For Those Who Want To Take Charge Of Their Own Growth

I am very busy with grad school just now, so I won't be able to write a new post this week.  However, grad school (and self education in general) line up nicely with a post I wrote a few months ago, a post which I have decided to share again with interested readers who are trying to improve themselves in the midst of a society that is trying to scapegoat and destroy them.  Here then, for your enjoyment and edification, is Not Someone Else's Bonsai.

Not Someone Else's Bonsai

The attitudes of a culture toward the people it touches are seen in the impact that culture has on the people and things it touches. Sometimes a culture can turn those it touches into works of art. Sometimes a culture succeeds only in turning everything it touches into garbage. Not infrequently, the culture in question can become confused as to which category its works belong to, and as to whether or not its modifications of the “wild” are actually an improvement.

Consider the practice of bonsai, an Asian art which is over 1,400 years old. The word bonsai is a Japanese modification of the Chinese word penzai. Both words can be rendered as “tray plantings” and penzai is related to penjing, which literally means “tray scenery.”  The object of bonsai is to recreate a large-scale, wild landscape in miniature, using the same living elements which comprise the large landscape, yet at a scale which can be as intimate as a tray in the living room of a house. The living elements of bonsai are trees such as fir, maple, alder and elm – trees which in the wild grow to many times the height of a man. Yet the bonsai sculptor trains these trees from the seedling stage – using wires, bands, pruning and other techniques – to shape the tree into a living sculpture which is usually no taller than a man when mature, and which often grows to less than half as tall.

Imagine for a minute that you are a child in a locale where a large population must inhabit a limited living space. Now suppose that this population comprises a culture which loves greenery and cultivation of living things, yet which is forced to adapt its love of cultivation to limited spaces. Thus they become practitioners of bonsai. Throughout your youth, therefore, the only landscapes you see are miniature, planned down to the centimeter, carefully crafted. Then a day comes when you must travel to another place far away, and you must pass through a wild forest – full of maple, fir, alder, and elm trees, big and tall. Would the sight make you uncomfortable? Would you say, “A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing...”? 

I mention bonsai, not as a criticism of the art form, nor of Asian culture (for which I have the highest respect), but to use bonsai as a metaphor.

Each of us is a sculptor of others at some point in our lives. But how the sculpture turns out is often highly dependent on the intent of the sculptor. If the sculptor complains that his finished sculpture looks like garbage, maybe we should look at the motives of the sculptor rather than blaming the material which has been sculpted. When sculpting human beings, what material do we start with?

Here I look to the Good Book for answers. Acts 17:26 says that “[God] made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth...” That is, according to biblical Christianity, every one of us has the same origin. Therefore, every one of us is fully human. There is only one race within the human race, and that is the human race. We have the same basic genetic makeup, and therefore the same basic potential. This assertion is backed by science, which has determined that the concept of individual “races” within the human race has no factual validity. In other words, the human race has no subspecies.  The abundant proof of this is seen in such things as the success of “colorblind” organ transplants and blood transfusions.  It is also seen in the similarity of outcomes in those children across all “racial” and ethnic classifications who are exposed to the same “sculpting” process – also known as nurture.

That nurture has been scientifically examined in recent years, and the relative weight of nurture versus nature in producing specific outcomes has been examined as well. In 1993, a team of cognitive psychologists led by K. Anders Ericsson published a paper titled, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”  That paper asserted that innate talent is vastly overrated in the making of an expert in a particular field of endeavor. Rather, the key to the making of an expert is regular, consistent, “deliberate” practice. (Ericsson's definition of “deliberate” is itself deliberate.)

This research turned out to be rather controversial, and it deeply offended a number of people who had come to believe that they and their offspring are innately “all that and a bag of chips.” But there are several examples, both historical and modern, which justify Ericsson's assertions. One example cited in Ericsson's paper is that of Laszlo and Klara Polgar, a Hungarian couple who set out to train their three daughters to become chess masters. As a result, two of them became the best and second best women chess players in the world, and the third is ranked sixth in the world. Ericsson's research is also confirmed by the documented experiences of Shinichi Suzuki, originator of the Suzuki method of music instruction.

The focus of Ericsson and his colleagues, as well as Suzuki, was the outcome of healthy nurturing by mentors with good intentions. But mentors with evil intentions can be just as effective in producing the outcomes they want to see in their protégées. This is why adult children of alcoholics (ACOA's) and adult children of narcissists (ACON's) suffer such damage. Benevolent mentors lovingly encourage those in their care to develop their full potential, but personality-disordered and evil mentors seek to destroy those in their care – through constant put-downs, negativity, and active sabotage.

And when a society is itself narcissistic and dysfunctional, it destructively mentors those populations within it who are targeted as scapegoats. This was the motivation for laws in the antebellum South which made it illegal to teach African slaves to read and write. (See this and this.)  This was the motivation for segregated schools in the American South, and schools in the North which were de facto weapons of mass destruction.  This was the motivation for the first counterattacks against the minority education victories won during the civil rights struggles of the 1960's.  This is the motivation for the continued disparity in expectations, discipline and outcomes between white and minority children in American mass education, whether public or private. This is also seen in the portrayals of minority culture which are deemed to be acceptable to mainstream media (see this and this), media whose owners tend to look for the most dysfunctional elements of minority culture (especially Black American culture) in order to make sweeping generalizations about an entire people from one small element of what is after all a heterogeneous culture. Then they endlessly rebroadcast this elements to a defenseless and clueless public, saying thus that “THIS is what minorities are, and THIS is all they will ever be.” And they turn around and attempt to use the school system again as a weapon of mass destruction as the Oakland school district tried to do in the 1990's when it tried to force all Black children to be taught in the language of “Ebonics.”  One of the crowning successes of American mass media has been its ability to convince broad American society that Black Americans constitute a “criminal race” even though the facts contradict this. (See this and this for instance. Did you know that there are studies which indicate that actual rates of drug use among Black American youth are far lower than among White American youth, and that there is a higher percentage of White youth selling drugs than Black youth?)

The experience of minorities of color therefore continues to be similar to that of trees “sculpted” with fire, chain saws, battery acid and Roundup by a sadistic bonsai gardener who likes bare dirt better than soil “contaminated” by living matter. Yet seedlings manage to escape and turn into something much healthier than their sculptors planned. Some examples of plants which turned out differently than their sculptors intended include Junot Diaz, a writer from the Dominican Republic who made a name for himself by publishing gritty stories about life in inner-city ghettos in the American Northeast. Now he is working on a passion which for a long time was secret, namely, his desire to become an author of science fiction.  There is also Lloyd Ferguson, PhD, an emeritus electrical engineering professor who is also part of the Affordable Learning Initiative at Cal Poly Pomona. For many years Dr. Ferguson taught electromagnetics using a textbook written by another notable Black academic, namely Dr. Matthew N.O. Sadiku.  And there is veteran astronaut Robert Curbeam, and Vladymir Lamadieu, an information technology professional with a law degree who is also a good guitarist.  And there is Candace Makeda Moore, a Black American doctor now practicing medicine in South Africa.  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of other female Black academics, professionals, or intellectuals, nor the vast number of Hispanics in the United States who are turning out differently than the masters of our predatory society had hoped. These all turned out as they did because they were not sculpted by American culture, or they learned to sculpt themselves in spite of American culture. In daring to be different, they risked the wrath of those who would accuse them of not “keepin' it real.” Not a few of the accusers are white!

