Abstract
Compelling evidence of major health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and outdoor interaction with 'greenspace' have emerged in the past decade - all of which combine to give major potential health benefits from 'grow-your-own' (GYO) in urban areas. However, neither current risk assessment models nor risk management strategies for GYO in allotments and gardens give any consideration to these health benefits, despite their potential often to more than fully compensate the risks. Although urban environments are more contaminated by heavy metals, arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins than most rural agricultural areas, evidence is lacking for adverse health outcomes of GYO in UK urban areas. Rarely do pollutants in GYO food exceed statutory limits set for commercial food, and few people obtain the majority of their food from GYO. In the UK, soil contamination thresholds triggering closure or remediation of allotment and garden sites are based on precautionary principles, generating 'scares' that may negatively impact public health disproportionately to the actual health risks of exposure to toxins through own-grown food. By contrast, the health benefits of GYO are a direct counterpoint to the escalating public health crisis of 'obesity and sloth' caused by eating an excess of saturated fats, inadequate consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables combined with a lack of exercise. These are now amongst the most important preventable causes of illness and death. The health and wider societal benefits of 'grow-your-own' thus reveal a major limitation in current risk assessment methodologies which, in only considering risks, are unable to predict whether GYO on particular sites will, overall, have positive, negative, or no net effects on human health. This highlights a more general need for a new generation of risk assessment tools that also predict overall consequences for health to more effectively guide risk management in our increasingly risk-averse culture.
Highlights
In the UK there are estimated to be over 300,000 allotments [1] and in urban gardens fruit and vegetables are often grown in regions known to have a legacy of environmental pollution linked to former industrial activities, coal burning, motor vehicle emissions, waste incinerationEnvironmental Health 2009, 8(Suppl 1):S6 http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/S1/S6 and dumping [1,2,3]
Whilst local authorities and environmental protection agencies have focused considerable attention on assessment and management of the potential health risks of 'grow-your-own' (GYO) in urban areas, current risk assessment methodologies such as the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (CLEA) model [4] fail to consider the evidence of multiple health benefits of GYO, which may offset or more than fully compensate these risks
Risk assessment modelling of GYO for the West Midlands Conurbation in the UK [18], using a highly conservative risk index, indicated that food grown on 92% of the urban area presented minimal risk to the average person, the subgroup of people consuming the largest amounts of own-grown produce in the most polluted areas were considered to have an increased risk - the health outcomes of these risks were not quantified [18]
Summary
In the UK there are estimated to be over 300,000 allotments [1] and in urban gardens fruit and vegetables are often grown in regions known to have a legacy of environmental pollution linked to former industrial activities, coal burning, motor vehicle emissions, waste incineration (page number not for citation purposes). Encouraging children from an early age to eat fresh fruit and vegetables has been shown to establish healthy choices and improve their long-term health [15] This is likely to be further enhanced by active engagement of both children and adults in GYO providing outdoor exercise, and psychologically-enriching interaction with greenspace, together with the nutritional rewards of greater access to some of the key components of the lifeextending 'Mediterranean diet'[16]. In a UK-wide risk assessment, the Food Standards Agency analysed crops from 6 urban allotment plots which have typical urban soil metal concentrations, and concluded that GYO posed no significant risks [20] These findings accord with those of an earlier and larger study of 94 allotments and vegetable gardens in nine English towns and cities which found that the geometric mean soil lead concentration was five times higher than in typical agricultural soils, less than 1% of 80 samples each of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, carrot and parsnip exceeded the old statutory limit of 1 mg of lead kg-1 fresh weight [20].
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