35% of Australian Gardens Contaminated With Lead: Keep Your Family Safe With Lead Tests:

Through the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing plants for Australian consumers have increasingly become green thumbs and growing their own food. While it is great that there’s a further initiative to improve their health with fresh vegetables, lower their carbon footprint and find a new hobby, much of the food produced maybe risk your family towards lead poisoning. Lead poisoning can both have serious health effects for Australian adults and developmental effects for Australian children. So much so that 35% of Australian Gardens are contaminated with lead, according to  Macquarie University’s ongoing VegeSafe program. With this article today, we will go over:

1. What exactly the VegeSafe program says about lead poisoning in simple English terminology.
2. What exactly lead poisoning does to the human body.
3. How you both detect and mitigate lead poisoning in your Australian backyard. 

Macquarie University’s VegeSafe Program:

The full paper, “A citizen science approach to identifying trace metal contamination risks in urban gardens” goes through the extent of lead poisoning, and the effectiveness of Macquarie University’s own VegeSafe program. VegeSafe is a community science participation program run by Environmental Science staff at Macquarie University to combat poisoning from metallic elements. The program had an overall sample size of 3,609 Australian residences out of a total of 17,256 residences. Now, keep in mind the Australian guideline for safety is 300 mg/kg for any soil sampling.  In total, 35% of those sample Australian homes had lead levels above the Australian guidelines and 11% had Chromium levels above the designated Australian guidelines for safety. Now, those houses that had lead levels higher than the Australian recommended safe amount had the following characteristics:

1. Older Painted Properties: In both Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, older houses tended to have Lead levels higher than the safe level. This mainly involved both painted and unpainted houses older than 80 years old in Sydney. For Melbourne and Brisbane, above safe levels of lead were observed in painted houses over 80 years old. 
2. Mainly Concentrated In CBD Regions of Major Cities: Due to the relatively newer construction of suburbs without lead paint, houses in the more central part of cities tend to have higher concentrations of lead. This includes Sydney’s CBD and Inner West, Brisbane’s CBD and Melbourne’s CBD.
3. Closer to Traffic Congestion: Due to presence of lead in earlier petrols in cars, higher congestion throughout a specific region leads towards higher concentrations of lead. So, that may explain why CBD regions tend to have higher concentrations of lead. 

So, there is a concerningly high concentration of households with unsafe lead levels. Your house, if it’s an older painted property, closer to the CBD of your city or near traffic congestion may have higher levels of lead.

Risks of Lead Poisoning: 

There are significant, well-established risks associated with lead poisonings both for yourself in health and especially any family members. For adults, the following lead poisoning has the following symptoms:

1. High blood pressure
2. Joint and muscle pain
3. Difficulties with memory or concentration
4. Headache
5. Abdominal pain
6. Mood disorders
7. Reduced sperm count and abnormal sperm
8. Miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth in pregnant women

Lead poisoning has different developmental effects on children and has been widely linked towards lower outcomes for given health outcomes. These take more time to observe, due to the longer-term effects of lead poisoning. These include the following:

1. Developmental delay
2. Learning difficulties
3. Irritability
4. Loss of appetite
5. Weight loss
6. Sluggishness and fatigue
7. Abdominal pain
8. Vomiting
9. Constipation
10. Hearing loss
11. Seizures
12. Eating things, such as paint chips, that aren’t food (pica)

So, to make sure that you and your family are safe, you should take proactive precautions to prevent the above potential symptoms. 

How You Can Fight Against Lead Poisoning:

While lead poisoning has long-term effects, there are ways you can help keep your family safe. 

If you’re looking for some sage guidance (see what we did there?) in terms of financing the purchase of that particular patch of land, get in touch and lettuce help you out today (sorry not sorry!).