[Pollinator] White House Garden Problem

[Ladadams at aol.com]

>From  AOL
Michelle Obama's toxic veggie nightmare: White House  organic garden 
polluted with sludge
_Alex  Salkever_ (http://www.dailyfinance.com/bloggers/alex-salkever/)  
(http://www.dailyfinance.com/bloggers/alex-salkever/rss.xml) 
Jul 30th 2009 at  10:00AM
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Filed under: _Healthcare_ 
(http://www.dailyfinance.com/category/healthcare/)  
 
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When First Lady Michelle Obama planted an _organic vegetable  garden on the 
White House lawn in March 2009_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html) , she hoped to both set an  example of healthy eating and to 
grow tasty edibles for her daughters and  husband. But Michelle's organic 
dream has been dashed by a nasty toxic legacy  lurking in the soils of 1600 
Pennsylvania Avenue. It turns out that a previous  Presidential gardening team 
had used sewage sludge for fertilizer. 

This  is a fairly common practice with one huge problem. Sewage sludge 
tends to be  laced with anything that people pour down the drain and often 
contains heavy  metals. Not surprisingly, the National Park Service tested the 
dirt beneath  Michelle's garden and found the plot has _highly  elevated 
levels of lead averaging 93 parts per million_ 
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/the-obama-organic-family_b_224398.html) . That's below the 400  
ppm that the Environmental Protection Agency says is a threat to human 
health.  But I'd wager that Sasha, Malia and Barack won't be getting arugula or 
tomatoes  from this garden any time soon. 




The likely source of the toxic sludge that has  ruined Michelle's garden? 
The Clinton White House apparently _used  a sludge-based product to fertilize 
the lawn during the 1990s_ 
(http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/06/did-sludge-lace-obamas-veggie-garden-lead) ! Aside from  casting a shadow on 
the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor  Roosevelt resided 
there, the sludge ensures that Michelle's garden will never  attain organic 
status. Organic certification processes strictly prohibit the use  of sludge as 
a fertilizer substitute. 

The White House has sought to  downplay the issue, and a number of experts 
have pointed out that 93 ppm of  sludge in soil is somewhat normal for older 
urban locales. However, the EPA  recommends not growing food in soil that 
has 100 ppm. Several major food  producers, including _H.J.  Heinz and Del 
Monte_ 
(http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/07/more-thoughts-sludge-and-white-house-garden) , won't accept produce grown in sludge. That's despite 
 decades of _U.S. government  efforts to encourage farmers to use solid 
sewage wastes _ (http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/tfer.html) in lieu of  traditional 
fertilizer products.














































































Laurie Davies Adams
Executive  Director
Pollinator Partnership 
423 Washington Street, 5th  floor
San Francisco, CA  94111
415-362-1137
LDA at pollinator.org

_www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 

_www.nappc.org_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2009. 
Beecome  involved at _www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
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