Article 2607 of bionet.plants:
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From: kjp@well.sf.ca.us (Karen Paulsell)
Newsgroups: bionet.plants
Subject: Re: Lead & Community Gardens
Date: 18 Mar 1994 06:09:47 GMT
Organization: The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 37
Distribution: bionet
Message-ID: <2mbgjb$7bq@nkosi.well.com>
References: <0097B76D.BFEE68E0.15357@umbsky.cc.umb.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: well.sf.ca.us

In article <0097B76D.BFEE68E0.15357@umbsky.cc.umb.edu>,
 <orrell@UMBSKY.CC.UMB.EDU> wrote:
>2. who out there is willing to test the soil 
>and crops from this garden?

I belong to East Bay Urban Gardeners (a fairly new organization).
They offer soil testing at $20 for members, $30 for others. They
send it to the University of Massachusetts, I think. They
get all the major nutrients tested, and some of the minor ones
too. They have to specially request the lead test, but I don't
think it costs extra. I haven't gotten a copy of the two tests
we had done yet, just a verbal report on the lead portion of
the test. The waiting was agony, though: it takes about 3 weeks
for the results.

We might do additional soil samples in the badly contaminated
lot to determine if the lead is present throughout, or in
some of the area but not others.

I decided to see if it was possible to get lead-only testing done
faster or cheaper, so I perused "Laboratories--Analytical" in
the Yellow Pages. I called several places, and prices ranged
from $20 to $45 per sample, for 1/2 dozen samples, with 5-7 day
turn around. One place asked a bunch of questions, told me
that in ranges about 10 parts per million, they could do the
"less expensive inductively coupled plasma test". I think the
less-than-10, expensive tests are for drinking water, etc.

EBUG is getting some lead-studies soon in the mail. I'll post
relevant details from these and from the leads I've gotten on
the net once I get the info together.

Thanks for all the help, I'm learning a lot, and please post any more
suggestions and citations.

East Bay Urban Gardeners is located at 1801 Adeline, Oakland 94607.
Phone: 510 834-5352 (they don't have email, imagine that!)