Although high achievers in a scapegoated group can arise even in the midst of a culture which seeks to destroy them, the fact is that the scapegoating is almost always damaging. Dysfunction almost always results in the targeted group. This is seen across cultures and in many nations. The example of the Burakumin of Japan is illustrative, showing that the sort of dysfunction which arises from cultural scapegoating is very similar to that experienced by many members of the Black American population. It is also the same sort of dysfunction produced in Irish and Welsh populations by British occupiers from the 1700's to the early 20th century.

What scapegoated groups must therefore do is to disconnect from their abusers as much as is humanly possible. You're not somebody else's bonsai. Stop letting abusers treat you as if you were their plant to be ruined by them. There is also a need to heal the damage done by sadistic sculpting. And those who have been damaged will have to take charge of their own healing. That will be the topic of my next post.

Brownfields and Urban Agriculture - Assessing The Challenges (Part 2)

This is the second part of a transcript of an interview I conducted last week with Clark Henry of the Portland Brownfield Program. In this interview, we discussed the prevalence of brownfields (areas of land polluted by commercial or industrial activity) in urban environments, and the implications for urban agriculture and food gardening. Today's post contains the remainder of that interview, in which solutions to brownfields are discussed. For the sake of continuity, I have also included all of the transcription from last week's post. My questions are in bold type, and Mr. Henry's answers are in normal type.

People talk about adapting to Peak Oil, economic collapse and resource constraints...and there are all sorts of responses, including trying to make things work where we live. Food systems are a big part of this, including urban gardening and urban farming. But some have pointed out the pollution of the urban environment, including pollution of soil due to lead. Telling people, “Don't grow food in the city; it's too dangerous,” won't fly as people find that they can't afford to rely on our present food systems. Yet the issue of pollution is valid. Can you comment on the scope of the problem, starting with lead pollution?

Sure, and just to qualify my statements, I am not a scientist, but an urban planner. I've been working with this [Portland Brownfield Program] project for eight years, so I have developed some understanding of levels and pervasiveness of contaminants. My wife, however, is director of the Josiah Hill III Clinic, a community-based nonprofit organization that does blood lead level testing for pregnant women and children in lower income neighborhoods and among communities of color.

The #1 source of lead contamination in Portland is lead paint, from older construction and older houses. The problem of lead contamination grows more severe as one moves eastward across the United States and as one goes into older neighborhoods. Scraping and sanding paint, or chipping and flaking of paint is the source of soil contamination in the home environment. In commercial and industrial areas, shipbuilding and shipbreaking, bulk oil terminals, old gas stations and old storage sites for leaded gasoline are sources of lead contamination.

Lead is a background element in nature, and agencies like the EPA and HUD publish environmental lead level figures that, in their view, “do not pose a driving risk to human life.” However, they also say that there is no safe level of lead in the human body. And there are documented detrimental effects to small children up to the age of 7 from exposure to lead. The City and County Health Departments partner with the State to publish guidelines for lead exposure, and there is a “Lead Hotline” available to City residents.

What other contaminants are a concern (including organic contaminants like organic compounds from leaking underground tanks)?

Petroleum of all varieties – gasoline, heating oil, motor oil, diesel fuel, bulk oil, and so forth. Former gas stations occupy a large portion of America's commercial corridors, and they were usually situated on corners where people drive by. Many sites of these former stations show few or no signs of such previous use; yet when people look into the records for such sites, they discover that, “Oh, a gas station was here!”

Modern gas stations operate under rigorous oversight by state regulators, but these older sites represent a mystery, an unquantifiable risk, and available databases don't do justice to this risk. Verifiable sites are maintained in two State (Oregon) Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) databases: the Leaky Underground Storage Tanks (LUSTS) database, and the Environmental Cleanup Site Inventory. Some of the sites on this list have been cleaned up and re-used. All of these sites are candidates for State involvement in assessment and/or clean-up.

There are two stages of State environmental assessment. First is the Phase 1 assessment in which a consultant determines the history of the site, using sources such as the County library, building records, the Polk Directories and the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. (In the 1950's, the Sanborn Fire Insurance company made very detailed maps of underground tanks for underwriting purposes.) Also, the consultant will visit the site to do a visual inspection, where he may notice old concrete pump islands or old gas station structures or fill ports for underground tanks.

The Phase 2 assessment follows once the consultant has determined that a site is a former gas station or dry cleaners' facility or metal plating facility or so forth. Phase 2 consists of taking soil samples or groundwater samples, or taking samples of the contents of barrels if there are barrels on the site, or taking samples of the materials of any existing buildings or structures on the site.

Once the assessment is finished, the level and type of contamination is compared to the desired future use of the site. The DEQ is concerned with limiting exposure to contaminants. Thus, a site that meets regulatory approval isn't necessarily cleaned up, but is configured in a way that limits exposure – via placing a parking lot or building foundation on top of contaminated soil so that people are prevented from coming in contact with the bare soil. This is called an engineering control. Another form of control, called an institutional control, consists of placing restrictions on the title and permitted uses of the site.

So then, it is possible that there are sites that would be under institutional controls that forbid their use for urban agriculture?

Absolutely. Unless you worked through a new way of getting the site cleaned up. And the City is working with some groups who are researching how to make brownfields both safe and functional for urban agriculture, whether it's small-scale community gardens or something larger. We're working with a group called Groundwork Portland, which is just a year and a few months old. It's part of a network called Groundwork USA, whose mission is to identify brownfields within environmental justice communities, and to have them assessed and cleaned up and re-used in a way that reflects the surrounding community. Not necessarily to eyeball these sites for condominium development or Starbucks, but to make sure that they are doing something for the people who live there – by protecting their health first, and then by insuring that these sites are used in a way that meets the needs of the people around them.

Groundwork Portland has a board of directors whose members come from several local organizations: Organizing People, Activating Leaders (OPAL); the Oregon Tradeswomen; and the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT). The Oregon Tradeswomen provide training in hazardous waste handling for brownfield work. OSALT owns property for agricultural use and they are doing research on appropriate agricultural development of urban properties. There is a project on 8^th and Emerson in NE Portland, the “Emerson Garden Project,” now being undertaken by OSALT, and it is a 4000 square foot lot that was donated by the County through foreclosure.

