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by digitallis42 964 days ago
Except that pretty much no plants bioaccumulate lead. The biggest lead vector for plant-based food is the soil that hitches a ride on the outside. So peeling potatoes, carrots, beets etc and washing your other fruits and veggies is really all that is needed.

It's actually a little unfortunate that no plants we know of will take up lead because this would be a way to clean up soil. Plant a lot of plant X. Pull out the plant and discard. Repeat until the lead has been pulled out of the soil.

3 comments

Some kinds of mushrooms take up lead And other toxic materials.

I only found this out because edible mushrooms grew in my yard, but they are warned in literature that they may contain heavy metals, as my well water contains 3ppb lead I wasn’t confident to eat them.

I also found this article for you, https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/03/05/mushrooms...

I grow my own turmeric and ginger with reverse osmosis filtered water indoors, perfectly lead free, and it tastes amazing when it’s fresh

That's going to take a while; when you discard the plant, the lead will go back into the soil. You'd need to store the leady plant somewhere.
Sunflowers and Indian mustard do bioaccumulate lead (especially with a chelating agent).