A Sudbury, Ont. non-profit wants to know if locally grown produce contains heavy metals

A non-profit group in Sudbury, Ont. is collecting soil and vegetable samples from gardens across the city to test them for heavy metals.

"What we're trying to achieve is to produce some guidelines for people if, you know, they want to grow food directly in the ground in Sudbury," said Sudbury Shared Harvest executive director Carrie Regenstreif.

The group wants to find out if mining operations in and around Greater Sudbury have had a negative effect on produce grown in local soils.

In 2008 the Sudbury Soils Study published a report that "predicted little risk of health effects on Sudbury area residents associated with metals in the environment" based on soil samples collected around the city in 2001.

The study's technical committee included the City of Greater Sudbury, Health Canada, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Public Health Sudbury and mining giants Vale and Xstrata (now Glencore). 

Researchers collected 8,500 soil samples and tested them for nickel, copper, cobalt, selenium, lead and arsenic.

But Regenstreif said the data from the study is more than 20 years old.

"There really wasn't much of a look at garden produce," she added.

"You know, the assumption in human health risk assessment was that people weren't really eating a lot of (locally grown) garden products, which is probably true for most people in Sudbury."

But now that gardening is more popular, Sudbury Shared Harvest wants to see if produce grown in local soil is likely to contain heavy metals.

Regenstreif said there's probably little risk to people who grow their produce in raised garden beds, though, because the soil used is not local, in many cases. 

Sudbury Shared Harvest is collaborating with Trent University researcher Eric Sager to test soil and produce samples for heavy metals.

Regenstreif said they're asking for volunteers to set aside a square metre in their yards so they can grow lettuce and radish plants – which grow quickly – and send them to Sager's lab for testing. 

She said they hope to have some results, and share recommendations, within a year.