The Portland Brownfield Program tested the lot and found that there were really high lead levels in a couple of spots. We (Groundwork Portland, OSALT and the City) are now trying to clean up the soil using phytoremediation (decontamination via plants), in order to turn this lot into a community garden. OSALT will test native plants on this lot, to determine their phytoremedial qualities with lead, in order that we can turn this into a site for food production and education at the same time.

What are the available remediation strategies, starting from the most expensive strategies down to those that are within reach of communities and non-profits?

That's a good question, and the answer is not obvious. Soil removal is one option. But this is very expensive compared to trucking dirt to a regular landfill. Dirt at regular landfills is simply used as a cover. But contaminated dirt requires removal to a toxic waste landfill. Fortunately, there is such a landfill in eastern Oregon, but the cost of trucking dirt there is over $700 a ton, compared to $70 a ton for removal to a regular landfill. And a ton of dirt is not that bulky. So soil removal quickly becomes very expensive, not to mention the cost of finding virgin, clean dirt and trucking it in to your urban agriculture site.

Another strategy is groundwater treatment, but this is an ongoing process that may last several years, and it too is expensive. When dealing with petroleum products, oxygenation and breakdown of compounds using bacteria and/or mushrooms is sometimes used. But this requires continual monitoring. The big questions for bioremediation, and indeed for all remediation, are “How long will this take?”, “How much will this cost?”, and “Who will pay for this?” These are often unknown until one gets into a project. Those who undertake such projects therefore take on a significant risk. Private developers must take this risk on themselves, but communities and tax-exempt non-profits can get help.

The Portland Brownfield Program focuses most of its efforts on helping community-based revitalization efforts, and I think we've achieved some good successes. But we also help private markets figure out remediation, as even large private firms who specialize in brownfield redevelopment sometimes get in trouble.

As far as nonprofits, there's a group, Southeast Uplift, that owns a former gas station on southeast 57^th and Division. This land was given to them by the U.S. Marshal. This site was known to have underground storage tanks that had leaked. We helped them deal with the environmental liability issues and obtain the resources to deal with regulatory requirements for dealing with the site's past use. Our approach was straightforward – “dig it up and haul it away.” Fortunately, when we started digging out the tanks, we found very little contamination. But a site with identical usage and identical tanks might have had monstrous contamination – you just doesn't know until you start digging. We can test all we want, but the reality is that we drill a series of holes spaced a certain distance apart, and we make assumptions about what lies between those holes. If we find contamination, we will drill more holes until we don't find any more. This helps us determine the zone to be cleaned up. But the testing is expensive, and it is not fast. We can make educated assumptions about what we hope to find, and then have a plan B – a healthy contingency. Private developers have the luxury of having a large investment pool for cleaning up land for large projects, such as the Pearl District and South Waterfront. Things get tighter as the project size shrinks, though there are State and Federal grants available to tax-exempt organizations and nonprofits.

It sounds like there really needs to be a partnership with city governments in order to promote urban agriculture. The extent of urban pollution is fairly widespread. Are you saying then that people should not rush in blindly and grow vegetables in any bare patch of land?

Yes, that's a fair assumption. But it depends on what you're growing – does your tomato plant take lead out of the soil and store it in the fruit? It's questionable. Look at the literature to see what contaminants plants actually take up. The more serious threat comes not from eating the vegetables, but from working the soil – digging, planting, then bringing contaminated soil into your home.

The National Brownfield Conference was recently held in New Orleans. My co-worker Jen was there, and spoke at an urban agriculture session. There was also a woman named Anne Carroll of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who is working with city groups to help accurately communicate the risk – there really aren't a lot of regulatory standards that people can follow to determine what's safe; most of it is perception.

At that Conference, one researcher from the University of Washington said, “There's a very scientific approach to this; there's very little risk, so why address it? We haven't seen plants take up contaminants; all you're doing by applying this stigma to areas of land is stopping people from growing food. There's no risk; just go ahead and do it.” To me such a statement sends up a red flag – because people don't necessarily respond well to purely scientific reasoning. Even if that reasoning is communicated clearly, people don't always respond well. For instance, if you were told, “That soil is safe for you to garden in so long as you and your children aren't consuming more than 18 percent of your annual broccoli intake from that plot,” how would you feel? Perception of risk – perception of contamination is everything. Perception that a site is too dangerous to use may cause it to lie fallow, unused for anything- along with the perception that any assessment or remediation is too costly to undertake.

This is why partnership with a city government or other group that understands these issues can help in reusing sites. This is why we have been working with OSALT on the 8^th and Emerson site, and why we have been working with Anne Carroll on accurately communicating the risk, and what to do to manage the risk. Not everyone who wants to start a community garden has a few hundred thousand dollars to remove the existing soil and bring in verified clean, composted new soil – that's unrealistic. So what's the alternative? To not use land? To use only the most pristine land? The vast majority of this world exists right in the middle, and if we want to use urban land for agricultural uses, we will be walking with some risk. That's okay, as long as we understand the risk and we take reasonable steps to limit it.

There are some obvious no-no's – you don't plant directly in extremely contaminated soil, for instance. And composting has been shown to bind contaminants in soil so that they are not mobile and can't be absorbed by plants. But some of this is subjective. And one size doesn't fit all. What's needed is an arsenal of many tools to deal with contamination in many situations.

One question is “What does sustainable cleanup really mean?” Does sustainable brownfield redevelopment consist of digging up contaminated soil and hauling it to a landfill? That just makes it someone else's problem. These landfills don't remain landfills forever. We're already dealing with the problem of closed landfills, and the big voids they leave in the urban environment. Landfills are big. Once they get closed, normally nothing happens on them. Will we try technologies and products that clean soil and groundwater? Do these products really do what they're supposed to do? Or do they actually make the contaminants more toxic?

Are there other cities throughout the U.S. and the world whose city governments are working to reclaim brownfield sites in their city limits for use in urban agriculture?

Yeah, absolutely. Philadelphia has been receiving national attention for their “Philadelphia Green” efforts. There's a group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – I feel bad because I can't remember the man's name – but there's a gentleman who has done a tremendous job with aquaculture and urban agriculture, and he's doing it in a way that's educating tons of people, while generating enough funds to support itself; it's economically viable. There's also the Groundwork USA network. New York City is also looking at this as far as urban gardening, and they recently launched a very ambitious Brownfield Revitalization office.

Germany has a very interesting “Interim Use” philosophy. If a site is not being used, the government asks, “What can we use this for?” They don't have the same “property rights” gusto found in the USA, so the German government has a lot more statutory authority to put sites to use when their owners leave them fenced off and contaminated. Urban agriculture is one of the uses Germany has looked at for these sites, particularly in Leipzig.

