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The Only Thing Toxic About The White House Kitchen Garden Is The Rumors:
Scientists Correct The Record On Contamination
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-house-kitchen-garden-as-med
ia.html

Noted Scientists Try Not to Laugh As They Demolish The Latest Ridiculous
Rumors...

Mother Jones magazine is the current winner in the bizarre race to see who
can most effectively spin the White House Kitchen Garden as a Bad Idea For
America. Last week, the magazine declared that “the National Park Service
disclosed that the garden's soil was contaminated with toxic lead,” and
tried to make a dubious connection to sewage sludge that had been used in
the Clinton era to encourage grass growth on White House lawns.
“Contaminated” is a good bit of overstatement, and evidence that Mother
Jones does not have a fact checker on staff, or any regard for its own
reputation, but the magazine’s pronouncements have rapidly led to a game
of toxic telephone on the Internets and in the media. The rumor that the
White House Kitchen Garden is contaminated is being repeated over and over,
and gaining more traction by the day--even in places that should know
better, and do their own fact checking. But Mother Jones is just plain
wrong about the White House Kitchen Garden, as is everyone who’s repeated
their nonsense. (Above: First Lady Michelle Obama harvests lettuce in the
garden, with her Bancroft Elementary School helpers)

93 PPM As A Lead Level Is 'Ridiculously Low'

It’s true that the patch of South Lawn where the White House Kitchen
Garden is situated was carefully tested by National Park Service officials
before the garden groundbreaking in March, and was found to have a lead
level of 93 parts per million. But that number is “ridiculously low”
for any urban garden, according to Dr. Gabriel Filippelli, chair of Geology
at Indiana University, and associate chair of the Center for Environmental
Health. Dr. Filippelli spent a lot of time chuckling during a recent
conversation about the White House Kitchen Garden, because trying to make a
case for grave contamination based on a test result of 93 ppm is absurd.
(Photo: Mr. Filippelli taking a break from field work)

Dr. Filippelli also noted that the ppm reading for the White House Kitchen
Garden is probably even lower than the actual 93 level the garden has been
tagged with, because not all lead that’s actually present in the soil is
bioavailable—capable of being absorbed by food crops.

“But 93 ppm is laughably low to begin with,” Dr. Filippelli repeated a
few times for emphasis (while chuckling), and added that anyone claiming
the garden is contaminated simply has no idea what they’re talking about.
“It would be nearly impossible to find a garden anywhere with less than
93 ppm,” he noted.

Crops Could Have Been Safely Planted At The White House With A PPM Number
That's Double The White House Score

Dr. David L. Johnson, professor of Environmental Chemistry, Environmental
Science, and Forestry at the State University of New York, pointed out that
the only way to get lead poisoning from a garden growing in soil with a 93
ppm level was if the dirt itself was being eaten in large quantities.

“Is suspect that’s not happening at the White House,” Dr. Johnson
said, and he also laughed when Mother Jones’s contamo campaign was
described to him. He added that a far higher ppm reading would be
“normal” in any urban area, because more than a century of using lead
for things such as house paints, crystal, fuels, industrial applications,
etc.--has led to contamination in cities across America.

“We as a culture got fooled by lead,” Dr. Johnson said. “We focused
on the good parts, and only discovered all the bad parts later.”

Washington, DC is an urban area that has relatively low lead levels when
compared to other cities that previously had heavy industry located within
their borders—such as Chicago, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Baltimore,
according to Dr. Johnson. That doesn’t mean lead isn’t a concern,
however, because once lead is present in an environment, it never goes
away. Thus the testing that was done at the White House Kitchen Garden
site, which experts recommend for all garden sites, so appropriate
remediation measures can be taken to grow safe food if lead is present. But
remediation of the South Lawn wasn’t indicated with a test result of 93
ppm.

“I have no concerns at all about growing vegetables in soil with a
reading of 93 ppm,” Dr. Johnson said.

And Dr. Filippelli said that planting right in the ground is perfectly
appropriate at the White House.

“I would have no concerns about growing food there, and having kids eat
it," Dr. Filippelli said. "I would be happy to grow on that." He added that
he and his colleagues recommend the same thing for lead readings of up to
200 ppm. “Most state day care centers identify 400 ppm as the dangerous
level for exposure for children,” he noted, to give perspective.

