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Contaminated Allotments & Gardens

Is your allotment or garden contaminated? How would you know?  What is the history of the site?

 

Soils of allotments are often contaminated by heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants. In particular, lead (Pb) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) frequently exceed legal intervention values. Soil contamination in allotments is often linked to historic land use, gardening practices and the burning of lead painted doors windows etc. There have been numerous instances of allotments being shown to be contaminated (see links opposite). In most instances the cost to check one allotment or garden would be prohibitive using the usual laboratory methods; however the on-site techniques employed by QROS allow us to offer a service to screen an entire allotment in one day for both hydrocarbon and heavy metals at a cost that is feasible to a small group of allotment holders.

 

No power or site accommodation is required as the equipment is powered and operated from the back of a vehicle and the results generated before we leave.

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Contaminated Allotments & Gardens in the Press

“Contaminated Allotments”

Allotments owners from one of the poorest regions of Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England, have been told not to eat vegetables or any other products from their allotments after the discovery of poisoned ash and the possibility of deadly cancer-causing dioxins.The Guardian reports that the allotments lie next to a waste incinerator plant and that around 2,000 tonnes of waste ash were put over the ground by the local authority to make hard pathways. But the ash contained high levels of potentially poisonous cadmium, lead and zinc - as much as 800 times the safety levels.

In other allotments dioxins were recorded and this discovery is the most worrying because of dioxins vigorous cancer-causing effects.

GreenFingers.com

 

“It is my opinion that many allotment sites will have raised levels on contaminants - heavy metals etc due to the use of former heavy metal based fungicides, pesticides etc, burning of lead painted doors windows, plus other, none specific allotment activates ( I am an allotment gardener myself so am familiar with this sort of thing!). Research to see if harm is being caused will become more and more important - unfortunately very little help is available to take this route, the closure or dig and dump option is the easiest.”

Phil Hartley.

Assistant Team r - Land Contamination Newcastle City Council

Contaminated Allotments & Gardens References

Contamination of soils in domestic gardens and allotments: a brief overview

Land Contamination & Reclamation, 12 (3), 2004

B. J. Alloway

 

Record Of The Determination That Land, Known As George Street Allotments, Reading Is Contaminated Land.

 

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