In Indianapolis, my counterpart is Christopher Harrell, and he's looking at this as well. We're definitely not unique, but we like to think we're doing good work.

So here we are and someone wakes up to the insecurity of our economy and our industrial food system, and as he thinks of the need to start building local economic systems and systems of food production, he looks out his apartment window at the vacant lot across the street. Where does this person start?

Talk to the property owner if you're thinking of using some vacant land. Then, do your research on the site's history. In Portland, the Polk Directories are a good resource. Then, if you find that the site has a history that might have generated contamination, do some testing. Call the Portland Brownfield program. Also, talk to neighbors who know the history of the site.

But should you find that the site is contaminated, what do you do with that knowledge? You can compare your findings against the DEQ standards for agricultural use. Also, HUD and the City of Portland's Building Department have guidelines. But you have to be able in the end to look your neighbor in the eye and say, “Yes, this site is safe for use.”

* * *

Debrief: Mr. Henry provided some very useful information, which I am sure is greatly appreciated. Three things stand out: first, that pollution of the urban environment is a widespread and serious problem; secondly, that functioning in the urban environment therefore involves intelligently managing the risk from urban pollution; and thirdly, that providing sustainable and viable local economic systems – especially, local systems of food production – in urban areas will require us to learn to live differently. If we care about relocalizing our food, we will have to stop polluting our land, and we will have to stop supporting those businesses and activities of the present official economy that continue to ruin our cities. I know there are cities in China and on the African continent that are learning this the hard way.

One other note: The City of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is hosting its “Urban Growth Bounty 2010” series of classes on urban agriculture and self-sufficiency. There will be 82 classes, covering topics such as urban farming, keeping chickens and bees, food preservation, and cheesemaking. Those who live in Portland and who are interested can go to http://www.portlandonline.com/bps/ugb for class descriptions and online registration links.

Lastly, here are links to the organizations mentioned in this interview:

• Philadelphia Green

• Growing Power (I think this is the Milwaukee organization that Mr. Henry was referring to.)

• Indianapolis Brownfields Redevelopment Program

• Office of Environmental Remediation – NYC.gov

• brownfields2009.org (National Brownfields Conference, 2009)

• Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition

• Josiah Hill III Clinic | Working to keep children and their homes safe

• OSALT: The Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust

• Organizing People, Activating Leaders (OPAL)

• Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.

• Groundwork Portland

• Groundwork USA

Brownfield Remediation For Urban Homesteaders

Urban homesteading is a very valuable skill set for the times we now face. One of the most important aspects of urban homesteading is for city dwellers to learn to grow their own food. A unique challenge of growing food in an urban or suburban environment is dealing with pre-existing pollution or contamination of an urban garden site. Such sites are known as “brownfields” as opposed to uncontaminated virgin lands called “greenfields.” Brownfields are common in urban areas and we must learn to deal with them, because as the existing “official” food economy deteriorates, we won't be able to just keep going to the store rather face this challenge. Knowing how to garden successfully on brownfields may soon mean the difference between surviving and starving.

Our Endangered “Official” Food System

The food production and distribution system that now exists in the industrial world is becoming increasingly endangered. This system depends on the concentration of control of vast amounts of farmland, labor, machinery, storehouses, distribution facilities and farm “inputs” in the hands of a few large corporations. These corporations distribute food through a vast global network of supply chains that lead to points of sale at local supermarkets. The whole system depends heavily on artificial means of forcing increased production from the ground that is farmed – means such as mechanized farming, pesticides, fertilizers and long-haul transport. All of these artificial means depend on fossil fuels and the cheap credit that a fossil-fueled economy provides.

Now that fossil fuels are becoming scarce, the entire system is beginning to break down. During the last oil price spike, the prices of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides also spiked. During the economic collapse that occurred afterward, lines of credit to farmers were wiped out, just as lines of credit for other businesses also dried up. Farmers have come to depend on credit in order to buy the seeds, fertilizers and other amendments, and machinery for each year's harvest. The reduction in availability of credit is causing farmers to cut back on planting. Several news reports predicted in 2008 that this could result in decreased harvests in 2009, leading to price spikes for food, and possible shortages.

This story will play itself out repeatedly and with ever-increasing severity as oil becomes scarcer and the official economy continues to deteriorate as a result. Under such circumstances, city dwellers will need to farm whatever pieces of ground they can get their hands on. Telling such people that it's safer to get their food from the store is a non-starter. Yet it is important to know how to garden safely in urban soils, and how to deal with contamination. In this post, I will focus mainly on dealing with lead contamination. Future posts may delve into how to deal with other kinds of contamination.

Dealing with lead contamination is a multi-pronged strategy consisting of the following elements: appropriate plants, separation techniques, and remediation tools.

Appropriate Plants

All plants accumulate lead to some extent; however, not all plants concentrate accumulated lead in their edible parts. A study performed by the Argonne National Laboratory examined lead accumulation in edible parts of food plants, the results of which showed that lead generally does not concentrate in the “fruit” of fruiting edible plants. These plants include things like fruit trees, corn, cucumbers, peppers, squash, tomatoes, watermelon and zucchini. Therefore, when dealing with heavily contaminated soils (soils that test over 400 parts per million for lead) that cannot be remediated due to cost or lack of access to resources, plants such as these should be cultivated, along with legumes such as beans and peas. Quite a lot of plants can be safely harvested and eaten, even when grown in heavily contaminated soils.

Once the fruiting parts of these plants are harvested, the crop should be washed thoroughly before use. Some sources recommend washing with both water and detergent. Afterward, these crops are quite safe for human consumption. However, it is generally not safe to eat root vegetables, leafy greens or herbs grown in soil contaminated to 400 parts per million or above. Safe utilization of these vegetables requires appropriate separation techniques.

Separation Techniques

When raising root vegetables and other crops susceptible to lead contamination, it is essential to keep these vegetables away from the source of contamination. Therefore, when gardening on a contaminated site, one must not plant these vegetables directly in the soil. Instead, raised beds or containers should be used. Clean soil should be placed in the beds or containers, and the soil should be monitored every season to insure that it does not become contaminated by windblown dust from adjacent contaminated areas. Wind-caused cross-contamination can also be reduced by planting a cover crop of grass in areas of bare dirt to immobilize the soil, as well as by mulch or weed tarps.

Suitable containers for container gardening are easy to come by, free of charge. One can find used five-gallon food-grade plastic buckets at many restaurants and supermarkets. Empty plastic detergent buckets are also good. As far as raised beds, some sources recommend placing a semi-permeable barrier at the bottom of the bed to separate the contaminated soil from the new clean soil added to the bed. The beds must be deep enough that any root vegetables grown in them will not contact the contaminated soil underneath even when they have grown to their full extent.

