[Ralphy]

Hi folks, I've not been on the forum for a good long while, life took a turn for the hectic and confusing and nice things got put on the back burner for a while, but that's another story...

Anyway, for years I've had half a plot, I've never met my neighbour, he seemed to turn up and do odd things then go away before I got there, one of the last things he did was pile up the remains of his old greenhouse and burn them in the middle of the plot, the greenhouse was made of old sash and case windows that were probably last painted in the 70's. (you can see what I'm getting at now).
So after several years of him not growing anything, just occasionally blowtorching the weeds and strimming the life out of a couple of sorry looking fruit trees, he has vacated his half of the plot and it has been signed over to me.
YAY!

But I was wondering how contaminated the soil might be from old burned paint flakes? and would any of the lead compounds be taken up by the plants anyway, I'm thinking that they may not be soluble in water but O grade chemistry is a long way back in my past  and I'm all at sea!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[JayG]

The use of lead in paint was discouraged from about 1963 but not banned entirely in the UK until 1992, so there is a good chance that at least one of the coats of paint contained lead.

The unfortunate fact is you won't know unless you have the soil tested for lead contamination, which is expensive, although there are home-testing kits available at much lower prices. I will have to let you do the research on them because I've never tried them so can't vouch for their accuracy.

Fruits (including squashes and tomatoes) are considered safer to eat because they don't take up lead to the same extent that roots and some leaves do.

If only you had not found out about the plot's recent history you would still be in blissful ignorance, as I bet many other people still are!   

[azubah]

Tricky one, this..but I would not think that there would be much lead around when the ash is mixed with the soil. I have often wondered about the wisdom of using calomel for club root (back in the old days) and how much mercury is still left in the soil.