It's Inflammatory Politics To Suggest That The White House Kitchen Garden
Is Contaminated

Dr. Kimberly Gray agrees with both Dr. Filippelli and Dr. Johnson’s
assessment of the White House Kitchen Garden as a low-lead zone. She’s
the Director of the Environmental Sciences Program at Northwestern
University, as well as Associate Director of the Institute of Environmental
Catalysis (in pic, working in the field). Dr. Gray has spent much time
figuring out remediation solutions for environments that actually are
heavily contaminated with lead and other heavy metals. She said she's
frequently seen areas in Chicago with lead levels between 5,000 and 10,000
ppm. She also laughed when she heard that Mother Jones, among others, is
calling the White House Kitchen Garden “contaminated.”

“This is about politics, not lead,” Dr. Gray said. “It’s
inflammatory. 93 ppm is well below background lead for an urban
environment. It’s what you’d expect just from atmospheric
deposition.” Atmospheric deposition is lead particles that fall out of
the sky, from things like auto emissions.

“In Chicago, we don’t necessarily even identify a result of 2,000 ppm
as highly contaminated, because the lead levels are in general so high,”
Dr. Gray said. One of her projects was figuring out how much lead from
soils actually gets into plants, and then wind up being consumed, something
Dr. Filippelli is also studying.

“Root vegetables absorb much more lead than other crops,” Dr. Gray
said. “Fruiting crops, like tomatoes and berries, have a far lower level
of absorption from contaminated soil.”

Dr. Filippelli noted that lettuces and greens and peas—all crops that
have been harvested in abundance from the White House Kitchen Garden—are
also less likely than other crops to draw any lead from the soil.

Dr. Gray said that because lead exposure has profound, lifelong health
effects, particularly for small children, dealing with lead is always a
cost-benefit analysis in the modern world, of weighing human activities vs.
gravely but routinely contaminated environments. But this cost benefit
analysis at the White House is almost negligible.

“The White House garden is an incredibly wonderful, beneficial thing,”
she said. “It’s great.”

The Sludge Theory Is...Well, Sludge

The three scientists also each weighed in on Mother Jones’s accusation
that the White House is still contaminated by the sludge that was
supposedly spread on the lawns in the ‘90s.

“On average, sludge has elevated levels of heavy metals but not terribly
high levels,” Dr. Gray said. “You have to know what slipstream it [the
sludge] came from, and that’s impossible now.” She added that it's "of
little concern that there is enduring sludge contamination at the White
House, given the lead reading."

“My experience with sludge is that sometimes microorganisms are the
biggest issue,” Dr. Filippelli said. “But this far down the line, any
microorganisms are dead.”

“As time has marched forward, any contaminants [at theWhite House] that
might have come from sewage sludge have dramatically decreased,” Dr.
Johnson said. “And because there's no body of evidence about what was in
it [the sludge], where it came from, it's not worth trying to make a story
on the Internets that there's a story there.”

Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gray both pointed out that perhaps the accusations
against the White House Kitchen Garden have a positive side, from a public
health stand point, in terms of raising public awareness about lead in
particular and other toxins in general.

“It reminds us that we do live in a contaminated environment..and
precautions have to be taken with any outdoor activity,” Dr. Johnson
said. He noted that simply washing one’s hands thoroughly after being
outside is a good way to get rid of environmental toxins. “Parents and
caregivers should emphasize that for children, in the same way that you
wash your hands before food.”

The Case For Organics, Yet Again

These observations make one more thing about the White House Kitchen Garden
perfectly clear. If we’re already living in an irrevocably contaminated
physical environment, then eliminating toxins from pesticides and chemical
fertilizers used on food crops is critical to preserving human health.
Organic practices for growing food crops is a part of health care reform,
if we identify environmentally created disease as something that can be
eliminated just by changing growing practices. If we can delete unnecessary
fats, salts and sugars from our food chain, surely we can delete
unnecessary chemicals, too. Organic practices as a key element of health
care reform was recently adopted as a platform by the American Medical
Association for just this reason. Although the White House Kitchen Garden
is not certified organic--as this takes a rigorous three-year protocol--and
no one has ever claimed the garden is "organic"--there are no pesticides or
chemical fertilizers used, which is a terrific policy. Mother Jones is now
officially on top of the compost heap of White House Kitchen Garden
bashers, right there with Politico and Drudge Report.