Gardening in raised beds or containers limits the size of the harvest available to an urban household. In order have the freedom to grow anything anywhere at any time on an urban homestead, soil remediation techniques must be employed where contamination exists.

Remediation Tools

Techniques of remediation of lead contamination have been studied extensively by non-profit urban gardening groups, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), universities and researchers affiliated with the governments of the United States and several other nations. Interest in lead remediation has risen as governments and others have come to grips with some of the negative effects of massive industrialization. The techniques studied have varied in complexity, reliance on advanced technology and cost, with the governments of First World nations tending to favor study of the most costly and complex techniques. These techniques include things like soil removal and replacement, soil washing, electrokinetic methods, and other costly remedies.

Such techniques are beyond the reach of most residents of the Third World, as well as most poor and middle-class people in the First World. I will therefore focus mainly on those techniques which have been studied for use in poor settings by people of limited means.

First, there are techniques of binding lead in soil to reduce its bioavailability to plants. One method, studied in China and in the U.S., involves adding rock phosphate and/or phosphate fertilizers to contaminated soil. The phosphates bind to the lead to form insoluble lead phosphate compounds that are not taken up by plants. Another method is simply to add compost to contaminated soil, as the organic compounds in the compost accomplish the same goal of immobilizing and binding lead in soil.

Then there is phytoremediation, which consists of growing plants that are known lead accumulators in order to reduce the total concentration of lead in soil. Some phytoremediation strategies promise a reduction of 100 parts per million per growing season. Reduction of soil lead levels to an acceptable range by this technique takes from two to over five years. It should be viewed as part of a long-range strategy for healing urban areas.

Final Thoughts: The Correct Way To Assess Contamination Risks

This week's post is a follow-up to my earlier post, “The Chicken That Laid Leaden Eggs, And Other Horror Stories.” In this week's post, I seek to drive home an additional point that I may not have made in the earlier post. That point is the fact that urban homesteading, and particularly urban agriculture, have a disruptive effect on the official global food system, because they result in people breaking free of that system. Therefore it is no surprise that the masters of that system might find it advantageous to try to arouse fear of potential “dangers” of urban food gardening, in order to keep people dependent on the official system.

A recent case in point involves keeping urban chickens for the purpose of eating their eggs. An article appeared in a local newspaper warning urban chicken-keepers of the danger of eating eggs from chickens that have ingested lead-based paint from older buildings. That concern is valid, yet the article went on to imply that because of the ubiquitousness of lead in urban environments, it is largely unsafe for people to raise chickens for food in the city. While the article caused many people to get their property and their children tested for lead contamination, these people then concluded that if there were elevated lead levels on their property and elevated blood lead levels in their children, it had to be due to the children eating eggs from contaminated urban chickens.

Now I believe that the writer of the news article had the best interests of readers at heart. Yet the conclusion of that article and the conclusions drawn by some of its readers seem like “fuzzy” logic to me. I think that before we start blaming urban chickens for childhood lead poisoning, we need to conduct some rigorous experiments, including measuring the lead content of random samples of store-bought eggs, double-blind experiments in which blood lead levels of urban gardeners/chicken keepers are measured against levels of non-gardening urban dwellers, and tissue/egg lead levels of chickens who do not ingest lead paint chips, yet are raised in urban environments. Only after such experiments are performed will we be able to blame or exonerate urban chicken-keeping as a source of lead poisoning. In the meantime, I'm still working on my coop. My plan is to get some chicks in July.

As to the problem of reclaiming brownfields for urban agriculture, I applaud all who are tackling this problem – including the solitary backyard tinkerers doing homegrown research. In finding solutions, you are proving yourselves to be true heroes and heroines.

Sources:

• “Global Markets: The Planting Season And The Credit Crunch,” STRATFOR Global Intelligence, 12 November 2008, http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20081111_global_markets_planting_season_and_credit_crunch

• “Credit Crunch Could Cost Farmers Dearly in 2009,” Daily Post North Wales, 31 December 2008, http://www.dailypost.co.uk/farming-north-wales/farming-news/2008/12/31/credit-crunch-could-cost-farmers-dearly-in-2009-55578-22584929/

• “Credit Crunch Could Limit Ag Trade,” Missouri Farmer Today, 24 October 2008, http://www.missourifarmertoday.com/articles/2008/10/29/news/crunch.txt

• “Farm-Credit Squeeze May Cut Crops, Spur Food Crisis,” Bloomberg, 27 October 2008, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=a.YrOnFi9aJM&pid=20601087

• “Is There Lead In Your Homegrown Vegetables?”, Argonne National Laboratory, www.dep.anl.gov/p_k-12/women/2007posters/Finster.pdf

• “Lead Levels of Edibles Grown In Contaminated Residential Soils: A Field Survey,” Northwestern University, 28 March 2003, www.garden-guys.com/binnspaper2003.pdf

• “Urban Soils and Backyard Gardens: Potential Contaminants and Remediation Techniques,” Urban Agriculture Notes, http://www.cityfarmer.org/urbansoils.html

• “Soil Lead Remediation: Is Removal The Only Option?”, U.S. EPA Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory, www.p2pays.org/ref/37/36908.pdf

• “Field Demonstration of Reduction of Lead Availability in Soil And Cabbage (Brassica Chinensis L.) Contaminated By Mining Tailings Using Phosphorus Fertilizers, Journal of Zhejiang University Science, 27 July 2005, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1361759

• “Biosolids Compost Amendment for Reducing Soil Lead Hazards: A Pilot Study In Urban Yards,” Science of The Total Environment, 20 March 2005, http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=159411

• “Brownfield Remediation: Solutions For Urban Agriculture,” McGill University, http://mse-research.mcgill.ca/envr401_2002/brownfields/analysis.html

• “Community Gardeners May Be Lead-Removal Pioneers,” Sentinel News Service, 17 April 2009, http://www.portlandsentinel.com/?q=node/4434

Homeboy Culture And The Solari Index

When I first moved to Portland, Oregon in the fall of 2007, I immediately noticed one difference between Portland and Southern California from whence I had come: the almost complete absence of “gangsta” graffiti. The rare graffiti I did see was almost entirely political – much of it quirky and quaintly humorous.

Over the last year and a half, that has changed. There has been an explosion of graffiti in our city during that time, and most of the new stuff is not political. Instead, it's a tired repeat of the same things I saw in So. Cal. – homeboys and “wanna-be” homeboys marking out their turf in destructive ways, much like cats marking their territory with their own urine. The City of Portland has a webpage with a link to a document titled, “How to Read Graffiti And What To Do,” describing the various types of graffiti now showing up everywhere in the city (http://www.portlandonline.com/index.cfm?mode=search&search_action=SearchResults). According to that document, gang-related graffiti now accounts for 15 percent of all graffiti in Portland, although that percentage is growing. (“Tagger” graffiti comprises almost all of the rest.) The document also states that most of this gang graffiti is now done by Hispanic/Latino/Latina gangs and gang “wanna-be's.” Curiously, the document does not mention the obvious link between gang graffiti and tagger graffiti.

