Abstract
Although urban community gardening can offer health, social, environmental, and economic benefits, these benefits must be weighed against the potential health risks stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals and organic chemicals that may be present in urban soils. Individuals who garden at or eat food grown in contaminated urban garden sites may be at risk of exposure to such contaminants. Gardeners may be unaware of these risks and how to manage them. We used a mixed quantitative/qualitative research approach to characterize urban community gardeners' knowledge and perceptions of risks related to soil contaminant exposure. We conducted surveys with 70 gardeners from 15 community gardens in Baltimore, Maryland, and semi-structured interviews with 18 key informants knowledgeable about community gardening and soil contamination in Baltimore. We identified a range of factors, challenges, and needs related to Baltimore community gardeners' perceptions of risk related to soil contamination, including low levels of concern and inconsistent levels of knowledge about heavy metal and organic chemical contaminants, barriers to investigating a garden site's history and conducting soil tests, limited knowledge of best practices for reducing exposure, and a need for clear and concise information on how best to prevent and manage soil contamination. Key informants discussed various strategies for developing and disseminating educational materials to gardeners. For some challenges, such as barriers to conducting site history and soil tests, some informants recommended city-wide interventions that bypass the need for gardener knowledge altogether.
Highlights
Urban community gardens—gardens tended by multiple households in an urban neighborhood—may offer a range of benefits
Gardening in urban settings may present health risks, including those stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals, organic chemicals, and asbestos that may be present in urban soils
Information needs Through informant interviews, we aimed to identify urban community gardeners’ information needs related to soil contamination
Summary
Urban community gardens—gardens tended by multiple households in an urban neighborhood—may offer a range of benefits. Community gardens—and urban green spaces in general—may confer an additional set of social benefits [17,18,19,20] and ecosystem services [21,22]. Urban green spaces provide educational opportunities for urban residents, for whom parks and gardens may be their primary source of experience, knowledge, and valuation of nature. Gardening in urban settings may present health risks, including those stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals, organic chemicals, and asbestos that may be present in urban soils.
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