Will it be safe to eat?

mmmm. well i would look at your neighbours babies too........ joking
1)ask the council,,,,, send them a formal letter expressing concern, ask them for any reports they have and licences , planning consents etc

2) use grow bags and pots and containers for your first food crops .... you will get a good yield anyway and the residue will improve your soil

3) plant the plants which will absorb heavy metals if you like....... but if you are sure they are in the soil i would not advise eating crop. its not worth it

 

Hi, I contacted Which? to see if they had any info. and they came back with this:-

'I have the following reply from our Gardening experts:

Sadly the reason why you cant find a home test is because there isn't one. Testing for heavy metals is very complex process and requires a lot of chemical reactors (and a big machine!). You can't really test soil samples for a number of different chemicals either, as generally the cost of the tests would be prohibitively high, so you really need to know what your looking for.

One of our soil labs can test for heavy metals, but just testing for one metal is well over �£50. We did run a series of tests for one member whose garden was virtually on a slag heap and although some contamination was found it was nothing the soil lab thought would actually cause a problem. They said that generally if a plant absorbs sufficient contamination to cause harm to a person the plant itself would suffer and die. So I guess it depends what your planning on growing, and what the land may be contaminated with.

Try a cress test. Grow some cress in a pot of soil from the land-fill site and some in another pot filled with compost. If the land-fill seed don't grow and the compost seeds do, then you know you have a problem.

Regards,

Sharon Tyler
Which?

For more information about Which? click here <http://www.which.co.uk> '

So all in all it looks as though veg. growing would be OK. The cress test would be something to do while the weather is cold, and would entertain children, if any!

 

basically all you need to do is take a ph test and find out what your soil is like and call the councill,
i should think they will help,
Aaron.