This graffiti can be found on the usual public structures such as signs and freeway barriers, but it is also being applied to private buildings such as company offices and storefronts. Here's the kicker: some taggers are now putting their mark on private residential property, such as front yard fences, houses and vehicles. I'm sure these taggers are not asking the permission of the owners of said property beforehand.

This says something about the mindset and culture of these people, namely, that they can't feel comfortable living in a place unless they have had a chance to make it ugly and dangerous. Graffiti is the first step toward turning a place into a ground of armed battle – battle over things that are really stupid and insignificant, desperate attempts by gangbangers to provide themselves with an identity. That identity is not built around a worthwhile personhood devoted to making one's place a better place or becoming a productive member of one's society, but rather toward doing one's best to tear things apart – toward becoming known as the biggest, baddest nihilist (though most gangbanger wanna-be's can't even spell “nihilist,” let alone tell what it means). Gangstas and wanna-be's don't care if the things they deface are not their own things – in fact, it's more fun to destroy someone else's things, whether those things are publicly (i.e., taxpayer) owned infrastructure or privately owned buildings, houses and neighborhoods, or human lives.

Who is responsible for creating this culture? There are two answers to that question, I suppose. On the one hand, one can say that gangbangers are fully responsible for their actions, having knowingly chosen things that are wrong and evil, and that one day they will have to answer fully for their actions. There is a level on which that is certainly true. This should be a cause of great fear for gang members, if they are thinking with clear heads – namely, that one day, they will stand in ultimate judgment for every piece of defaced property; every stupid, senseless fight; every neighborhood ruined by senseless violence; everyone killed over gang signs, gang colors, ethnicity or other stupid reasons; every wounded or killed innocent bystander; every attacked outsider; everyone who was ever pressured by a gang peer group to do something criminal.

Yet gang members are not thinking with clear heads; if they were, they wouldn't be gang members. Gangs are dysfunctional groups that attract dysfunctional people. They are symptoms of a larger dysfunctional society. In my post, “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods,” I described the “Solari Index” as a measure of how safe and healthy a neighborhood is for its residents, and I described how certain wealthy interests outside the American minority community were doing things that lowered the Solari index of minority neighborhoods in order to make money. The problems caused by this, and the culture that results, have become the emblems of minority culture in America. But a further problem is now becoming apparent – that the dysfunctional culture of the American 'hood has now burst out of the 'hood to infect the rest of America and the world.

It can be seen in places as far-flung as Sudan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6915187.stm), and Britain, for instance, where over the last few years there have been incidents of gang-related gun violence and where in 2004, a well-known black personality on British TV criticized gangsta street culture as a “deadly virus” destroying a generation of African-Caribbean boys. According to a Guardian news article, the TV sportscaster, Garth Crooks, said “...there was a direct link between films and rap music glorifying violence and the drift of black boys away from education and into crime and violence.” (Source: “Gangsta Culture A Deadly Virus, Says Top TV Presenter,” UK Guardian, 12 September 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/sep/12/schools.society)

As drug use in American minority communities was partly boosted by CIA and Federal involvement during the 1980's and 1990's, I'd like to suggest that gang culture in America is being driven by forces outside that culture, in order to enrich certain powerful growth capitalists. The drivers of that culture include all the usual suspects, namely poverty, exploitation and gross material inequality. But I want to focus on two huge drivers of that culture: the prison-industrial complex and the entertainment (or “content”) industry.

It's fairly easy to trace the role of the prison-industrial complex in the growth of American gangsta culture. As the prison “industry” has lobbied for ever-tougher laws and punishments for ever more trivial offenses, the result has been an explosion of the American prison population. This has meant more jobs for prison administrators, staff, guards, and so forth, as well as more contracts for architectural and engineering firms who design these prisons. But it also means that one out of every 31 Americans is now in jail. One out of every 31 Americans is now being exposed to and shaped by a corrosive institutional culture in which gangs are prominent. One out of every 31 Americans will one day come home to a family that has been disrupted by that one individual's incarceration. Many of those families will have kids on whom the culture of the lockup will rub off.

The corrections “industry” has influenced the American judicial system to prey on minority communities first of all. But the corrections “industry” is a growth industry, like all industries in our global economy. Its success is measured in capturing market share and growing the bottom line as measured each quarter. Therefore, it can't remain static. It grows exponentially, as expressed thus:

Corrections Industry Growth = Ae^x

Those who want to grow it want really high growth rates, rates that are usually higher than the rate of population growth, so that they can get rich really quick. This can be expressed thus:

Corrections Industry Growth Ae^x > General Population Growth Be^y

This means that this industry is branching out beyond the minority community in its search for people to throw in prison. They're probably already looking for poor non-minority candidates for lock-up. Who knows? Maybe soon they'll be looking for formerly well-off people who can't pay their bills. They'll encounter ever more surprised fish as they move up the food chain. We may get to see what sort of culture emerges when a large percentage of America is thrown in the slammer.

Then there's the entertainment industry. I don't have nearly the time to trace all of the “urban-themed” entertainment now being marketed to impressionable American youth, but I suspect that it's quite a lot – from the rap, gangsta, hip-hop and other “urban” music, radio and music videos to the gang-themed movies. As I write this, Slumdog Millionaire comes to mind – not only because it shows how pervasively American hood culture has infected the rest of the world, but because the producer, Celador (now wholly owned by Sony Pictures) couldn't even make a movie about a non-Anglo country and culture without injecting American trash culture into it. Now Summit Entertainment is releasing yet another “urban” film, Next Day Air, with black people in all the settings customary to such a film – raunchy comedy, drugs, guns, and sex. There are even gang-themed video games for Microsoft's Xbox and Sony Playstation!

The trouble with all of this is that it's being marketed to an ever-younger audience. The self-imposed industry rating systems are a joke, as they are meant much more to protect the movie industry from strong regulation than to actually protect young kids from trash. The content industry says that consumers of its content are assumed to be responsible consumers who can properly process the unwholesome parts of the content they consume. But this is not the case with young kids whose powers of discernment are not only not yet developed, but are actively being short-circuited by ads for harmful movies and other content. The content industry says that its movies, TV and other offerings are not contributing to a general breakdown of society. But anyone who watches young kids acting out the “entertainment” they now see and hear knows that this is a lie.

The continued creation and strengthening of gang culture in the U.S. will be an impediment to the efforts of citizens to create local, resilient communities that can weather the effects of economic collapse, resource constraints and climate change. All of these threats will be difficult enough to handle without having to worry about dysfunctional people trying to tear down whatever anyone tries to build up, all for the sake of “keepin' it real.”

