car fumes

[amo]

Hi

My allotment site rep. want to authorise parking very near my plot (1m),
and as you could imagine I am not very happy about it.

What's the point of growing organically if I get car fumes on my veg.

What do you think about it? and what can I do to stop it?

and I already thought about dropping a BIG box of nails just by accident of course!!!

Many thanks

amo

[Primrose]

I understand your point but if the cars are stationery and parked they won't be emitting fumes except for the very brief time when they arrive and depart. I've always taken the view that I wouldn't want to pick blackberries from a hedge which bordered a main road because of possible car fume contamination but realistically many of our agricultural fields which grow wheat, barley, cabbages or whatever have one side which borders along a road somewhere or other so will be exposed to a small amount of traffic fumes. Even if the crops are organically grown, there's no way of stopping some exposure to traffic pollution. You could explain your anxiety about pollution to your allotment rep and ask that cars are parked with the exhaust pipes facing away from your plot but I fear realistically there is probably little else you can do apart from washing all your crops after they are picked.

[peter]

No offence intended, but it is possible to worry too much.

There will be more crap in the rain that falls on your plot than a row of cars parked with their engines running could achieve in a week. Think Chernobyll.

Lead is no longer an ingredient in petrol and by the time the exhaust has travelled a few feet it will be mixed with the atmosphere.
If anyone has a vehicle that is smoking like a chimney then it should not be on the road anyway, so dob it in.

Crude oil and its derived liquid products are organic. It is decomposed heated animals, in quantity, such spills as we produce cause dreadful short term damage to wildlife, but long term the biosphere does cope. What little is in a normal exhaust would have no more effect than blowing in from a nearby road.

Interestingly the worlds biggest oil spill happened when the rock formations that went out to sea (now) from the oil shales on the south coast of the UK collapsed, geological estimates are in the thousands of millions of barrells.

In terms of products of combustion, the worst you'll be getting will be diesel particulates, but the risk there is of inhalation.