Health benefits of 'grow your own' food in urban areas: implications for contaminated land risk assessment and risk management?

ABSTRACT: Compelling evidence of major health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and outdoor interaction with 'greenspace' have emerged in the past decade - all of which combine to give major potential health benefits from 'grow-your-own' (GYO) in urban areas. However, neither current risk assessment models nor risk management strategies for GYO in allotments and gardens give any consideration to these health benefits, despite their potential often to more than fully compensate the risks. Although urban environments are more contaminated by heavy metals, arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins than most rural agricultural areas, evidence is lacking for adverse health outcomes of GYO in UK urban areas. Rarely do pollutants in GYO food exceed statutory limits set fo

SUBMITTER: Leake JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2796502 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature