Free Soil Screening @ Newburgh - Saturday, April 30, 2022
12:00 noon - 4:00 pm at Downing Park Urban Farm
The NYC Urban Soils Institute (USI) is bringing our highly popular Free Soils Screening event to Newburgh for the Downing Park Urban Farm Fair on April 30th, 2022 from 12 noon to 4 pm! During this event, you'll have the opportunity to bring up to three soil samples from your home or garden to be tested in real-time using our state-of-the-art XRF analyzer - no registration required. The results will let you know if your soils are contaminated with heavy metals, such as lead or arsenic, and what you can do to minimize your exposure to these metals during your gardening or outdoor activities. Spending time around soils has many health and wellness benefits, but it's also very important to know if your soils are free of contamination - we will help you find out!
Here’s some things to know about the free soil screening:
Gather a plastic bag with about a cup of soil from your yard or garden; surface to 4’’ depth works best. Please clearly identify the bag so you can find it. No registration required, but please bring a maximum of 3 samples per person
Bring your sample to our table at the Downing Park Urban Farm Fair
We will test your sample for heavy metals content within 10 minutes and have it waiting for you on the porch at the pick-up table. The sample will come with a results label and a pamphlet describing best practices. Sample deadline: 4:00 pm
If you have contamination present, don’t panic! We will go over best practices on how to remediate it customized to your yard or garden!
Why Test Soil?
Great question! Soils are one of our most important resources, but they can easily become contaminated as a result of legacy industrial activity in urban settings like Newburgh. Common soil contaminants tend to be heavy metals such as lead or cadmium, which can cause negative health effects to folks who work and play with soil. Fortunately, remediating soil contaminated with heavy metals can be easy, inexpensive and doesn’t require professional services. The tricky part is identifying heavy metal contamination, so we’ll help you with that! Our handheld XRF Analyzer quickly screens soil samples for heavy metals content, and lets you know whether remediation is recommended.