[margalabargala]

> avoided GMO-food, she was always eating as much as possible from her own garden

Depending where she lived, this may have been the cause.

Plenty of people unknowingly live and grow food in areas that had toxic waste dumped on them a century ago, and it's still there in the dirt.

GMO food, in addition to not being any worse for you than non-GMO food, generally gets grown in places that have always been agricultural land.

[worik]

> grown in places that have always been agricultural land.

Living in New Zealand they are often the most polluted.

Agri industry is, and was always, very lax about disposing of the extremely toxic chemicals in use

[margalabargala]

My personal understanding (which may be very wrong) is that there are different sorts/mechanisms of pollution involved.

Ag pollution is usually things like herbicide, pesticide, and fertilizer, which can have disastrous effects downstream if it washes into a river, but don't make things grown on that land poisonous as long as you rinse off anything that has been sprayed on them.

This is in contrast to, say, reclaiming farmland in an area that had a textile dye factory upstream.

There are certainly exceptions, for example many old orchards used lead arsenate as a pesticide, contaminating the soil with both lead and arsenic.