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Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

(www.nature.com)
262 points gnabgib | 2 comments | 16 Apr 25 21:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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photochemsyn ◴[20 Apr 25 18:15 UTC] No.43745434[source]▶
Odd that an article on healthy soil completely ignores the major health risk from growing food in regions with a long history of industry and mining, eg most of Europe, northeastern USA, etc. - Heavy metal contamination with species like lead, mercury, cadmium etc. There's a huge literature on the subject, but real-world monitoring is pretty light, certainly doesn't look standard:

>"Freslyn Mae, Camata, and Ryna Mae, Capurcos, and Eula Marie, Delino, and Gecelene, Estorico, (2025) Assessing the Sources and Risks of Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soils: A Comprehensive Review. International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology"

https://eprint.ijisrt.org/id/eprint/324/

replies(1): >>43745629 #
hinkley ◴[20 Apr 25 18:41 UTC] No.43745629[source]▶
We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.

White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals.

Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid climate. Some people put it in the rinse cycle for their dishwasher as well, instead of rinse aid which is hell on your intestines.

replies(1): >>43747227 #
1. hammock ◴[20 Apr 25 23:11 UTC] No.43747227[source]▶
> We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.

It depends. For leafy vegetables it makes sense that dust > soil. However we find more lead and antimony in corn grown in proximity to highways.. this is clearly from road runoff taken up by the plant through the soil . We also find arsenic in brown rice and other crops again taken up through the soil because these soils are heavily contaminated from past arsenic-bearing pesticide use

But, dust/ topicals also matter. There is a reason fruits with thick skins like avocados, pineapple, melon, kiwi, always find themselves on the "Clean 15" list every year- because they are testing the flesh of the fruit, which is protected from topical pesticides by the skins. But I eat the kiwi skins sometimes...or make tea with the pineapple rinds... which people usually don't... and am guessing that they are a lot worse than the flesh.

replies(1): >>43750310 #
2. hinkley ◴[21 Apr 25 10:34 UTC] No.43750310[source]▶
Also read you can remove around 60% of the arsenic in rice by washing it before cooking, which you’re supposed to do anyway. (But I no longer save the water for things like putting into the compost pile).