Hope Michelle Obama isn’t gonna serve any of those veg in her “green garden” now that lead’s been found in the soil!
Jeff Stier of ASCH (American Council on Science and Health) exposes how the White House has been hoist on its own petard.
“Michelle Obama’s White House garden was created using a “green” approach, based on the belief that exposure to even minute levels of synthetic chemicals and contaminants such as lead is dangerous. Indeed, when environmental activist groups lobbied for a drastic consumer product safety law known as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), they repeated the frightening but unscientific mantra that “there is no safe level of exposure” to the synthetic chemicals and contaminants they sought to ban.
This is radical environmentalism that flouts “every known precept of toxicology.”
Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the National Park Service found lead in the White House garden soil. In fact, tests found somewhere between 450% and 900% of the normal amount of lead in U.S. soil. The White House did not dispute the findings but defended the lead in the garden, calling it “completely safe.”
“They are right. Though lead at higher levels can be dangerous, the garden, like the products banned by CPSIA, is well within safety limits. But the White House’s defense rings of self-serving hypocrisy. Where were the White House reassurances when environmentalists were pushing CPSIA restrictions on other fronts?”
The organic approach endorsed by the White House unjustly contests the proven safety of properly applied chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
I do believe there is no known safe level of exposure for human consumption. That has nothing to do with safe or unsafe lead levels in soil. The only health measure that matters is human exposure.
There are levels of human exposure (from some foods, for example) that are simply impractical to reduce below due to the ubiquitous nature of a minimal level of lead in the general environment.
Some foods pass on lead from soil very effectively and thus must be monitored -for example, lettuce, which can be used to ‘clean’ lead from soil.
interesting point Stuart – so why did the Obama administration okay zero tolerance?