http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/

VLM 12y ago
There has to be some level of scale involved... I googled for lead emissions and found a nice graph showing a quarter of a billion tons in 1972 dropping to basically nothing now, around 500 tons or so. The graph links from here http://faculty.cua.edu/forbes/environment.htm http://faculty.cua.edu/forbes/environment.htm
Zigurd 12y ago
Shell announced lead free avgas last year. Last I heard it was undergoing regulatory approvals.
steven777400 12y ago
As a recreational pilot, this bugs me too. Every time I fuel the aircraft, or check fuel samples, or stick the tanks, I'm interacting with lead. I'm sure that the amount is small enough that I'll never notice any difference, but, I'd really rather not have the lead. I'm hoping for a lead-free Avgas sooner rather than later.
- amenghra 12y ago
  Keep in mind that for lead there is no minimum safe exposure limit.
sokoloff 12y ago
It frustrates pilots as well. However, the sticking point is not the mostly recreational usage. Most of the pure recreational fleet could burn an unleaded version of the current 100LL. That wouldn't "solve" the problem though. I'd love nothing more than to see a safe, usable, unleaded aviation fuel emerge from the morass that is the FAA approval process. I want an unleaded replacement fuel as much for the sustainability of the necessary part that general aviation plays in the economy as for the ecological issues. There is only one chemical plant in the world that makes TEL today. We are quite possibly one significant industrial accident away from having the fuel supply disrupted. I believe 9 candidate unleaded fuels were submitted to 1 testing avenue, though I think that the most promising fuel, G100UL, was not submitted to that testing process. Presumably GAMI (the creator of the G100UL) has some alternative certification process that they're intending. I do know that the Shell, Swift, and GAMI fuels have flown a fair amount in experimental airplanes already. That's a technical categorization. The airplane itself was probably mechanically indistinguishable from the certified airplane, but was placed into the experimental category specifically in order to test its flight characteristics with the new fuel. A certified airplane cannot legally fly on non-certified fuel (or with non-certified radios, autopilot, non-certified diesel engine, etc). Convert that same certified airplane to experimental, put the required placards on it, and you can fly it with the non-certified fuel. To address the "why don't you just burn car gas?" question: the high-compression and/or turbo-charged engines typical in the working airplanes require an octane rating higher than currently available car gas or unleaded aviation fuel. Most (some estimates are over 80%), of the low and mid-performance piston engined airplanes could burn 94UL (the current ASTM D910 standard 100LL just without the lead added at the end of the process). The relatively low percentage of the fleet which cannot burn 94UL is unfortunately the portion of the fleet that flies the most hours and burns the most fuel. Estimates are that this 20-25% of the fleet burns 60% or more of the fuel. These are the freight haulers, charter operators, CapeAir and other island hoppers, Alaska mail/grocery/fish/charter ops, firefighting water bombers, small business aircraft, and high-performance family airplanes. (That last category doesn't burn near as much as the planes that fly everyday on working missions, of course.) I sympathize with the FAA a lot, as the standard (ASTM D910) for the fuel they're looking to replace is a chemical makeup standard and not a performance standard. The standard literally dictates that it contains a certain amount of tetraethyl lead (TEL), rather than dictating certain performance characteristics. Therefore, it's just as impossible to create a "standards conforming fuel without lead" as it would be to create "water without the wetness". So, why can't we just have airports start selling the 94UL at least to those planes that can use it? Two reasons: 1. Aviation fuel is already a low-volume fuel, and requires special handling all the way from refinery to dispensing station. If you believe that 94UL sales would only be 1/3rd of the current fuel sales, you now need a duplicative system of trucks, tanks, and dispensers for a volume of sales that's 1/3rd of the current, already low volume. The economics of that are daunting to say the least, on a per-gallon-dispensed basis. Airplanes are, by definition, mobile. If 94UL costs more than 100LL due to low-volume of sales, airplanes will fly to a field that sells 100LL. You can't readily (practically) ban the sales of 100LL to airplanes that could use 94UL, because you don't want airplanes taking off from airports that only sell 100LL with inadequate fuel and crashing from fuel exhaustion. 2. If an airport were to decide to take their existing single avgas storage tank and switch it over to 94UL, they'd be turning away 2/3rds of their business. If they decide to keep the single dispenser selling 100LL, they can sell to everyone. Again, the economics are compelling in favor of a single fuel solution for all piston airplanes. I happen to believe in G100UL, but I'm not sure I see the clear path to getting any of them approved.