For Further Reading

• http://www.maverickentertainment.cc/films.php?CategoryID=1

• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/urban-movies-continue-to-rise.html

• http://www.streetgangs.com/movies/

• http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,302010,00.html

• http://houston.broowaha.com/article.php?id=2009

• http://www.latinheat.com/columna_det.php?col_id=3&column_id=3

• http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08158/887702-254.stm

• http://www.nancycarlssonpaige.org/articles9.html

• http://www.tothegame.com/ps2-1634-crime-life-gang-wars-for-sony-playstation-2.html

• http://www.us.playstation.com/Search?search&s=gangsta

• http://games.teamxbox.com/xbox/1091/Crime-Life-Gang-Wars/

• http://www.truthout.org/040309J

• http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2136

• http://galewarnings.blogspot.com/2008_02_13_archive.html

• http://galewarnings.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html

• http://current.com/items/87069981/visit_america_before_america_visits_you.htm

The Chicken That Laid Leaden Eggs, and Other Horror Stories

I have become interested in raising urban chickens as part of my strategy for decoupling myself from the breaking system of the “official” global economy while living more sustainably. Thus I recently found myself at an urban chicken-keeping class which covered various aspects of the subject, including building backyard chicken coops. During the class, one student mentioned a rather disturbing article that was published in the Portland Tribune on 26 March, titled, “Chickens Eating Lead Not So 'Sustainable.'”

It seems that this article is a response to the explosive popularity of the “urban chicken-keeping movement” in our fair city, and is a criticism of that trend. The author, Tamara Rubin, stated that there is a high risk of lead contamination of the soil of most Portland home lots, due to the lead paint that was used on homes built or painted prior to 1978. She also stated that it takes only two grams of lead dust to heavily contaminate an area the size of a football field. She asserted that chickens on farms are typically less likely to ingest lead, due to the non-lead-based paint used on barns and farms, as well as stating that “most free-range farm chickens and eggs are therefore lead-free.” After giving a few short, general suggestions for testing soil and siting a chicken coop, she concluded by suggesting that the better alternative to backyard chickens is to “[buy] locally farmed, organic, free-range eggs from the store and don't risk inadvertently poisoning your own children in the name of personal sustainability.”

This article hooked my interest, though perhaps not in the way that Ms. Rubin had intended. My interest is always piqued when I hear people warning me or other ordinary citizens away from specific steps toward self-sufficiency. My response is always to ask, “What's really going on here? Is what I'm hearing true? Even if it is true, is it the whole story? Why am I being told these things – especially now?” It was with these questions in mind that I began to study the issue of lead soil contamination in urban areas. This is what I found:

Is It True?

It is a fact that many older urban neighborhoods in the U.S. have soil that is contaminated by lead. The sources of contamination are lead compounds from automobile exhaust and industrial processes, and lead paint on older buildings. The lead from car exhaust was generated by the burning of leaded gasolines, which were gradually phased out in the U.S., starting in 1973 and ending with a complete ban of lead as a component of automotive gasoline in 1996. However, leaded gasoline is still allowed in aircraft, off-road vehicles and farm equipment. The sale of lead paint for residential use was banned in the U.S. in 1978.

Because of the high concentration of heavy industry and car traffic in older inner cities over time, soil lead levels have built up to very high values in these places. The United States Environmental Protection Agency standard sets a maximum “safe” soil lead level of 400 parts per million (PPM) in areas where children are likely to play, and 1,200 ppm elsewhere. As a reference, lead levels in virgin, uncontaminated soil range from 20 to 50 ppm. In cities such as New Orleans, Boston, Detroit and Philadelphia, soil lead levels of nearly 2,000 ppm can be found.

These heavily polluted areas are where poor and ethnic minority populations have historically been concentrated. The small children of these neighborhoods absorb lead via breathing dust and windblown dirt from bare lots, or by ingesting dirt. They frequently suffer central nervous system disturbances as their blood lead levels build to very high values relative to the general population. The children of some of these cities have rates of chronic lead poisoning that are ten times higher than rates of children in affluent suburban neighborhoods.

The lead contamination problems found in older American inner cities is greatly amplified in the cities of the developing world, where environmental and health regulations are much more lax than in the U.S., and where large multinational corporations have moved most of their dirtiest manufacturing operations as a result. The environmental damage wrought by lead pollution prompted this quote from Caltech geochemist Clair C. Patterson: “Sometime in the near future it probably will be shown that the older urban areas of the United States have been rendered more or less uninhabitable by the millions of tons of poisonous industrial lead residues that have accumulated in cities during the past century.” If this is true of the United States, it is true in spades of many places in China, India, South America and other places of outsourced manufacturing.

Lead And Urban Agriculture

Is there a danger then to those who raise their own food in their own backyards? Not as much as one might think. Many studies of this subject have been performed by many groups, including U.S. Government scientists, local universities, local non-profit food security and urban gardening groups, and public-private partnerships between two or more of these agencies. In addition, studies have been performed by NGO's and governments of other nations where lead and heavy-metal soil pollution is a problem. These groups have discovered that lead is not readily absorbed by many plants, nor is it readily concentrated in their tissues to a significant extent. (There are some notable exceptions, however.)

A 2003 study titled, “Lead Levels Of Edibles Grown In Contaminated Residential Soils: A Field Survey,” by Northwestern University, found that those plants that in any way took up or concentrated lead in their tissues did so in their roots first and foremost. Thus, root vegetables such as carrots or onions might absorb between 10 and 21 ppm from growing in highly contaminated soil. Plants were less likely to concentrate lead in their shoots or leaves, although some leafy vegetables like mint had leaf lead levels as high as 60 ppm. Lastly, the fruit portion of fruiting vegetables like corn, beans, grapes and other varieties was least likely to absorb or concentrate any lead. Mitigation of risk from eating these vegetables was easily handled by thorough washing with soap and water. In addition, the 2005 study “Sources, Sinks and Exposure Pathways of Lead In Urban Garden Soil” by Wellesley College concluded that a small child's standard serving of garden vegetables would contribute no more than 10 to 25 percent of the lead found in that child's standard daily portion of tap water.

Then What About Urban Livestock? (Specifically, Chickens)

I was only able to find two studies that directly examined lead uptake and concentration in tissues of chickens. One study, “Lead Contamination of Chicken Eggs And Tissues From A Small Farm Flock,” was cited by Tamara Rubin on her website about lead poisoning, and dealt with chickens that had actually eaten chips of lead paint from an old farm building. While the report states that lead tissue concentrations rose as high as 1,360 parts per billion for the livers of these chickens, concentrations in the eggs of these chickens rose no higher than 450 parts per billion. This study did not analyze the uptake of lead by chickens from polluted soil.

