Macquarie University/The Lighthouse
New research has found Australian backyard gardens near busy roads and in older homes often have high levels of lead and other contaminants in their soil, making them unsafe to grow food.
More than a third of the soil tested across thousands of Australian homes had unsafe levels of lead, according to new research from Macquarie University’s VegeSafe, the largest citizen science program of its kind.
Digging deep: Research Fellow Dr Cynthia Isley, Master of Research student Kara Fry and Professor Mark Taylor in the lab at Macquarie University.
“Our program has helped thousands of home gardeners across Australia make sure the food they grow is safe to eat,” says Professor Mark Taylor, an environmental and human health scientist at Macquarie University who set up the VegeSafe program in 2013.