coldpie 12y ago

Interesting article. I bought a CSA share with a local urban farm in St Paul and Minneapolis. I thought about soil and air contaminants when we made the purchase, but eventually decided to do it anyway. This article reassures me a bit that it's fine, especially since we always wash our veggies well.

normloman 12y ago

Urban gardening is a great example of faux-environmentalism. It feels good, but it's not an efficient or safe way to farm. Lead contamination is one reason. Another is pure logistics. While advocates claim local food reduces "food miles" and saves resources, the amount of miles food travels to get to your plate is just a fraction of it's carbon footprint. It's much more efficient to grow food where it grows best and ship it across the world compared to growing it locally and using excess resources to grow plants in poor conditions. If you have time, read this: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/15000/15100/15145/DE97763079.pdf Otherwise, get the short version: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles That said, gardening is a great hobby that shouldn't be limited to rural communities. But we need to do this safely - perhaps raised beds and a green house. And we shouldn't expect urban farming to magically solve our food needs. Even if everyone had a garden in their back yard, it wouldn't substitute the amount we grow in large farms.

bluthru 12y ago
The associated benefits cannot be overstated: education, beauty, community, a connection to nature, health, and most assuredly tasting better. Urban community gardens are a very worthwhile pursuit. People should be encouraged to garden with their lawns instead of using so much wasteful, non-native grass. Long term I hope to see LED-powered warehouses for urban produce production: http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partners_with_ge_to_develop_world_largest_led_indoor_farm http://www.ledinside.com/news/2014/7/japanese_farmer_partner... Fresh, local, efficient, and no need for pesticides.
- sirseal 12y ago
  Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it. LED powered farmhouses would be nice. But going back to the person that you commented on, now we're making energy to give to plants, instead of using the sun directly to make plants. This has the potential (especially in today's economy) to increase the carbon footprint of urban growing. Certainly local. Fresh most likely. Efficient? Not so simple, probably not as efficient. And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).

logfromblammo 12y ago

Some plants, such as ragweed, mustard, oilseed rape, sunflower, cabbage, and duckweed (for semi-aquatic gardens) are metal hyperaccumulators. If you have contaminated soil, you can grow these plants in the contaminated soil, then remove the plants and dispose of them safely. This will take several growing seasons to bring toxic metals levels down to acceptable parameters, but it has the advantage of being extremely inexpensive. Urban soils polluted by leaded paints and vehicle exhaust will likely be usable after one or two seasons of phytoremediation, but extremely polluted waste sites could take decades, starting with a narrower range of hyperaccumulator plants that can survive the initial high levels of contamination. Adding mustard to your regular crop rotation is also useful for pest and weed control.

peterwwillis 12y ago

http://dge.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_31/SCOPE_31_2.05_Chapter10_119-146.pdf http://dge.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_31/SCOPE_31_2.05_Chapter... Read the summary at the bottom for the goods. Basically, different plants absorb different amounts of cadmium, and different soils have different levels of it, and it's all influenced by whether large human developments are churning Cd into the soils nearby. Nothing that hasn't been covered in studies for the past 30 or 40 years...

jqm 12y ago

This kind of issue is why the food safety and modernization act (or some version thereof in US) is a necessary evil. http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ People on the internet (including HN) often consider this act a conspiracy by Monsanto and friends to seize control of the worlds food supply, but the simple fact is that people are regularly endangered by food they eat and there haven't been proper controls in place to address many easily preventable hazards. Just like restaurants, there needs to be some regulation and inspection of food production. No, before you can even think it.... I'm not a paid Monsanto shill (was accused of this multiple times last time this came up here on HN) nor am I fan of big centralized seed/chemical companies. I am however a fan of safety and good sense. Just because a small producer does it doesn't mean it is necessarily better or more natural.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hoprocker 12y ago

Gardens aren't the only potential vector; when we were raising chickens in out backyard in Oakland, we had an egg tested and found that its lead content was quite high. Still, visitors seemed to love that we had them, and we never received any commentary from the hens themselves.