The other study is titled, “The Content of Cadmium And Lead In Muscle And Liver Of Laying Hens Housed In A Copper Industry Region,” and was published by the Agricultural University of Wroclaw, Poland in 2005. This study tracked the lead uptake of two sample groups of hens raised in a region that had formerly been mined for copper, with resulting heavy metal contamination of the soil. This study found that free-range hens and their eggs were likely to have higher concentrations of lead and other toxic heavy metals than their caged counterparts. The weakness of this study is that measurements of soil metal levels were not included, nor were they correlated with the locations of the flocks studied. Therefore, it is not possible from this study to plot the relationship between specific levels of soil and environmental heavy metal pollution and heavy metal blood and tissue levels in chickens raised in this environment.

These studies do indeed show a correlation between environmental sources of lead and increased concentration of lead in poultry tissue. However, these sources do not show the correlation as clearly as it should be shown, especially for lead uptake by poultry on contaminated soil such as is found in urban environments.

There is one other thing to mention, namely that even on regular farms, animals and poultry are being exposed to heavy metal poisoning through exposure to pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. Being on a farm is not necessarily safer in this regard.

Remedies For The Urban Homestead (The Other Side Of The Story)

When one reads Tamara Rubin's writings, as well as the sources I have cited above, one can get the impression that urban gardening and self-sufficiency is scary and dangerous, and that one is better off continuing to rely on the official food system. However, such a conclusion ignores several facts. First, non-profit urban gardening groups and scientists from universities have studied strategies for making urban gardening safe even where soil is contaminated. Northwestern University has published the following recommendations for urban gardeners:

• Survey the property to determine the potential lead hazards, extent of the contamination and location of high-risk areas.

• Plan to locate fruit and vegetable gardens away from buildings, especially if peeling paint is evident and sites where sludge with heavy metals was applied.

• Analyze lead concentration in soil samples from areas where vegetable gardens exist or are planned.

• Do not grow food crops in a soil that is contaminated to levels greater than 400 ppm. Instead, use either containers or construct raised beds, with a semi-permeable barrier between the clean and contaminated soil.

• Where container or raised bed gardening is not possible, fruiting crops should be grown.

• Root vegetables, leafy greens and herbs should not be planted in contaminated soils.

• Test new topsoil before using it and annually retest the garden soil to monitor for recontamination.

• Do not use plants grown in contaminated soils for compost.

• Use mulch or a weed tarp in garden beds to reduce the potential for aerial soil dust deposition or soil splash up on crops.

Others have studied the effect of adding various soil amendments to reduce soil lead bioavailability. One such study, conducted by Hangzhou University in China, discovered that adding phosphorus to lead-contaminated soil bound the lead and made it insoluble, thus less able to be absorbed by plants. Other studies have shown that adding raising soil pH or adding compost and manure to contaminated soil reduces the bioavailability of lead. Lastly, there are agencies who are studying phytoremediation techniques, where specially selected plants are used to draw lead out of contaminated soil in order to reduce total soil lead concentrations. While the other techniques have documented success, phytoremediation is still in an early, experimental stage. And as for chickens, there are several very simple strategies that can be employed in the building of their coops and runs to keep them from coming into contact with contaminated soil.

But before anyone rushes out to secure remedies for soil contamination, the first step is to get your soil tested by a reputable laboratory. It may be that you live in an area that is not heavily polluted.

Conclusion: Bustin' Loose From The System

Having examined the evidence behind Ms. Rubin's article, I believe that she does raise some legitimate concerns regarding lead contamination of urban soils. However, I disagree with the tone of her article, because it forces ordinary, average people of small means into a corner. These are the people who are being squeezed and bruised by their continued reliance on the breaking system known as the official economy. Last year, most of them found it increasingly hard to afford food and fuel as resource shortages led to skyrocketing prices. Most of them even now are being crushed by the weight of unsustainable debt. Very soon they will be squeezed yet again by rising food prices. Midst all of this, they are losing their jobs at a terrifying rate.

What shall we say to such people? “Don't garden; don't raise urban livestock, don't try to be self-sufficient; it's too dangerous”? Shall we tell people that they can only get their food from the store? Shall we pass laws making self-sufficiency illegal? That will go over about as well as a lead chicken. We can't not garden; we can't not keep urban chickens; we can't not learn self-sufficiency. We have to pursue these things. Rather than trying to scare people away from self-sufficiency, let's work on fixing that which has become so broken, while going after the people who did the breaking in the first place.

I'd have been much happier with Ms. Rubin's article if she had mentioned the public/private partnerships between Government and University researchers and urban food security non-profit groups to find remedies for lead soil contamination. I'd have been much happier if she had suggested pressuring the government to make urban polluters clean up urban neighborhoods instead of trying to scare people away from raising backyard chickens. The truth is that the city is where most of us will take our stand, where we will rise or fall in our efforts to carve out a meaningful life to hand down to our descendants amid the crises now converging upon us. We can't all run away to the farm, nor can we continue to rely on a breaking system. As Bruce Sterling said, “The ruins of the unsustainable are the 21^st Century's frontier.” We're starting to live in those ruins now. That's where the new pioneers will make their stand. Whatever's broken, it will be up to them to make it work. There is no other choice.

Sources:

• “Field Demonstration of Reduction of Lead Availability in Soil And Cabbage (Brassica Chinensis L.) Contaminated By Mining Tailings Using Phosphorus Fertilizers,” Journal of Zhejiang University Science, 2006, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1361759

• “Sources, Sinks, And Exposure Pathways of Lead In Urban Garden Soil,” Journal of Environmental Quality, 27 October 2006, http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/6/2066

• “Lead In The Home Garden And Urban Soil Environment,” University of Minnesota, 2002, http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG2543.html

• A Resource Guide: The Phytoremediation of Lead in Urban, Residential Soils, Northwestern University, http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/EHE/HTML_KAG/Kimweb/MEOP/INDEX.HTM

• Urban Gardens: Lead Exposure, Recontamination Mechanisms, and Implications For Remediation Design, Department of Geosciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, July 2008 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18456252

• Greennet Chicago, Chicago's Greening Network, Publications Page, http://www.greennetchicago.org/soil_contamination.html

• The Annual Conference On Soils, Sediments, Water And Energy (Formerly known as the Annual Conference On Contaminated Soils), http://www.umasssoils.com/

• “City Soil Lead Exposure Maps,” http://urbanleadpoisoning.com/maps.html

• “Lead In Soil,” Lead's Urban Legacy, Tulane University,

• http://www.som.tulane.edu/cbr/ecme/leadhome/soil.html

• “Lead for Car Batteries Poisons An African Town,” MSNBC, 4 January 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28484477/

• “Lead Contamination of Chicken Eggs And Tissues From A Small Farm Flock,” Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation, 2003, http://jvdi.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/5/418