If you eat foods you grow in a backyard garden, and you use ordinary gardening tools like water hoses, gloves, kneeling pads, and plastic tools, you may be unknowingly adding toxins to your food.  But maybe you’ve already thought about this problem–you have a rain collector or a whole house filter for all your water, and you check out your tools carefully, but this new study surprised me–I guess it shouldn’t have though.  Manufacturers rarely consider health or safety for their products unless required to do so, and there is no regulation of any of this equipment.

New Study Findings

Ecology Center, an Ann Arbor-based environmental organization, has just completed testing of nearly 200 items used in home gardening for lead, cadmium, bromine (associated with brominated flame retardants); chlorine (indicating presence of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC); phthalates; and bisphenol A.  These chemicals have been linked to many adverse health effects, such as “birth defects, impaired learning, liver toxicity, premature births, and early puberty in lab animals. . .”  Two-thirds of the tested samples contained significant levels of one or more these toxins.  30% of items tested had over 100 ppm lead–100 ppm is the Consumer Product Safety Commission Standard (CPSC) for lead content in children’s products.  100% of the garden hoses contained four phthalate plasticizers–currently banned in children’s products.  Two of the hoses tested also contained a flame retardant.

Hose Water Contaminants

New hoses left sitting in the sun for a few days had high amounts of lead, phthalates and BPA in the water.  Bisphenol A (BPA) was found at 2.3 ppm, a level 20 time higher that level deemed safe (0.100 ppm) by the NSF.  The level of phthalate DEHP was found at 0.025 ppm, which is 4 times higher than federal drinking water standards.

What We Can Do

HealthyStuff.org has several recommendations to minimize contaminating your home garden:

• Read the labels: Avoid hoses with a California Prop 65 warning that says “this product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm.”  Buy hoses that are “drinking water safe” and “lead-free”.
• Let it run: Always let your hose run for a few seconds before using, since the water that’s been sitting in the hose will have the highest levels of chemicals.
• Avoid the sun: Store your hose in the shade. The heat from the sun can increase the leaching of chemicals from the PVC into the water.
• Don’t drink water from a hose: Unless you know for sure that your hose is drinking water safe, don’t drink from it. Even low levels of lead may cause health problems.
• Buy a PVC-free hose: Polyurethane or natural rubber hoses are better choices. Visit http://www.healthystuff.org/ for sample products.

HealthyStuff.org lists several brands of PVC-free rubber or polyurethane/other watering hoses.

Ecology Center has been testing consumer products for toxic chemicals since 2007.

Update, May 9, 2013: A follow-up to the 2012 study has been completed. The new study “tested 90 garden water hoses. This year, 21 garden hoses were tested for lead, cadmium, bromine (associated with brominated flame retardants), chlorine (indicating the presence of polyvinyl chloride or PVC), phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA).” “Levels of the toxic chemical BPA was found in the water at levels of 0.34 to 0.91 parts per million, a level that is three to nine times federal safe water drinking standards. Also, the phthalate DEHP was found at concentrations of 0.017 to 0.011 ppm in the hose water, two times higher than federal drinking water standards.” [source]

Photo by Srl