Q.I'm doing a whole-house
remodel on an old home. It's the height of the
gardening season, and the owners - knowing that many
layers of lead-based paint had been scraped off the
house over the years - asked me what I thought about
planting tomatoes in the soil next to the south wall.
Is there a danger that soil lead could be taken up into
vegetables in dangerous quantities?A.Carl Rosen, a soil
scientist at the University of Minnesota,
responds: In general, plants do not take up
large quantities of lead even when grown in soil
with elevated lead levels; however,...