Heavy Metal City-Zen

Urban Gardening has become increasingly popular globally in the past two decades as urbanites begin to recognise the benefits of growing their own food and the sense of community these gardening activities engender. Urban Gardening activities take place in formal institutions such as schools and care facilities, but a vast number of urban gardens have sprung up independently with the dual role of promoting community cohesion and provision of safe and healthy food for their community. These activities grow as citizens reclaim derelict land and increasingly use roof top gardens and novel containers. Many such sites are in areas of high traffic density, brown field sites or sites overlying landfill, providing much needed green oases in the city which are particularly popular with the share generation. People are often scared to eat the food they produce as they fear it may be contaminated, which is a shame given the wide range of benefits of growing and eating your own food. One of the main fears is the transfer of urban pollutants into the consumers food chain. Trace metals are one of the contaminants frequently found in urban crops and soils. Collection of city-wide data on the health of the soil is often difficult and expensive to collect. In this project we will recruit citizens to conduct simple common collaborative experiments in their urban gardens, from these data we will create a city map of soil health status and provide information on potential risk of heavy metal contaminants.

Urban Gardening has become increasingly popular globally in the past two decades as urbanites begin to recognise the benefits of growing their own food and the sense of community these gardening activities engender. Urban Gardening activities take place in formal institutions such as schools and care facilities, but a vast number of urban gardens have sprung up independently with the dual role of promoting community cohesion and provision of safe and healthy food for their community. These activities grow as citizens reclaim derelict land and increasingly use roof top gardens and novel containers. Many such sites are in areas of high traffic density, brown field sites or sites overlying landfill, providing much needed green oases in the city which are particularly popular with the "share" generation. People are often scared to eat the food they produce as they fear it may be contaminated, which is a shame given the wide range of benefits of growing and eating your own food. One of the main fears is the transfer of urban pollutants into the consumer's food chain. Trace metals are one of the contaminants frequently found in urban crops and soils. In this project we recruited citizens to conduct simple common collaborative experiments in their urban gardens. These data provided information on potential risk of heavy metal contaminants and ways in which to mitigate those risks in an urban gardening context. Generally, values were below guideline thresholds but at a few garden sites soil trace metal concentrations (Pb, Cd, Zn) exceeded Austrian recommended limits. Moreover, only at two sites were plant trace metal concentrations shown to be above European food standards limits. Given the citizen's positive response to the project we suggest expanding this study to the whole of Vienna, giving newly established gardens a chance to predetermine the risks posed by their local soils.